Cake Monday - June 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.

'Coconut & Lime Cake' by Greg

Greg likes coconut and lime as a combination, but he couldn't find a cake recipe for this, so he used Nigella's coconut cake recipe and adapted it.... Bold, for someone who's never made a cake before. 

The first adaptation he did was to change her proportions (NB. this is no slight on Nigella) and he went large. He soaked dessicated coconut in boiling water (this in itself blew Adam away). He added the list of ingredients and the whole thing looked "way too liquidy". No matter, Greg ploughed on and setting the pinger for 20 minutes, poured it all in the tins and turned his attention to the butter icing. Here, he toasted dessicated coconut adding icing sugar and butter once cooled. The icing for the top of the cake was icing sugar mixed with limes. 20 minutes on and the cake still looked like a pool of liquid sitting in a cake tin. Greg now conscientiously checked the cake-cooking at 5-minute intervals. Panic beginning to set in, he covered the cake in foil to stop it from burning on the top and closed the door hoping it would cook. 40 minutes later the cake appeared done. And very large. Lime marmalade was added to one half of the cake and the butter icing to the other before they were sandwiched together. Icing was poured over the top and lime zest grated over the top to finish it off. 

The Verdict:

This was a strong cake. We've never had anyone boil or toast anything before - this was out-of-the-box stuff from a cake novice. The coconut texture and flavour was appreciated even from those who were nervous about coconut flavours. The lime meant it was "zingy" without being sweet. There were a lot of steps to execute this cake and despite opening the oven door in a fan-like motion, the cake managed to remain moist and "summery". Only one person was less keen on the cake (Sam) who felt the top of the cake didn't match the bottom of the cake in the piece that he ate (he may have experienced a large blob of lime marmalade), but Sam being Sam, this didn't deter him from a 2nd helping. Greg received 3x 10/10s for this cake and is joint first on the leader board! 

'Coconut & Lime Cake' Average Score: 9.1:

Next time: Jamie H - his last one for a year. With quite a few people out of the competition for a year, the race to become the next baker is getting tense.