Wednesday 10 August 2016

Cake Monday - August

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.

'Courgette Cake' by Greg

Chosen because Nigella worked for him last time and this was the next recipe in the book. 

Eggs, sugar, oil were creamed together. Flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda were sifted and added into the mix together with grated courgettes and sultanas. The cake was baked in two tins in the oven for 30 minutes. 

The recipe provided a lime filling, but as this was similar to his last cake, Greg went off-piste (again) and made up his own using walnuts, pistachios, honey and sugar for the middle filling of the cake, and figured he'd make a cream cheese type frosting for the the top of the cake similar to the icing used for a carrot cake. His frosting was made from soft cheese, butter, icing sugar, lemon juice and a pinch of cinnamon.

The Verdict:
Good cake!! We liked the improvisation. It was tasty, moist, didn't taste like vegetables and we liked all the nuts. It seemed to be the filling that lost the cake some marks. Whilst the look of the filling put some people off (diarrhoea with sweetcorn anyone?), others found that it made the bottom half of the cake a little soggy and that having the filling and frosting with different flavours didn't mesh as well. That said, the top frosting was appreciated. 

 'Courgette Cake' Average Score: 7.7 


Next time: Adam's holiday abroad was ruined when he received the text to say he had to bake a cake upon his return.