10 Featured Jobs - February

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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

Cake Monday 19th January 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.

'Sparkly Rocky Road Cake' by Katie. Katie's baking background is 'packet-mix' cakes. 

Question: how do you make a cake when you have no weighing scales?

Answer: you guesstimate each quantity.

Question: how do you make a cake when you have no liquid measuring jug?

Answer: you clean out a beer bottle and use that as your measuring vessel.

Question: how do you mix the ingredients when you don't own an electric blender & don't want to spend all afternoon mixing?

Answer: you use a 1950s egg beater of course.

Ingenuity was used in this cake. Katie remembered that cocoa as a chocolate flavour received criticism in the past, so she melted a bar of Green & Blacks finest into the mix. Only problem was, she melted it on its own so she didn't have long to beat it into the cake before the chocolate began to solidify. The other issue she faced was that the cake didn't appear to be cooking 20 minutes in. It was then that she realised that Mary Berry's recipe was intended for TWO cake tins, not one. At this point, the cake changed from a sandwich cake to single-layer cake.

Once the chocolate cake was cooked (and burnt bits removed), Katie turned her attention to the decoration and made a butter cream mixed with marshmallows (some of which were melted into the icing) to cover the top of the cake. She also cut out a heart-shape from one of the marshmallows and sprinkled pink glitter on top. Katie spent a lot of time on the glitter part. Cookies were also placed on the icing. 

The Verdict: there were a few who appreciated the cake, but many who didn't. The decoration was described as 'weird', it looked like scrambled egg, and the marshmallow detail was compared to those polystyrene wotsits used for packaging. The other problem was with its construction; the icing came away in its entirety as you took a mouthful. All in all, the cake was okay, but the icing wasn't. Katie doesn't want to do Cake Monday again. 'Sparkly Rocky Road Cake' Average Score: 6

Next time: we haven't got long to wait to sample one of Jamie O's masterpieces. 

New Year, New Job?

Happy new year! We had staff holidaying in Dublin, the Isle of Man, France, and way “up north” on NYE. That alarm clock has been a struggle so far this year, but it’s only a couple of months until we hit the slopes on our work ski weekend.

New resolution to change jobs? We are hiring! We look for self-motivated, ambitious and enthusiastic people who have the ability to quickly assess information and make decisions! Click and apply.

Christmas Jumper Day for Save the Children

A solid effort

And the winner is....Teresa for her homemade jumper which included a real carrot nose on her snowman. Jamie O came 2nd with his flashing lights Christmas pudding jumper. Jamie H won the sweepstake. 

Cake Monday - December 2014

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 Cake' Jamie O. Having only joined the Company a few weeks prior, this was Jamie's first cake for Cake Monday. He had pre-warned us that he would be 'fitting' the cake into his weekend and that he would be hungover when making it (based on errors of method, I would actually question overall sobriety). So onto the cake, Jamie 'Googled' a recipe that was "fool proof". The cake was made completely by hand (no electrical assistance) and empathy was awarded for the 10 minutes of focused whisking to beat air into the batter. However, what he didn't realise was that the order of the ingredients had been added into the cake mixture incorrectly, which meant for all the whisking undertaken, no air was ever going to be produced, and what should have been a light, fluffy chocolate cake, ended up as a 1 inch high, dense chocolate brownie/cheesecake. 

The Verdict - the cake had a cracking flavour and this was clearly a good solid first attempt at Cake Monday for Jamie. We appreciated the melted chocolate that had gone into the butter icing. However, the density of the cake was such that it felt as if we had eaten 4 slices of cake by the time we had powered through a slice. Considerable jaw effort was required and the singed edges to the cake did not go unnoticed. There was also some disappointment in the lack of Christmas theme - it is the 1st of December after all... If only he had called it 'Chocolate Brownie Cake'.

'Chocolate Cake' Average Score: 6.1

Next time: Katie's culinary and artistic talents are put to the test.