Thanksgiving Bake-Off, Work Addition

Every year, a week before Thanksgiving, we have a "Work Thanksgiving" where everyone brings in a dish to share. This year, we decided to have a mini Bake-Off in conjunction with lunch. Four of use participated in this game with the winner earning the title "King of the Lab".

I debated for a few days on what to make. I thought about doing the pumpkin cheesecake from Rose's Heavenly Cakes, but my coworker who had borrowed my book decided to make that one. I wanted to do something somewhat easy since I only had Wednesday after work to make it. So after flipping through numerous cookbooks I stumbled upon the recipe for Chocolate Genoise with Peanut Butter Whipped Ganache. It did not look complicated, and the combination of chocolate, raspberry, and peanut butter sounded good, so that is what I went with. I will not go into details about the recipe, but it was a chocolate sponge cake brushed with a black raspberry syrup and topped with a chocolate peanut butter ganache. This was the first cake I have made that has a syrup soaking step, so I was slightly skeptical going in to this. But when I was done I was feeling more confident because I thought it looked pretty good.

The next day at work we had the following entries (one person entered 2 desserts, that's why there were 5 total):

Chocolate Peanut Butter and Jelly Cake

(given the raspberry and peanut butter, I thought that name would fit well)

Pumpkin Cheesecake

Sweet Potato Pie

Chocolate Strawberry Mango Crumb Bars

Black Forest Cake

I thought everyone did very well on their presentation.

When it came time for tasting, we cut a piece of each dessert and called in a few other judges. The judging went as follows: 3 points for first place, 2 points for second place, and 1 point for 3rd place. When the last "judge" was in the room tasting I peaked in to look at the score board. My cake had zero points. I pleaded for a sympathy vote and was given 1 1/2 points from the last voter. I guess that made me feel a little better.

I'm note sure what went wrong. The cake looked good, the texture was fine, it just had no flavor. When I brought the cake home afterwards (all but 2 extremely small slices remained) I made Matt taste it. He said it tasted like a fluffy omelette with a little bit of cocoa powder added. I agreed that it was not a very good cake. The raspberry syrup flavor was nonexistent and the chocolate flavor was very weak. I used a dutch process cocoa powder from King Arthur that I have used previously with success. The peanut butter ganache, however, was pretty good. The peanut butter flavor was subtle but definable. Although I lost, I learned that maybe sponge cakes are not for me, but that probably won't stop me from trying another one, but I know I won't be making this one again.

I will say that my vote went for the pumpkin cheese cake. It was extremely creamy and had excellent flavor. However, it tied for second place with the crumb bars. First place went to the black forest cake which was a chocolate cake baked with cherry pie filling and topped with cream cheese frosting.