Teresa retires!!!!

As one of the Company's original founders back in September 2001, Teresa is finally joining Andrew in retirement....well, sort of - she's back in on Monday for a management meeting! Whilst she will be missed on a day-to-day basis, we hope to continue to see them both on our Curry Nights and we'll try not to be too jealous when we hear about what they've been up to and all the places they've visited!

There are a couple of sore heads this morning after an evening in Berko that began at The Crown, involved BYO in Buenos and continued on til we were chucked out of the Kings Arms.

Cake Monday - September

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.

Chocolate Coffee Cake by Adam

The method: the first bit was a pain - whisking eggs and sugar for 10 minutes. Added sieved flour, coco powder, split it between two tins and put into the oven. The filling was yogurt, cheese, and sugar. The topping was yogurt, cheese, and sugar with dark chocolate and coffee granules. Adam announced that he hadn't looked at the cake's recipe reviews online before making the cake until afterwards, and when he did, they weren't positive. He wasn't going to sample his own cake. 

The Verdict:

You don't notice that there's no butter in this cake - it's very light and tasted good. UNLESS you don't like coffee. The topping shocked many an eater. The neat coffee granules gave it a strong flavour...Fortunately, the topping could be easily removed from the rest of the cake. Despite the coffee divide, Adam still managed to score 8s and 6s and came out with a strong 7 as a final score. 

Chocolate Coffee Cake Average Score: 7

Next time: Greg's 3rd and final cake for a year. If only we'd captured the moment he found out the news on camera. 

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.

Quiz Night - July 2016

We split into 2 teams. The strategy was - put all our quiz-master-queens in one team to win (eyes on the prize), and everyone else in the other team with the booby prize in their sights. The experiment failed. The losing team won! Several things were taken from the evening; Peter Crouch, Sue's map drawing of Florida, "Uncle Jamie" (appearing very early doors way before the pub was ready for him), the Icelandic clap, the sailing question, and the maths question (you know who you are). Now all we need to do is defend our title...

Cake Monday - July

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.

'Apple & Cinnamon Cake' by Jamie H

Chosen because it's the first recipe that came up on a Google search for 'Dorset Apple Cake' inspired by a recent holiday. Jamie's method as always was short and to the point - flour and cinnamon were mixed, sugar, butter, eggs and milk were added and mixed by hand. He peeled an apple, cut it into chunks and mixed it in with the other ingredients along with sultanas. Demerara sugar was sprinkled on top and into the oven it went. 

The Verdict:

Relief was the overwhelming feeling towards this cake. It was edible and more than that, it was tasty. (People still fear kale cake creations). The fact that this cake was made without machinery aid and involved hard labour pleased some, not Jamie however, whose wife queried why he hadn't used an electric mixer after he had finished making the cake. Plenty of people enjoyed the apple and crunchy sugar topping. Half found it a moist cake, with others referring to it being slightly dry and needing icing or something to moisten it. We think this was because some slices had heaps of apple and some didn't, and those without found it a tad dry. Everyone liked the combination of flavours in the cake and it was plain to see that this was Jamie's best ever cake. Jamie is now out of the competition for another year.

'Apple & Cinnamon Cake' Average Score: 7.8

Next time: only three people were in the race due to booked holidays. Greg lost...

P.S. the office fridge is smelling beautiful again.

Smelly fridge update

The smell is getting worse!!!! Jamie's even googled "smelly fridges". There was another milk carton contender, but although that smells, it's not THE smell. Teresa is sniffing plastic containers to work out the root cause.

Mystery Smell Drama

Cake Monday will follow soon, but the "mystery smell" has taken over the office since last Thursday. Adam has received all sorts of derogatory comments about his cauliflower meal creations, but his defense has remained resolute; the smell began before cauliflower was introduced. The focus moved at one point to an old cup of coffee whose milk had turned to cottage cheese. Gone off milk? Spilt milk? A bin leakage? Neighbouring offices have even started commenting. The cauliflower concoction was asked to leave the premises.

All windows are open. Teresa has cleaned the fridge inside and out, broken nails in the process and yet the wafts continue. One thing's for sure, when the cause is found, that colleague will never live it down. Ever.