My Husband, a Marshal: Conquering the Stars with My Culinary Arts-Chapter 523 - 177 Maltose and Dragon Beard Cake (Part 2)
After dinner, Du Xixi rubbed her belly and entered the kitchen. The mixture of glutinous rice and wheat malt paste placed in the thermal box this morning had turned watery by now. With a light stir by the spoon, a rich sweetness could be smelled.
The mixture was placed in a mesh cloth, forcefully pressing out the maltose syrup. The yellow-brown maltose syrup wasn’t very thick, but after Du Xixi filtered it several times, she gently dipped her chopsticks in and tasted it, feeling the sweetness permeate her mouth.
This maltose syrup, even before boiling, was already sweet enough. Once boiled to evaporate the water, who knows how much sweeter it could become.
Du Xixi chuckled softly, and asked 2569, who came to help, to pour the heavy bowl of maltose syrup into the pot. Boiling maltose syrup wasn’t particularly difficult; it just required enough patience and occasional stirring.
Maltose syrup with different water content required different boiling times. Boil it too short and it’d be too thin, boil it too long and it’d be too dry. It all depended on the syrup maker’s self-control.
Du Xixi boiled this large pot of maltose syrup for a full two hours. When she used chopsticks to pick some up and dipped it in water, the yellow-brown maltose had become hard, needing effort to break it.
At this point, the maltose was considered done.
Turning off the heat, Du Xixi divided the large pot of maltose into two parts. One part was stored in a sealed jar, ready to be eaten whenever desired. The other part was kneaded into a ball, placed on a cutting board nearby, and she began to make Dragon Beard Cake.
Dragon Beard Cake is a snack that truly tests endurance and hand strength. The hot maltose is continuously pulled and twisted until it becomes thousands of silky threads with a milky white color. During the process, it’s also coated with roasted glutinous rice flour or soybean flour, and the final product is wrapped with fillings like crushed peanuts, forming into square shapes.
Although Du Xixi liked Dragon Beard Cake, she had tasted too many delicacies, and her love for Dragon Beard Cake was just one among many. On the contrary, Chen Yin, with his big heart, was very curious about all the wonders of Blue Star, liking everything.
But using this exotic-looking Dragon Beard Cake, with its unique taste to win over Miao Miao... Du Xixi shrugged nonchalantly, maybe it was a good choice?
The boiling maltose had just come out of the pot. Even if it was cooled for a while on a board sprinkled with roasted glutinous rice flour, Du Xixi still found it hard to hold in her hands. But Dragon Beard Cake was best made while warm, so she just frowned slightly and began to pull the maltose, enduring the heat.
A small hole was first made in the center of the maltose ball. Du Xixi’s fingertips circled the small hole, her hand gripping the whole ball of maltose, twisting and pinching. In no time, the maltose was stretched several times, its strands wrapped in glutinous rice flour were as white as snow, softly waving like satin.
But this wasn’t fine enough yet.
Dragon Beard Cake required the maltose to be pulled to a white, dense texture, fine as dragon’s whiskers. When stricter, it’s expected to be as fine as a strand of hair, even finer.
Du Xixi was already very skilled in pulling maltose. Her face steady, she raised her hands to the sides, and the maltose strands were continuously stretched between her hands. The glutinous rice flour was lifted by the maltose strands, floating in the air. With the maltose strands’ dense dance, the flour rose like mist, beautiful as a painting.
"Wow..." 2569 had always thought his wife was quite a magical figure, always able to make food into art. Like her exquisite knife skills in the past, and now her technique of stretching a ball of yellow-brown maltose into silvery-white threads.
Truly amazing. 𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺
"This is actually nothing much. Any seasoned cook can master it with practice." Dragon Beard Cake and Dragon Beard Noodles’ stretching Kung Fu seemed amazing at first, but after careful consideration and practice, it wasn’t that difficult. Du Xixi first learned Dragon Beard Noodles before making Dragon Beard Cake.
Pulling dough and pulling a maltose ball wasn’t much different for Du Xixi.
Dragon Beard Cake was almost done with just one last step. Du Xixi called 2569 to take out the previously prepared crushed peanuts and sesame filling, wrapping three boxes of Dragon Beard Cake each.
In total, there were six boxes of Dragon Beard Cake. Two boxes were kept at home, and four boxes were entrusted to Chen Yin. Whether Chen Yin would give Miao Miao two boxes or all four wasn’t Du Xixi’s concern.
