Baker needed stitches making prize-winning Tudor cake

Emma Jayne took four weeks to create the cake

A baker had to get seven stitches in her hand during the process of making an award-winning cake of a Tudor-era monarch.

Emma Jayne, 54, from Aberdare, Rhondda Cynon Taf, won Cake Artist of the Year at the D'licious Magazine Awards for her life-size cake of Queen Elizabeth I.

Made from Rice Krispies, marshmallows and modelling chocolate, the creation of the only surviving daughter of King Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn took four weeks.

"It was a miracle she was made," Ms Jayne said.

Ms Jayne has a background in fine art and started making cakes in 2012, a career she said she "stumbled into".

She said her creations are so big that she previously had to take them around the side of her house and carry them over the garden fence before getting them into a van.

"Now we are going to put a double door at the front of the house," she told BBC Radio Wales Drive.

She said that she had significant support throughout her career, admitting that things have gone wrong along the way "but that's how I learn".

"The fact that people still appreciate the work that I do means so much," she said of the award.

"Realism is what I do. I thoroughly enjoy bringing things to life through the medium of sugar and modelling chocolate," she said.

Despite often spending weeks making such elaborate cakes, she said the joy comes "when the cakes are cut up and eaten", adding that she enjoys being "a part of that person's special day".

Ms Jayne said that "everything" on Queen Elizabeth I – who ruled between 1558 and 1603 – is edible but that she has been preserved for people to come and see.

The cake is now residing at the Haitian House in London, close to where Queen Elizabeth I grew up in Greenwich Palace.