Baking for the enemy

One of the side effects of doing lots of baking is that I'm often looking for others to take baked goods off my hands.  It was pretty easy a few years back when I worked with a larger staff--there were always plenty of people willing to eat sweets, even if a few were avoiding them.  With our current staff of 5 or 6, I worry sometimes about bringing things too often.  So I also take baked goods to the day care teachers, and send them to school with Brianna for her teachers.  I try to find other outlets as well, but they don't come up very often.  

Last week I finally had a chance to catch up on one of the recent TWD recipes that I missed--Brown Sugar Bundt Cake, picked by Peggy.  I thought about halving the recipe, but decided to go ahead and make the whole thing, using pecans and cinnamon chips.  I was going to take some to work and to the daycare.  After sampling some cake, though, I only took it to work, so I could keep more at home for us. =)  I haven't seen something disappear that fast in a while--it was a big hit with my coworkers.  The part I kept at home disappeared pretty quickly too, and I failed to take any pictures!  So of course, I had to make it again.  

As it turned out, last week I spent a couple days helping out at another branch, so I decided to take some of the second cake to them.  At one point, someone called from my branch to ask me a question.  The person who answered the phone informed my coworker that they were planning to keep me at their branch so I could continue to bake for them.  When I got on the phone, I was informed that it was not acceptable for me to be supplying baked goods to our "competition."  I had no idea that people were so possessive about cake. =)

The verdict?  My coworkers aren't the only ones who loved this cake--I ate more than my fair share of it.  Part of me wants to try some other variations, while the rest of me just wants to make another one that's the same. =)  I love the whole brown sugar/pecan/cinnamon combination.  This is definitely one of those cakes that just keeps getting better, too.  Not that it survived that long either time so far.  The first time I made it, I asked Gillian if we should add a glaze or just go with it as it was.  Surprisingly, she said we should skip the glaze, and she was right.  The cake is just right without it.  

I didn't follow the recipe exactly, but didn't change that much.  As I mentioned, I used pecans for the nuts.  I skipped the almond extract.  Instead of the fruit, I added about 140g of cinnamon chips.  My cake only took 50 minutes to bake.  If you'd like to give this one a try, head over to Peggy's blog for the original recipe.  To see what other fun variations people came up with, check out the Links.