I slowly mix so eggs and sugar.
In my parents country, the won want their Spanish Bread as soft as it can possibly be to achieve that, they whisk the eggs with the sugar for a prolonged period. They first whisk the whites and slowly, really slowly add the sugar. If you taste a homade cake in that country, chances are it will be softer than a bakery-made one. Why? Because housewives have all the ti in the world when they are bored. The hasty ones make harder cakes. Obviously, theres more than one way you can control how hard your base will be, Tiberius, I look at my assistant on the right.
And, Quintus, I look to my left, its normal for sothing to go astray in the process. The most important thing is to know how to redy it. No recipe is ever the sa. But you have to aim for perfection, not just the reduction of mistakes made. So, you have to know which steps will control the various aspects. Can you tell how many things we can use to control the hardness of the cake base?
I see the two slightly panic at the question.
You have to think in advance when working. If you dont, how will you be able to remain in control? Again, recipes are always different. Its like a river if you get in one ti, its the sa river your father bathed in 20 years ago, but its also a different river from the one your skin will touch tomorrow. Horace teaches us that.
The [Woodworker], Chef?
What? The woodwhatever. No. A [Poet], Tiberius.
I activate the magical whisks and let the whites slowly rise, watching them in silence.
This is one of the steps. How fast you add the sugar will influence how soft it will be. And since its the first step, you want to get it as soft as possible. We will work toward the desired hardness throughout the rest of the recipe.
With great patience, I start adding little amounts of sugar as if no one was watching . What I like about baking is that its a ditative process. Its like performing a great feat of athletics. It brings you to a flow state like no other. It makes your head move.
The people who watch TV while cooking should burn, I swear. So light chatter is good, but you want to give your head so ti to breathe. It has to stay fresh while baking, ready to react at the perfect mont.
Now, another step is whisking the yolks. This step is even more important. It is at this point when the lazy ones make a cake base as hard as a brick and dense. Christ, theres nothing more disgusting than an exceptionally dense cake base sadly, this is way more common than people realize.
I hear so scribbling on paper and parchnt behind . People are taking notes of my words. Good. Spreading good baking practices will make sleep more soundly at night; hopefully, no nightmares of rainbow cakes will haunt .
If you ever baked a rainbow cake, take a page from Silas from the Da Vinci Code and start flogging your back in repentance. Your sins will never be excused, but you might find the pain educational.
You have to beat the yolks to death. Anything less than fifteen minutes of screaming with arm cramps ans you didnt do it correctly. So, both of you, start whisking manually.
Yes, Chef, they chorus.
So say you must whisk until you can write on the mixture of yolks and sugar. I say thats stupid. You have to feel the overall composition with your hands. Thats why you never use magic for this step. You do it with your own hands. And you teach your assistants to do the sa. Why? Because if you use automatic whiskers, you might not realize that theres an uneven distribution of density. The irregular and asymtrical movents of your hands will help reach a more even distribution instead. And you can feel it. Never trust skills. Use your own senses. Thats the one thing we can truly trust in this world.
I watch the two n stoically endure the whisking process without flinching. They are staring at the yolks so hard that Im actually a bit sorry for those dead chicken fetuses.
It takes a while before they look certain that their composition is up to my standards. But when I delicately pour it on the whites, they both panic.
Chef! Chef! Dont you have to check?!
I trust you both. And Ill be able to feel the consistency while mixing. Pass the wooden spoon.
An audience gathered to assist the criminal Human who suddenly returned to his bakery, who threw everything askew, and told the two most dedicated and talented [Chefs] in Amorium that they had absolutely no idea what they were doing.
I hum to myself while mixing the compound. I also add so very finely grounded lemon peel, and thats it. I dont want any other flavors to overtake the composition apart from so light lemon touch.
You can eliminate so of the air you injected during the yolk-whisking at this point. That is, if you think that the mix will be too soft. To , it feels alright. Now, we slowly add flour and starch flour. But not too slowly. This is a crucial step. If you are too slow, you will do too many movents with your wooden spoon and that ans the air will slowly escape. If you are too hasty, though, you will create an uneven base; also, you will have to mix too much, which, as already said, will make the base much harder and denser. It takes a lot of ti and practice before you master this. But since youll need a base for every cake, you will learn to get a feel for all the different details.
Ill not go in-depth on the ingredients because I wrote about that in my instructions already. Hell, you could publish a damn book just about the right mixing techniques, the properties of the single ingredients, and so on.
Its important to rember sothing, I say, there are two thods. One is cold, and the other is warm. I use the cold one because I feel more in control. It takes longer, and its much harder to obtain the right softness without a lot of work, but its also safer. A fla can help hasten the process, but a fla is never perfectly controlled unless you have skills for it.
As soon as Im done mixing, I slowly pour it into two pans and gesture to Tiberius and Quintus.
Joey? Where is the yeast? Are you going to use skills to make it rise? Flaminias voice cos from the crowd.
Nope. This doesnt rise. The softness cos from how you mixed the eggs for so long and how you didnt destroy that work with a wooden spoon. Yeast has a strong flavor. Too strong. You can use yeast for so compositions, but you absolutely cannot in this case.
Now, Quintus, Tiberius, I declare, lets put your ideas together. Im going to need so magic here to manipulate the ingredients better. You can build tools to do this, though.
While the base was cooking, I had the two make so caral and whip up so Chantilly-based lemon whipped cream. And a kuvillinae one.
So, what we are going to do is make caral beads. They are going to act as a coating for
I raise a tiny globe of the cream made of lemons and kuvillinae.
The caral layer is going to be insanely thin. It will lt on the tongue. Listen, the cake bases wont be too tall, so we will use two layers. We will shape it with the petals and a thicker layer of cream on top. But the cream will be barely lemony. The flavor will co from the beads hidden in the top layer of cream. We cant have the beads in the middle layer because they would be squished. And ideally, you want to place them so that the Chef can cut the cake without breaking the beads. The beads should lt in the mouth. Or, in the worst case, break against the teeth. That shall give us a
What is he even saying? Camilla whispers.
Silence! Quintus shouts to the back. Chef, please, go ahead. Do you want to use the beads to create so more thickness, a pseudo-layer?
I smile. Hell, these two have not seen for quite a bit, but they still know how I think.
Yep. Thats what we are going to do.
I slowly model each bead individually, maneuvering the caral with magic and pouring it on a globe of lemon and kuvillinae cream. I keep them separated, barely mixing them together. God, this will be a masterpiece. Tiberius and Quintus had excellent ideas.
If the layer of caral is thin enough, and we keep it in its sugary form without enhancing its flavor, its going to help amplify the lemons and kuvillinae.
Now, after cutting one of the two bases into petals, we slowly wet it with so light liqueur that won love. Maybe sothing a bit tangy. And we use just a little brush of it. Then, we raise the temperature in the oven and bake the petals again for a few minutes, which will have them reach the perfect consistency.
I dry so of the sweat on my face and exhale.
The Mimosa is one of the hardest cakes to master. Its insanely complex to make it so that its not just another ordinary stupid cake that tastes like every other diocre baking concoction in the world.
We had to use a few cooling runes and a couple of other tricks to speed up the process. I still have to go back to the academy before its night; that ans I cannot let everything cool naturally. But its still in the realm of things that shouldnt have too big of an impact on the final product. Sure, its better to let everything rest for a while, but magic cos in handy from ti to ti, doesnt it?
Go ahead, I gesture to Quintus and Tiberius. They both seem to be looking at the cake in awe, scared even to touch it with a knife. Cut it and taste it.
Chef, are you sure? Quintus asks, looking at the beautiful, bright yellow cake. Its puffy thanks to its yellow petals and has a strong impact on the eyes. Its the kind of cake that you want to stand out won like lively colors. This cake is the equivalent of a diamond in the bakery world.
Sure. Go ahead. Cakes are made to be eaten, Quintus. Cut it up and tell if the caral spheres have lted or if they are too crunchy when its in your mouth. That should tell us if I made them thin enough.
Ideally, the caral layer should be almost indistinguishable.
After they both fumble with the knife for a minute, I take over and slice the cake.
Camilla and the others. Do you want to taste it? You already tried theirs, right?
They all nod multiple tis and take so plates from a cupboard.
I start distributing slices, careful not to break the caral beads. Thats probably the most challenging thing so far. The cream has shifted a little, aning I lost the exact perception of where I should have cut it. But, as with all things, its still food. A few beads break here and there, making the cream a bit darker, like little stains. But thanks to the petals, you can barely see it.
So, the cake is low on purpose. If you can, try to fit it in your mouth vertically to enjoy the full experience.
People around start shoving huge pieces of cake in their mouths, not having understood exactly what I just said. But all is good. This is good. I am good.
I missed them.
A lot.
I missed them much more than Im even willing to admit.
Camilla goes pale when she tastes the cake and looks at in bewildernt.
You didnt use any skills?
Nope. I dont have a [Baker] class, rember? I used so magic to help keep the caral thin. I made a littlewhatever, its not important. No, I didnt use any skills.
They all eat in silence, exchanging glances and nodding slightly.
If I did not know the culinary world, Id be nervous. I was nervous when I was dueling people, even though I wielded great magic, unattainable for most. But magic is sothing I started doing here by chance. Baking, instead well, you know I graduated high school early, and I didnt attend college, right? I went abroad to study under the masters, to learn from the greatest who usually never accept an apprentice as young as without an insane reference letter from fellow starred chefs.
And the reason I never stayed in a starred kitchen for too long is quite simple.
Theres space for only one master in a kitchen.
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