In an ill-judged moment, I recently agreed to be a judge at our recent annual Office Bake Off competition. As a hopeless baker but keen taster of baked products, I thought that this would be a good way to avoid having to produce my own entry but supporting the cause of inter-office bonding.
In years gone by, I had also been an enthusiastic viewer of the Great British Bake Off (although not recently but I might take a look at how the addition of Nigella Lawson to the judging panel has affected standards). How hard could it be thought I?
As it turns out, quite hard. There were 10 entries ranging from biscuits of various hues and flavours to some show-stopping cakes and desserts that would not have looked out of place in a restaurant cold cabinet.
I had taken the opportunity to do a little research on what I should be looking out for - my usual approach of going for the creamiest and most chocolatey looking item on the dessert menu discarded in favour of a more scientific (and hopefully, even-handed) approach given that it was the creations of my work colleagues that was being judged.
The internet provided some surprisingly detailed notes on texture, cohesiveness and structural integrity in a baking context which left me slightly concerned about how I was actually going to be able to form any kind of authoritative view on the contestants efforts. Fortunately, another colleague had also volunteered to do some judging and she seemed to actually know what she was doing.
There were four attributes that we were marking; taste, appearance, creativity and a slightly more ambiguous category of Bake-offishness which we took to be how well the three other elements had been combined together.
Due to work related issues, I had not been able to eat my lunch until quite late so by the time it came to starting the judging I was not feeling particularly hungry. There were also a large number of colleagues milling around the table where the bakes had been assembled - some no doubt competitors (the competition was done “blind” so we did not know the identity of the individual bakers) anxious to see how their creations were being received and so trying to cut slices off that were small enough to avoid completely crashing the diet but sufficiently wide in scope to capture all the various layers/textures/ingredients used was quite challenging - as was trying to discuss with my fellow judge our reactions to each of the entries.
In the end, we had to go to a separate room (on something of a sugar-high) to compare notes and reach a conclusion on the top three as the rest of the office descended on the bakes to test them for themselves.
In the end, it was a relatively easy decision on the top 3 and we were able to announce the results without too much controversy. However, I am still not feeling very hungry and am unlikely to be eating cake any time soon!
