GENEVA – The gigantic candy cane was laid out on a table, wrapped in festive green blown sugar ribbon and lit up with white lights.

Hundreds of people crowded around in the winter dark of Geneva’s Third Street on Saturday, watching as Chef Alain Roby of the All Chocolate Kitchen used a small blow torch to fasten the last cluster of spun-sugar ribbon bows to his massive creation: a 51-foot candy cane made of 900 pounds of sugar.

But there was a purpose to Roby’s work – to break the previous Guinness World Record of a 38-foot candy cane.