If we were having coffee I would tell you all about The Debacle of Cake Friday.

Now, some of you know what Cake Friday is. To those who don’t, it’s a very important day in the week for my team. Each of us takes turns to bring cake on a Friday. We have a Cake Boss who reminds us early on in the week that it’s our turn by putting the Cake Boss mug on the desk of the person whose turn it is.

This institution has been in place for five years! In the beginning there were four of us, which meant that we had a turn to bring cake once a month. As the team has grown this gap has grown larger. Now we are fourteen.

So, because I am in my last month of work at my current company, I offered to bring cake every Friday until I leave – home-baked cake nogal! I’m not a natural baker, things don’t always go according to plan. I lack the patience to be a good baker. I like those cakes where all the ingredients go in all at once, mixed, and put into a cake tin to bake.

Our bread machine makes cakes! So I decided to rely on this wonderful appliance to turn out home made cakes for my wonderful team. I settled on Madeira cake. Yikes! It’s mostly butter. In fact it relies mostly on butter for the “liquid” part of the cake. Anyway, my team are mostly in their twenties, they can deal with the cholesterol overload, I thought.

Mistake number 1: I didn’t soften the butter. The recipe didn’t say so! I cubed the butter straight from the fridge. I realised something was wrong when the little paddle in the bread machine started to struggle to turn. To take the whole mix out and soften the butter wasn’t an option because it had already started to mix in with the flour and the sugar. I used my hairdryer in the hopes of melting some of the butter in the machine. It worked somewhat…I had some cleaning to do afterwards…

Mistake number 2: Choosing the Madeira cake recipe. When I lifted the lid on the bread maker in the morning I saw that it had sunk in the middle. I cut into it and it was so stodgy and heavy and greasy.

I ended up buying Portuguese pasteis-de-nata (custard cakes) and samoosas for the team. They loved it. But this coming Friday I am going to have to come up with a home baked cake.

I will not use the bread maker for this. And I will need to practice a recipe this week.

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If we were having coffee I would tell you that I am managing to keep up the daily Blogging from A to Z Challenge. I have been pleasantly surprised at how receptive my readers have been to the theme Lessons from Behind the Lectern. I’m having fun writing them.

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(This conversational coffee post is part of a weekend link-up hosted by Part-Time Monster. Join in the fun!)