Matt: Empty Plate

Matt's eagerly anticipated planner cake never materialised today, because his supermarket was out of cake tins... but he'll be back next week

In its absence we just sat around looking at an empty plate for the afternoon, imagining how good it would be if we were eating cake.

Then we went home.

Competition?

who'd have thought that there could be two cake blogs in such close... proximity to each other:

http://ratemycake.typepad.com/

Let the cake-off begin.

Charlie: Chocolate Biscuit Cake

Trust Charlie to mix it up a bit. Firstly, Cake Friday comes a day earlier than expected. On Thursday. And I'll have to admit, I was a bit worried when I saw the cake in question, complete with VW logo in blue icing on the top. But by god it tasted good. Chocolate Biscuit Cake, I believe they call it, and when quizzed on the contents Charlie revealed that the secret ingredients were chocolate, butter, golden syrup, biscuits and mars bars. Just a small piece for me then.

John: Chocolate Tart

Nice work Mr Collins. An impressive chocolate tart with almonds and orange.

As much care was taken in the transportation into work as was in the baking, with John's tart (if you'll forgive the phrase) turning up in in a highly, insulated, protective polystyrene box - I think John was quite worried how the tart might survive the bus trip. And deservedly so because it was delicate and delicious, a lovely texture and not too sweet for something so chocolatey.

A definite winner.

Again, none left by the end of the day...

James: Chocolate Treacle Cake

James Hough stepped up to the plate and hit a cake home run today with his spectacular Gary Rhodes inspired Chocolate Treacle Cake. The test of a good cake is whether there's any left by the end of the day - in this case it was all gone by 3pm. And people had started to eat the extra bits that James had baked in his practice cake baking session on Wednesday. A true success.

In fact such, a success that I couldn't get a decent picture of it. The empty plate is top left in the pic above, and left overs are in the little tupperware containter on the right.

James didn't bake the birthday cake (Happy Birthday John), M&S have to take credit for that.

Mat: Carrot Cake

Well Cake Friday started a little unexpectedly with Mat's carrot cake. Although not cooked specifically to recipe (twice as much flour added as should have been) the cake was well-received. No pictures of the cake on the blog as I didn't think about taking a picture of it. Suspiciously, although everyone said it was really good, there was quite a lot left over at the end of the day.