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.
'Raspberry Bakewell' by Jamie. Jamie doesn't have the best track record in Cake Monday with a history of producing dry, over-baked fruit-flavoured cakes and here he stood before us having gambled with fruit again. Proclaiming it as a very easy recipe where everything went in a bowl and was then turned out into a tin, Jamie was never going to hit top marks for difficulty. However, he did keep watch over it in the oven this time and had added baking powder to the batter "to make it rise", a tip from Teresa apparently (as it happens, Teresa was referring to a sponge cake requiring height and fluffiness, not a plain-flour-almond-cake such as this, which is designed to be low to the ground).
The Verdict: the over-riding feedback on this bake was its tardiness. 2 days late was deemed unacceptable & people openly adjusted their scores to reflect their anger at lack of sugar on a Monday morning. The cake itself however, was a triumph for Jamie. A really good cake, that was moist, with a perfect row of raspberries down the centre. Yes it was simple, but it worked.
Raspberry Bakewell Average Score: 7.5.
Jamie has made it onto the Leaderboard with his final cake. Whoo-hoo!
Next time: Darren. This will also be Darren's 3rd and final cake for a year, so it's getting tight for those left in the running.
