Cake Monday: May

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.

Milkybar Cake by Katie. Last time Katie improvised for all kitchen utensils and equipment she didn't have (empty beer bottles were used to measure liquid). This time, Katie was determined to make a good cake and borrowed everything from Teresa (and a neighbour). She used a recipe off the internet, but realised as she combed the supermarket shelves for 'cake flour' that the recipe was in fact American and their terminology is quite different to ours. Thank goodness for smartphones and Google. 

Once home, she creamed the butter and sugar by hand (not sure why when she had electrical equipment available this time?) and added in a milkybar yogurt for good measure - her own addition to the recipe. The butter cream icing was also made with a melted milkybar and was used to sandwich the cake together. The icing was piped on top of the cake and a milkybar button was placed onto each piped section.

The Verdict:

The cake was liked, the only downsides generally related to how sweet it was and that it was deemed a simple cake to make. BUT, the sponge was 'light, fluffy, and moist' - so moist in fact, that it was like drinking a drink at the same time for Callum (??). The cake was well executed and quietly quite subtle compared to Katie's last glitter-adorned cake. 

Milkybar Cake Average Score: 7.75

 Next time: George. It's been a year since her last Cake Monday cake. The pressure is definitely on.

10 Featured Jobs for May

Cake Monday - April

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.

'Healthy Chocolate Cake' by Teresa.

Teresa has been very vocal about her hatred for how popular chocolate cake is for Cake Monday. So when we walked in and saw a chocolate cake, we knew there had to be a catch. So how do you make a chocolate cake healthy? You make it with beetroot of course! This was a very adventurous cake and it was not easy to create this delicious cake sensation. Teresa had to use a lot of bowls, six in total (and therefore she had a lot of washing up). They were needed because of the many different ingredients that had to be mixed separately. Separate bowls were as follows: 1) puréed beetroot 2) melted chocolate and butter 3) egg yolks 4) egg whites and sugar 5) flour, coco powder and baking powder and 6) whipping cream. Bowls 1-5 were mixed separately and then folded in to each other and bowl 5 was used for a light topping. Chocolate buttons were added for decoration.

The Verdict: 

It’s safe to say we were all (well nearly all) converts for beetroot cake and most were shocked at how nice a cake with beetroot in could be. The cake itself was moist and chocolatey but not too sweet and the healthier option of light whipping cream rather than double cream complemented the rich cake beautifully. Jamie H declared it his favourite Cake Monday ever and it received two 10/10 scores (an Enterprise Recruitment first). Even those who don’t like beetroot liked this cake. However, not everyone was impressed with Teresa’s out of the box thinking, shockingly chocaholic Andrew said it was dull and uninteresting, unless you were diabetic. Overall the cake was a winner and goes straight in to the joint top of the leader board with an 8.8.

Next time: Katie. All of us are nervous.

Healthy Chocolate Cake Average Score: 8.8

Will it work?? Suction bird feeders.

We love our Blue Tit, so much so that Jamie brought in a bird feeder. Our office is on the top floor of the building in line with the Blue Tit's nest. There's a certain amount of anticipation as to whether the bird feeder will stay on the window or whether it will fall off and smash the BMW below. We also don't know if large almonds are his thing....will keep you posted...

Competition Wednesday: The B team nail the 'hoop game'

Victory cup

 the A team's efforts

Wednesday is competition day in our office.

Office Jenja....

Comic Relief 13th March 2015

To raise money for Comic Relief we had a prize draw and paid to eat some homemade cupcakes. Excitement had been building up for weeks leading up to the raffle and the Draw started badly with 2 prize winners not actually liking the confectionery they had won. It was a nervous moment as to who would win the biggest prize of all.....
Callum's so far refuted any negotiation offers to swap prizes.