This cake has been on my to-bake list for quite a while, mainly because it is fairly unusual (in the unlimited realm of online recipes) to come across a recipe repeated so faithfully, so often. Of the 4 links below, there are only 2 minor differences, neither of which affect the texture of the cake significantly.It is essentially the most moist, fluffy chocolate sponge you have ever eaten. Topped off with a delicious chocolate icing. What could be better?
If you have a birthday crowd to feed, BBQ to attend, chocoholic to impress or are just looking for a great chocolate cake to put in your regular rotation; try this recipe. It will not disappoint, I guarantee it!
This chocolate sheet cake is something all Americans are familiar with, being a staple dessert at potlucks (or so I’m told). I can see why; it certainly feeds a crowd with minimal effort. My office of 30 plus were well sated, with a few admitting to a second helping. This cake was new to me but is going on my regular rotation now; I plan to make Australians as familiar with this cake as Americans. Well, those I know well enough to bake for, anyway!
I found this recipe at these links. All are the same recipe, except that one called for a teaspoon of cinnamon to be added to the batter, an addition I can highly recommend.
Pre-heat the oven to 175 and grease a 45 x 33cm pan. Mine was only 40 x 30cm but it just made a slightly higher cake. Sift the flour into a bowl and mix with the cinnamon, flour, salt and sugar. Melt the butter in a saucepan and mix in the cocoa until smooth. Add the boiling water and stir, bring to the boil for 30 seconds and then remove from the heat.
Pour the cocoa mix into the flour mix and stir a little to partially mix. In a separate bowl or jug mix the butter milk, eggs, baking soda and vanilla essence. Mix vigorously until smooth and pour into the greased pan. Bake for 20 minutes, keeping a close eye on it. Test with a skewer and remove when it comes out clean.
While the cake is cooking, melt the butter in the saucepan and add the cocoa. Stir until smooth and remove from the heat. Add in the vanilla and milk, mix until smooth. Sift the icing sugar into the saucepan and stir in. Mix briskly until smooth.
Tyson Foods is preparing for a management shift and it’s only the second time in the company’s long history where the incoming CEO is not a veteran employee of the Springdale-based meat giant.
Donnie Smith, 57, announced his retirement effective Dec. 31, though he will remain an advisor to the company and its board for three more years. Smith negotiated an annual advisory fee of $2.3 million through 2018. He also will walk away with stock positions valued at $27.425 million, not counting options and deferred income which will vest on Dec. 31.
Smith has spent his entire 36-year career at Tyson Foods working his way up the ranks to eventually assume the CEO role seven years ago. That is not the case for his successor Tom Hayes, who wasn’t even on Tyson Foods’ radar prior to 2014. In fact, Hayes was not among the five top paid company executives listed in this year’s Tyson Proxy filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Hayes will take the reins as CEO Jan. 1, earning a base salary of $1.15 million, slightly more than the $1.124 million base pay rate of Smith last year. Hayes was promoted to president in June when the company divided the CEO and president roles.
“I am humbled to be named the next CEO of Tyson Foods and am grateful to the Board and the family for providing me with the opportunity to lead this incredible company. Tyson Foods is well positioned to realize numerous growth opportunities – our company has a solid strategy that leverages compelling market dynamics and an experienced and highly capable management team and many thousands of hardworking and dedicated associates,” Hayes noted in the announcement of his promotion.
Since joining Tyson Foods in 2014, Hayes has served as the chief commercial officer overseeing all North American sales in addition to the food service prepared foods business where he was also president. The contract Hayes negotiated with the company was made public on Tuesday (Nov. 22). Essentially, he has a two-year contract, which if terminated for good reason by either party, will include double salary and bonuses for two years, plus medical coverage for up to 18 months. Hayes is also entitled to 50 hours of personal use of the company-owned aircraft for fiscal 2017. The contract also has a 2-year non-compete clause after termination.
The retirement of Smith was somewhat of a surprise to Wall Street analysts given the pending class action litigation the company faces. When asked about the management change during the company’s earnings call Monday (Nov. 21), Smith said the timing was right given the solid financial footing of Tyson Foods and it has nothing to do the pending litigation.
“As we have said before, we dispute the claims, we are looking forward to our opportunity to defending ourselves in court on the litigation. So that has nothing to do with the transition. So, yes, there is not a better time, we have got a great team, Tom is a very capable leader. So in terms of all of that there couldn’t be a better time to be making this transition,” Smith told analysts on the call.
Smith also said since the promotion of Hayes to president in June, he and the Board have been constantly reminded why they hold him in high regard as a capable leader, strategic thinker and team player.
“He has the skills to deliver on our strategic goals and complete the transition toward our hybrid model,” Smith added.
It was Hayes who conducted the majority of Monday’s earnings call with analysts during which time he thanked Smith for his “unwavering support and advice.”
There’s no question Tyson Foods is in the midst of a metamorphosis from a commodity meat packer and processor into a food company and a house of branded retail products for consumers as well as restaurants and food service customers. Tyson today looks less like its traditional poultry industry competitors and more like Hormel or the former Hillshire Brands which it swallowed up for a whopping $8.55 billion just two and half years ago.
Wall Street largely approves of this ongoing transition to a higher margin business model, and Smith has said higher margins is the reason Tyson earnings can be less volatile and it’s the direction in which the company must move.
Hayes has almost 30 years experience in branded products which carry a higher margin than traditional commodity meat and is likely one reason he was tagged ahead of other long-time executives to assume the CEO role. Now that Tyson Foods has stabilized chicken margins between 9%-11%, it will be up to Hayes to keep them there and perhaps grow them more. The same will be true for the highly commoditized beef margins of 1.5%-3%. Tyson’s pork margins are a healthy 10% and Hayes will need to perhaps expand that where and when possible.
The last time Tyson Foods promoted a CEO outside its own legacy pipeline was in 2006, when Dick Bond took the reins from John Tyson, now chairman of the board. Bond was a long-time executive of IBP, which Tyson acquired in 2001. Bond ran Tyson’s red meat business prior to assuming the CEO role. During Bond’s two year and nine-month tenure as CEO, the company endured a severe chicken glut, record grain prices and a beef industry shuttering plants amid a rapidly shrinking herd. Competitor Pilgrim’s Pride went through bankruptcy and Tyson Foods faced hefty losses that threatened its debt covenants.
In January 2009, the board of directors called former Tyson Foods CEO Leland Tollett out of retirement to replace Bond on an interim basis, which he did for most of that year until Smith was promoted to CEO. Smith recently said when he took over in late 2009 Tyson’s chicken business was a mess and he was tasked with fixing it. No one can argue about the turnaround which has happened under Smith’s leadership. But with the new direction Tyson is trying to move, it is Hayes who has experience with consumer food companies like Sara Lee, where he served as president as well as in top management roles at Kraft Foods, Stella Foods, ConAgra and U.S. Food Service Inc.
“The Board’s decision to name Tom CEO at this time was based on both his track record and how his skills align with the company’s strategic direction and continuing evolution,” John Tyson, chairman of the Board of Directors, said in a statement. “The Board has the utmost confidence in Tom’s ability to build on the platform Donnie has created, to expand further into developing markets, new product categories and proprietary food experiences, and to continue investing in our core nine categories.”
Tyson shares tumbled more than 12% on Monday (Nov. 21) when the company missed revenue expectations and announced the CEO transition. The stock price regained some of the losses Tuesday (Nov. 22) but still remain under the $60 mark at $58.63, up 1.79% amid a major rally of the Dow Jones Industrials and broader market indices.
Analysts have been re-calculating their earnings models following Monday’s call and the double-digit price decline in shares. That said. Moody’s Investors Services recently raised Tyson Foods’ credit rating slightly and gave the company a “stable outlook” rating based on a complete review of the Tyson’s financials since August. Moody’s said the rating upgrade reflected Tyson’s improved earnings diversity and restored financial metrics following the leveraged Hillshire deal. The agency said Tyson has successfully integrated the Hillshire business and reduced debt to more comfortable levels.
Yeah, the AVS is also a fine option. I've been very tempted to snag one. (I'd also love the Analogue Nt mini, with its emulation of the various sound chips, but I ain't payin' that much.)
Yeah the Nt is appealing for the "full compatibility. no really. everything is compatible. we have fuckin' microphone support" thing but not $400-$500 appealing
And I'll be honest, I've wanted Stunt Race FX back in my life for some time now, so that would be good for me.
I just skimmed back through this thread from the very beginning, and let me tell you, it is a fucking journey. Hard to believe how differently I feel about this now from how I did almost a year ago.
I know this thread mostly exists for people to complain about not being able to buy one of these things, but I thought I'd take a minute to talk about actually using one.
My NES Classic arrived a little over a month ago, but I've only started using it in earnest now. The biggest problem was the controller cable length, which is just ridiculous. In order to play sitting on my couch, I had to use a 10 foot HDMI cable and plug the console in on the floor next to me. The HDMI, controller cable and power cable were all close to their limits, which turned my living room into a sort of Bermuda triangle where none could enter. Thankfully, solutions to this problem do exist, but since I was ordering them from the US I had to wait until the next time my parents visited to get them (since they are the ones who can easily cross the border to get packages from Amazon.com for me).
There are two ways of dealing with this limitation: extension cords and this Bluetooth adapter. I got one of each, since I didn't know how well they would work and I wanted to be able to play with two people anyway. I haven't actually tried out the controller extension cable yet, but so long as it works I think there won't be much to say about it. But I've played around with the Bluetooth dongle and I think I've found a setup that I like.
I started using it with a NES30 controller, also made by 8ButDo. You can actually buy the adapter and the controller together in a bundle, but I had the controller already (along with the Super Famicom-styled version, which I prefer). There are two problems with that setup, though. First, the NES30 adds buttons to the NES controller, using the SNES-style ABXY setup. That's all well and good for a game that you can reconfigure the controls, but with the dongle they only let you map A to A and B to B. This is annoying, because those buttons are at an angle that feels very unnatural - clearly, it would be better to map B to A and Y to B. The other issue is that the dpad isn't quite as precise as a Nintendo-made controller's would be. You know how, in Ninja Gaiden, you can cancel the spin slash by holding down when you attack? Well I was trying to do that and I messed it up about half the time, it wasn't very satisfying.
But the Bluetooth adapter is compatible with all sorts of controllers, so the other day I decided to try something else instead. I synced up one of my many Wiimotes to the system and found that it was a much more pleasant experience. The buttons are oriented comfortably, the dpad is nice and precise and I've played enough Virtual Console NES games with that particular controller that it feels very natural to me to use it for them. I can't shake the feeling that it's just a hair less responsive than playing those same games on the Wii, but I might just be imagining it. I don't feel much by way of lag (I set my TV to game mode when I use the Classic, but there's still about 25ms of lag, so it's hard to tease the screen lag apart from the controller lag) and I hit my inputs pretty consistently. If I really wanted to be scientific, I would try syncing one of my DualShock 3s up for the sake of comparison, but I'm pretty happy with the Wiimote and I have a whole bunch of them lying around not doing much. So my final recommendation is that people get the Bluetooth adapter, but maybe try out some controllers they already have before splurging on one by 8BitDo. I don't know how the dongle would map the buttons on a DualShock, though, so the Wiimote might really end up being the best option.
Aside from controllers, the other big question is what games you put on your Classic (and how they play). I bought a Switch, but I have no good reason to believe that any of my Wii or 3DS VC games are ever going to be available for me to play on it. In the meantime, by solution was to put every NES game I could want to play on the Classic, and that's what I did. I stuck about 80 games on there using hakchi2, which is close to the maximum that you can add without sorting them into folders. I wanted everything to be in a big buffet-style line, so I tried to keep it under the limit. In theory, the more games you have, the fewer save-states you can keep for each of them, but I haven't run into this limitation yet. One thing I have noticed is that the emulation is far from perfect. Some sounds are off, notably the sound Mega Man makes when he lands on the ground - but only in the later MM games. The system also does some crazy shit when the screen flashes, the colors bleed together in a way that is kinda cool, but not at all authentic. Most of the time it isn't a problem, but if you're fighting a boss whose attacks make the screen flash it gets psychedelic pretty fast.
So it's not perfect, certainly not the way the AVS or Analogue NT would be, but it's also a lot cheaper (even including the price of the Bluetooth adapter). It's a cool little toy and I'm glad to have mine, but there are definitely other options out there that will give you a potentially more faithful experience.
This was readily predictable once they discontinued it earlier in the year, although I wasn't predicting it as soon as 2018.
I don't remember where I posted it, but I had a feeling they would revive the system on a yearly or semi-yearly basis. Glad to see they're going to bring it back. The question, of course, is will any games get swapped out?
That too. I can't imagine that they'd stick with the exact same design, but who knows? They may not care. The average user that would hack their system probably already has been emulating for years and years.
(Ironically, the fact that I have been emulating for so long would probably keep me from bothering hacking it. I've got enough places to play my NES games already.)
What do you mean? They're HDMI-required devices. You can select 4:3 for slightly stretched display or pixel perfect (square), similar to what Mega Man Legacy Collection does.
I just want to repeat my recommendation: get the 8bitDo Bluetooth receiver and sync up a Wiimote, it makes a great wireless controller for the NES Classic.
(And since the SNES Classic has the same ports, hopefully I'll be able to use the same receiver for it too, along with the SFC30 controller.)
I use the 4:3 option most of the time and it's pretty good. You get a few minor artifacts here and there, but for the most part it isn't noticeable. The pixel perfect option is super crisp, but a little small for my tastes. I know that the Wii U had notoriously bad NES emulation, but the NES Classic does a generally decent job. I'd say it's just a hair worse than what the original Wii put out, but the added convenience of save states makes it better overall.
Amazon appears to have the Famicom Mini up in their new Retro Store. It's overpriced at $107 shipped, and I don't know if Hakchi works on the Famicom version, but it's in stock. It is being shipped by a third party, but fulfilled by Amazon, so caveat emptor.
Also: tiny controllers with tiny cables that are permanently attached to the console. I'd only pick this one up if you really like the aesthetics of the Famicom. I'm almost 100% certain that it can be hacked, at least.