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.
'Carrot Cake' by Adam. The usual nightmare was described; totally forgot he had to make the cake, so it was a sudden rush on Sunday to get to Tesco in time to buy all of the ingredients. No carrots at Tesco apart from carrot batons, which took hours to peel. No scales at home so all ingredients were weighed through guesswork using his hands. Only one baking tin, so the entire mixture was bunged in one half tin and cooking time had to be adjusted/guessed. He forewarned us that the cake looked overdone on the outside and may not be cooked in the middle. Mmmmm, nice.
The Verdict: Sob story aside, the cake tasted good. Rosie normally HATES carrot cake, but this one was fine because you couldn't taste the carrot (yey for batons). Only criticisms were that it was quite sweet and there were a lot of walnuts in it. The icing was made with two packs of cream cheese, vanilla extract and icing sugar - yet, it just tasted like icing sugar mixed with water drizzled over the cake.
Carrot Cake Average Score: 7.5
Next time: Jamie. We have asked him not to do a fruit cake. The one that got away: Smritee. 16 months later, Smritee has never lost the drinks dash and been forced to make a cake.
