I'm the Culinary God-Chapter 715 - 322: The joy of a bountiful harvest must be expressed with lotus cakes! Kid, come and draw the lottery! [Subscribe please]
From before the engagement until now, nearly two months had passed, and at last, the main quest was completed. This brought Lin Xu a wave of relief. For someone with OCD, finishing a task is truly relaxing.
He began to take stock of the rewards: a Perfect Level lost dish, a Perfect Level dry pot dish, a Perfect Level cured dish, three Perfect Level learning cards, a thirty-minute special prop Experience Card, and an additional Perfect Level Cooking Technique prize draw.
No wonder everyone says autumn is the season of harvest, he thought. I can truly feel the joy of abundance now.
Although the last Hidden Task prize draw had directly resulted in Spicy Chicken, Lin Xu didn’t dare to claim his rewards carelessly today. It would be better to let Dundun do it. That little guy seems able to directly pick out the dishes that best suit Lin Ji’s Food, which is much better than me blindly trying my luck.
"Boss, we’re number one on the trending search!"
As he was musing to himself, Zhuang Yizhou approached, showing Lin Xu his phone.
Lin Ji’s Food was number one on the Yanjing Region’s hot search list, followed by a deep red "Boom" icon—a clear indication that its popularity was skyrocketing.
Underneath the Lin Ji’s Food topic, confused netizens who had watched the video flooded in:
"Is this fake? Can cats really be that smart?"
"Can any pro tell us if this is a CGI performance?"
"It didn’t look like it. The people at the conference table were conversing so naturally during their meeting. It didn’t look like acting; it seemed more like Dundun had deliberately caused a commotion while they were recording a video of their conference."
"Buddy, you can’t just call it ’causing a commotion.’"
"Right, how could such dedicated acting be called ’causing a commotion’?"
"Let’s be real, is it even a challenge for Dundun’s acting to trounce those so-called ’little fresh meats’?"
"Ever since short videos became popular, people have been saying any random person’s acting skills surpass professional actors. Now, even a little cat can outclass professional actors in performance."
"We’d better not let the film academy professors see this, or they’ll add Dundun to their curriculum."
"..."
Online, it was common for standout scenes from some actors to be touted as teaching material for professional film academies like The Central Academy of Drama or Beijing Film Academy. It reached a point where the schools themselves had to publicly debunk these claims.
If every actor’s slightly expressive scene were listed as teaching material, students at film academies might not graduate even in eight years.
Lin Xu glanced at the online discussion. Considering the unintentional yet impactful contributions from the Fat-Loss Squad and the Silly Squad, he felt it was time for a reward.
Heroes, after all, deserve to enjoy good food. But what to make? Apart from Dundun, the entire crew consisted of girls, and girls generally liked dishes with an appealing presentation... Presentation?
Lin Xu immediately thought of a snack he had obtained before the Mid-Autumn Festival—lotus cake.
In terms of presentation, few dishes could compete with lotus cake, right? Yes, that’s the one.
He hoped the Fat-Loss Squad would continue their great work, keep producing those incredible short videos, and take Lin Ji’s Food’s trending popularity to an even higher level. At the same time, it would also boost the follower count on his personal account. Using cute pets to gain followers is a time-honored tradition among food area UP hosts. Today, I’ll embrace this tradition and take it up a notch! Since I’m making lotus cakes, I should get started right away.
Making this type of palace dessert wasn’t overly difficult, but it was quite tedious and required advance preparation.
First was the filling.
To make the lotus cake’s filling resemble lotus stamen, it needed to be yellow. Lin Xu gathered butter, eggs, milk powder, powdered sugar, and coconut shreds.
He separated the egg yolks and beat them with the butter, powdered sugar, and milk powder until a thick, viscous paste formed. The mixture needed to be beaten thoroughly to ensure the powdered sugar, butter, and milk powder fully dissolved, and the egg yolks were completely incorporated.
The butter and egg yolks gave the filling a color similar to lotus stamen. However, to make it look even more realistic, coconut shreds needed to be added. Coconut shreds would increase the filling’s viscosity. The white shreds would also make the filling look more like actual stamen.
After adding the coconut shreds and mixing them in, he carefully rolled the mixture into a large ball. Then, he divided it into small portions, about 20 grams each, and rolled these into smaller, perfectly round balls. To prevent them from melting, the small balls needed to be placed in the freezer.
With the filling ready, it was time to make the dough for the lotus petals.
The lotus pastry dough consists of two parts: a water-oil dough and an oil-based shortening dough. The water-oil dough is used to encase the shortening dough, and repeated folding creates the distinct, layered petal effect of a lotus. This is a standard technique for making flaky pastries; almost all Chinese snacks with a flaky crust use this method.
Unlike ordinary flaky pastries, the dough for lotus cakes also requires coloring. This is to mimic the pink hue of a lotus, enhancing its realistic appearance. There are many coloring options. One could choose more stable artificial food colorings or natural ones like red rice flour.
Lin Xu chose red rice flour. When diluted by the flour, it would produce a beautiful light pink color.
He placed low-gluten flour into a mixing bowl, adding a suitable amount of lard and powdered sugar. Finally, using a measuring spoon, he added half a spoonful of red rice flour to the bowl. He then mixed it all with warm water to form a dough of moderate consistency.
The process of creating layers in Chinese Dessert Making is known as "opening the flake." This process invariably involves lard. Indeed, one could say that the characteristic "flakiness" in Chinese snacks primarily comes from lard. Without lard, a significant portion of flaky pastry snacks would simply cease to exist.
Although some bakers dislike using lard and opt for butter, commonly used in Western pastries, truth be told, butter doesn’t even come close to lard when it comes to creating truly flaky pastries.
