The realm over which the monarch of the Food Kingdom presides is notional merely, and hence he labors during the day at undisclosed office location. The office recently held its 10th annual employee bake-off, a tooth-and-belly-ache-inducing affair to be sure, but only because the entry's high quality is reliably uniform and a judge always wants to consume more than is wise.
This was an excellent year, even by the event's usual high standards, enough so that it's worth posting comments and pictures of the entries here on the blog, even though this writer is aware of the danger of mission creep infecting this industrial-food-oriented blog. Without further ado, then:
Best Overall: Peanut Butter Pie
This is not the first peanut butter pie ever to be baked, but it may well be the best, blending fresh whipped cream top layer with an intense peanut butter cream underlayer, the latter enriching the former and the former lightening the latter. Inasmuch as every peanut butter flavor yearns for a counterpart in chocolate, this pie brought the house with big chocolate chunks that led with a crunchy impact, then melded with the other elements as it melted. The only ding on this was the store-bought graham cracker crunch, more sandy and particulate than buttery and coherent as a graham-cracker crust should be.
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| How high can the peanut fluff go? If you don't dig in, you will never know.
Best Taste: Marble Brownies
The entry, though well executed, didn't have the looks to promise great things, but under the hood was a pleasingly mild cocoa base lightened with a intriguing sweet-sour dairy/cream cheese note. It may not have been anything fancy, but people couldn't stop eating them and when the calls for taste scores was made, it was 9s all around.
Marble Brownies: Nobody could eat just one, stomachaches be damned
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It's a commonplace to signify a carrot cake's identity with a goofy cartoon carrot made of frosting or marzipan. These self-contained cakes announced themselves with a whimsical carrot curlicue that delighted the judges and built anticipation as to the taste. Though no slouch in the taste department, it is possible that the presentation may have slightly undermined the cake's palatability. While every element: cake, flaked coconut, cream cheese frosting, a ground nut border, was well executed, this was a dense array of accoutrements that surrounded a relatively small area of actual cake, so some bites were a little out of balance, with the outside elements dominating the inside.
Utterly charming little carrot cakes.
Honorable Mention: Tropical Rum Cake Trifle
The intrepid contestant that would enter a trifle into a bake-off in which appearance factors into the score tempts fate because it is almost axiomatic that trifles degenerate into wretched oozing slurries of miscellaneous fruit and cake fragments. The entrant of this trifle defied this fate with winsome creativity. Each judge was presented with their own little jam jar full of trifle, the lateral support from the glass walls ensuring that every spoonful had a little custard, a little cake, a little fruit. Perfectly balanced, the trifle had a discrete adult taste thanks to just the right amount of rum.
Apologies for the poor angle, but are they not obviously adorable?
Swedish Rolls
The new IT guy of Nordic descent brought a traditional and skill-intensive entry to the mix with these spiral-shaped rolls. A mature offering, not too sweet but definitely not savory, I contemplated with fondness the prospect of enjoying one with a cup of chamomile tea. Even after a day they were quite good, and one imagines they were even better a mere couple hours removed from the oven.
Not a lingonberry not any gravlax in sight!
Oreo Bars
Imagine everything you love about Rice Krispies Treats: the lightness combined with richness, the chewy marshmallow binding, and now turbocharge it by transplanting oreo fragments where the crisped rice would normally be. You get a rich but not filling new favorite snacking delicacy. Had there been a way to aesthetically ornament this, it would surely have been in contention for a prize.
The Oreo apocalypse never tasted so good.
Fudgy Chocolate Brownies
Okay, so no points for originality, but this was still a classic rendered with no false notes. Creamy rather than glutenously chewy there were strong elements of butter, cocoa, and vanilla. Nobody whines about having to eat a good brownie.
You could put this next to the definition of brownie in the dictionary.
Toasted Coconut Cream Pie
For as rich and creamy as it was, the pie held its shape well and its crust stayed crisp, crunchy, and buttery. Delivering everything it promised, this pie got strong marks for taste, including at least one 9 score. Some judges marked it down for a flavor of almond extract that was a little big strong, and a texture that was more creamy than fluffy. But the rich custardy filling had judges coming back for second helpings after the judging was over.
If you wanted coconut taste, you were in luck.
The Bottom Line
This year corporations will spend millions for their food technicians and scientists to create exciting and addictive flavors that can be churned out of an assembly line to a waiting queue of hungry motorists and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. But all creativity is human creativity and it resides in all of us. Technology fascinates but human cooks rock. Here's to another 10 years of the office bake-off.
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