British royal fashion inspires cakes and pastries

Among the presents Queen Elizabeth II can expect to receive for her diamond jubilee this year are cakes and pastries from a London luxury hotel. But they won't be your ordinary baked goods: The seven pieces will resemble a crown, a handbag, hats and fascinators.

The goodies, dubbed "The Royal Collection", were created by The Berkeley hotel to celebrate the queen's 60th year on the throne.

From May 29 to June 9, they will be served during the hotel's Pret-a-Portea afternoon tea, where the sweets are inspired by the hottest trends in the fashion world.

For those two weeks in late spring, however, the latest catwalk designs will have to take a back seat to some of the most memorable accessories worn by the British royal family.

There is the gold St. Edward's crown presented to the queen during her coronation (recreated as a vanilla biscuit with icing and sugar diamonds), and the natural straw coulis fascinator won by Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, at a wedding last July (re-imagined as dark chocolate mousse with crunchy pearls, topped with a thin wafer biscuit and fresh flower).

And who can forget the beige headpiece worn by Princess Beatrice to the nuptials of Prince William and Kate Middleton? The fascinator, described in the British press as a "fiasco", later fetched $130,000 for charity on Ebay. Its edible version is a profiterole with praline filling.

How does one even begin to create fashion pieces out of sugar, butter, flour, cream, chocolate powder?

"The whole pastry team works together on the creation of the cakes, picking ingredients, deciding on different pastry techniques, and of course tasting the end-result," Mourad Khiat, head pastry chef at The Berkeley, tells China Daily.

"The cakes and pastries not only need to look amazing, their taste also needs to match the haute couture design."

The queen herself can judge how successful the reproductions are, since the Buckingham Palace should receive a delivery from The Berkeley hotel in June.