Tuesday 9 September 2008

Let them eat cake...


Hey, Chris here again - so firstly I must apologise for the picture that the webmaster put up to accompany my last blog, I hate that picture: I look like a Dickensian fool! Oh that reminds me must get them to change my staff pic too!

In the office we love cake, and so for every birthday we take turns in baking. Last week we had three birthdays (Julia, Paul and Philippa) so we celebrated them all at once with three tastalicious cakes. I have never volunteered myself to make a cake; cooking I’m good at, baking... not so hot - but I decided to bite the bullet and make a cheesecake. As I’ve never made a cake I didn’t have the appropriate kitchen utensils, so it was off to the shops to buy ingredients - whisk, cake-tin and rolling pin. Came home without the rolling pin.

Turns out it’s really simple to make a cheesecake, even without a rolling pin. My blueberry cheesecake was brilliant - it's not the one in the pic, by the way, but not far off! - but don’t just take my word for it. Here's just a sample of my colleagues' reactions:


“Wow! I didn’t think you could cook” - un-named staff member who is yet to blog


“I’m impressed” - Jasmine (this means a lot as she is a cake-making Goddess)


“I think you should bake cakes more often, this is the bestest cheesecake in the world ever” - ok, so I made this one up but still I was happy with how happy people were to eat the thing.


I wasn’t so happy that someone (probably the cleaner) has thrown out the base of my cake-tin. It was NEW!

So our office is a happy, cake-filled office, it really is great to work with such a good bunch of people. I think that part of the reason that we get on so well is that everyone knows when to have a laugh or when to get their heads down and do the work. This week it's one of the latter times and I am doing lots of preparation for events in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Elgin and North Ayrshire, a tour of Moray, another tour of Argyle & Bute, the Royal Mail Awards (which is twice as big as last year) as well as a creative writing competition for teens. As I said it’s busy but fun.

Things that I am currently enjoying:

The Trouble with Dragons (publishing November) by Debi Gliori


Chris
Cakemaker Extraordinaire (and Children's Programme Assistant)

No comments: