Tuesday 6 October 2015

Cake Monday - October '15


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.

Pumpkin Cheesecake Cake by Katie

This being Katie’s last Cake Monday for a year, and having lost marks with a previous version for doing a cake that was too simple, Katie decided to go all out with a more complicated cake – and as we head into autumn she decide to keep it seasonal too. Hence we had Pumpkin Cheesecake Cake. She found the recipe on the Internet and felt confident having read the many good reviews it received. So, there were two cakes to this challenge: a pumpkin cake  and a cheesecake. The pumpkin cake involved canned pumpkin (found while shopping on the American aisle), the usual flour, sugar, eggs etc and some autumnal spices. The cheesecake incorporated cream cheese, sugar, eggs, yogurt and vanilla bean paste. Once the mixes were made they were used to create a marbled effect within the cake, and the whole lot was baked using the bain marie method – a first for Katie. Once cooled a cream cheese frosting was made to cover the top. So far, so good.

On arrival in work there was a shock in store for Katie – the cream frosting was very liquid and had failed to set – running off the top of the cake. Oh dear………….but while it made it a bit messy to eat it did not detract from the flavour.

The Verdict: 
Overall this was a good cake. The marbling effect was impressive and the scores were high. It was described as “Autumn in a cake” by several people. Jamie, who was disappointed by the appearance and slightly put off – didn’t have high expectations, but as it’s “all about the taste” for him, he was delighted  and thought it was very good – even going back for seconds.
Overall everyone was impressed with the number of stages and the effort that had gone into to it, and despite the appearance the taste was definitely a winner.

Pumpkin Cheesecake Cake Average Score: 7.7


Next up, it’s George again.

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