Monday 1 February 2016

Cake Monday - February 2016

We race (electronically) and the loser has to bake a cake to feed the office. 
Why? Because we like cake.
Who? Everyone in the office. No one gets out of it. When? 1st Monday of the month. The rules: you make the cake yourself, without any help. You can't 'repeat' a cake. Your cake will be judged on presentation, difficulty and taste, and marked out of 10 by each colleague. When you have baked 3 cakes, you are out of the competition for 1 year.

Victoria Sponge Cake by Jamie O
Jamie took a half day's holiday for this. Not only that, he got to the shops for 9.30am in order to buy the ingredients. Following a Mary Berry recipe (what could go wrong?), the ingredients went into an electric mixer (apart from the flour) and the batter was turned out into two lined tins. The cake was baked for 25 minutes, BUT, time was ticking. Jamie realised that he only had 30 minutes to cool the cake before he'd need to leave to get to work. With the butter icing and jam ready to hand, they were slapped on the bottom cake tier. With the cake filling "starting to go", the top tier was quickly pressed on top. The photos below show what happened next, but I don't imagine the car journey helped its stability. 

The Verdict: 
Once cut and on the plate, the cake actually looked alright and it tasted good! The sponge was fluffy and it tasted incredibly fresh (we've never had a cake straight from the oven before). Fortunately, the sweetness must have counteracted the burnt bits on top because no one mentioned those. The cake was very well risen (small slice requests weren't humanly possible) and well received. This cake created nostalgia and birthday reminisces, and the conclusion was that Jamie had baked a simple cake well. He had exceeded his cake ability expectations. In fact, everyone seemed to forget the car-crash-appearance and sniggers from when it first arrived in the office at lunchtime. Jamie's gone out for a year on a high. He is the man that brought us a cake that resembled a pork pie, a chocolate cake that disguised itself as a brownie, and today a victoria sponge that would be perfect at Halloween.  

Next time: Jamie H. We are all envious of Teresa & Tom who are away that day.


Victoria Sponge Cake Average Score: 6.9