3 to 2

My friend at work and I have a friendly, although competitive food rivalry going on.  We each bake something in a specific realm and the NICU staff vote on whose is best.  I will say, I am leading, 3 (pumpkin cake, cheesecake, flourless chocolate cake) to 2 (peanut butter cookies and chocolate chip cookies).  Jessica has recently gone "gluten-free" and so rather than make scones for our competition as planned, we decided upon flourless chocolate cake.  I found a recipe on foodnetwork.com, one of my go-to websites, for  Tyler Florence's Chocolate Cracked Earth.  

Katie gave me the idea of making a pretty design with powdered sugar and cocoa powder.  I tried different ideas one some mini-cakes I made, but none looked too good.  Jon had the idea of putting the CHLA logo on the cake, since I was making it for people at work.  He found the logo online, exacto-knifed out the design and held it for me while I sprinkled on the sugar.  I won, thank you Tyler.  I also made a raspberry sauce which I think seriously contributed to my win, thank you Ina.

When I arrived at work and opened the mini-fridge to insert my cake, I saw Jessica's cake and I was sure I was sunk.  She had this wonderful ganache on her cake, this may have been her downfall, some said it was too rich. I think there is no such thing as too rich when it comes to chocolate and I loved her cake. I thought it was super delicious.  I did not win by a landslide, it was a close one.  

I look forward to our next workplace dessert war, I mean friendly competition :).