Monday 2 February 2015

Cake Monday 2nd February 2015

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.

'Lemon Drizzle Cake' by Jamie O. 
Jamie was gutted when faced with producing a 2nd cake for Cake Monday. Last time, he made a chocolate sponge cake that didn't rise and looked like a chocolate brownie. This time, he made a lemon drizzle cake that looked like a pork pie. 

Jamie's school-boy-error is that rather than state he has made a chocolate brownie cake, or that he has deliberately set out to create a cake that resembles a pork pie (like Heston B) therefore maximising points for presentation and creativity, he stuck to his guns that this was a lemon drizzle cake which somehow ended up looking like a meat pie. 

What he did do however, was learn from previous mistakes; he added eggs to the mix one at a time and the flour went into the batter last. However, he waited for the cake to cool before pouring the lemon syrup on top and no holes were made in the cake to help the syrup bleed through - the recipe didn't say he should.

The Verdict: No one really knows how he achieved the perfectly crimped crust on top or how he delivers the density of sponge every time, but this cake tasted good. The intense lemony flavour was centred in one area of the cake (the upper crust), but it was certainly edible. We genuinely liked it, but found the pie-look slightly baffling. If the lemon had been evenly distributed and if the sponge wasn't so solid, he would have scored higher. Jamie has one last attempt to get on the Cake Monday Leaderboard. 

Next time: Andrew's back with his 3rd cake. 

'Lemon Drizzle Cake' Average Score: 6.6