Stardew Valley #27: Pink Cake

Ingredients: Melon, Wheat Flour, Sugar, Egg

Item Description: There's little heart candies on top.

Hello! It's been a while hasn't it. Not dead. I had tooth surgery, then a long christmas holiday, then laryngitis. Anyway while I'm still with family I thought it could be fun to do PINK CAKE before I leave them, so they can help eat it. This seems to be a common idea to have, but I thought in contrast to the chocolate cake I should try and do an angel food cake for this one. It just seems right..?

I also noted that unusual factor - a melon in the ingredients. Originally I was gonna try and sort of reduce a blended melon but then my sister pointed out she had some melon flavoured milk tea powder. Let's do it!

One caveat though... this will turn the pink cake.... green. Hmm. Will probably look cool though, if a little inaccurate. So far its got flour, melon powder and a shit load of icing sugar.

Then we get a shit load of egg whites as well, which my mum is kindly separating. I am also making this under my mum's superior baking expertise, so itll probably be Good, Actually.

Whisk the egg whites, cream of tartare, vanilla essence and a bit more sugar until we've made a sort of inadequate meringue.

Then we fold in the rest, and we have to mix it but we have to not like, mix it too hard because gluten??? what

Now it can go in my familys bundt cake pan (yes they have everything) and a any excess batter can go into an ovenproof mug as a little spare :)

Next we can whip up some simple pink icing. Feels right to just do a icing sugar and water glaze, and try to get it thick enough to override the green cake colour. Also my sister had some sakura milk tea powder as well, and i thought that would both pair really well, and also score us more pink points.

Its ready! Another tip from mum, let it cool upside down in the pan, and hopefully it will shrink its way loose a bit.

And it's out! I actually didnt break it, but it did somehow have a massive air pocket in one corner so ive tried to frankenstein a bit back in with that excess cake from the mug. It'll be fine probably.

Hmm, I didn't really make as much icing as I should have. I could have made more, but I already had to make dinner that evening so I decided this was fine (and its gonna be sweet enough already) so sorry there is a green bit in the middle i dont care. Looks kinda cool tho.

I didn't forget the heart candies! I bought some heart gummi sweets.

Spoiler cross section, yep its caked good.

*****

My family all agreed this came out great. The melon and sakura flavours are a delicious novelty and work really well in a sweet vanilla eggy sponge. It tastes just how you'd expect a super cute delicacy to taste.

Stardew Valley #26: Chocolate Cake

Ingredients: Wheat Flour, Sugar, Egg

Item Description: Rich and moist with a thick fudge icing.

My confidence in baking and sweets is a lil' low these days so im gonna not screw around too much and follow a recipe from the cake queen Nigella , except im gonna get some store bought icing to save a bit of effort. Click my handy link for proper instructions, or live vicariously through my journey.

So this cake has 3 tiers just kinda jammed together, which seems alright if i actually have enough baking dishes. I'm gonna try and make do with a scrunkly reused pie tin for the middle layer because i think its the best size.

So first we measure out the dries, sifting the flour and cocoa, and adding 2 types of sugar and various raising agents.

Then we've gotta melt the butter and the oil and mix them...

We can pop that in the mixer and add the chilled water. This is already a lot! and we're not done yet!

beating together "3 large eggs" (im using 4 medium) and some sour cream! Interesting... im not sure how i feel about this, as i dont dig the sound of a vague cheesecakey sourness but let's trust our queen and see. Also a splash of vanilla essence.

Finally its all together, maxing out my mixer bowl size here. It looks amazing, its all light and moussey... smells great... hell yea

Now its time for some.. creative crafts... I want to line my pans with a bit of baking paper to make pan-sticking related disasters a little less likely. I just ended up cutting circles out. In the case of the big pan i can tuck them under the base which is cool, but for the others we just have to use advanced cake pouring skills.

Lets not forget to lube the base and sides up as well!

Looks like we made just the right amount, magic! Now they can bake.

Now they're baked! Party. I will leave them to cool overnight before I attempt to ice.

This icing looks kinda firm if im honest... Wonder how this is gonna work..

So the first tier was going alright until I hit the soft part of the cake... and the second tier, that wasnt going at all! The icing just wants to tear this cake apart. I did a quick googling though for tips, and I tried the following: heating up a little bit of icing with some milk to thin it, applying a layer of that, and then cooling it off in the fridge.

That seems to be working about well enough to finish the job. Here's the ugliest side of the cake... so yeah uh its looking pretty rugged, but you can't deny it looks thick and fudgey.

And let's not forget the finishing touch! I couldn't find any glace cherries so i grabbed a couple fruits from a frozen red berry mix in my freezer and let them defrost while I was making everything else. Looks like the cherry will do nicely.

*****

Here's the cakes least ugly side. I think its as perfectly rugged as the sprite. And it tastes great! Nice one nigella, the cake is super moist but not soggy, dense yet soft, rich and chocolatey.

bonus slice shot

Stardew Valley #25: Trout Soup

Ingredients: Rainbow Trout, Green Algae

Item Description: Pretty salty.

I don't really know what kind of soup to make. Chunky and salty. I wanna do something thats sort of slightly chowder-y, so im going to use smoked trout- whats that?? it says salmon on the packet? Look i'll level with ya... they had like a fancy slab of smoked trout for like £7 or a bucket of salmon flakes, perfect for souping, for like half that price. And they basically taste the same smoked? On top of that I got onion, potatoes, bonito flavoured soup stock, cream, and some spirulina powder for the green algae!

Gonna chop up the onions and fry them in the pot first, I should probably do a bit of garlic too! 

While that browns I can chop and throw in the potatoes...

Then some hot water, bonito dashi stock, fish flakes and spirulina...

Then we can just let it stew for some time while the potatoes soften and the flavours... get all flavoury... and the entire kitchen smells like fish...

Mmm! I guess we knew it would come out a weird olive colour. But we're not done yet! We still need to add cream, and then see if it needs any other flavouring.

On a taste test, it's not very salty yet so i'll add some salt. Just enough to fit the description!

****

It's comforting and quite nice, as long as you like very fishy flavoured soups. Oh and you don't mind it looking like some sort of evil olive green gruel with grey lumps. The vegetables, cream and bonito make a nice flavourful backdrop really allowing the smoky fish flavour to be the main event. I have no idea what was intended for this dish but i'm really pleased with my take on it.

Stardew Valley #24: Tom Kha Soup

Ingredients: Coconut, shrimp, Common Mushroom

Item Description: These flavors are incredible!

Looking forward to this one, ngl. I'm pretty prepared! I've looked at a bunch of recipes to cobble together something hopefully good enough. For the coconut we've got coconut milk, for shrimp we've got some frozen pre-cooked king prawns, for the common mushroom we have dried shiitake mushrooms. Then we've got onion, garlic, fish sauce, thai red curry paste, coconut sugar, chillies, and I found a jar of galangal paste! Yes! But I didn't get lemongrass or lime, hopefully a lemon will do, plus there's lemongrass in the curry paste.

Gonna start by browning the onions, garlic, and a chopped chilli.

Been looking for an excuse to use up these dried mushrooms truth be told. I'm slicing them up to hopefully make them hydrate and infuse faster. This is a weekday soup after all.

This lidl coconut milk is so insanely thick. This seems like pure cream to me, crazy. I'll top it up with plenty of water too, and we can just throw in all the dry things now as well.

In goes the fish sauce, coconut sugar, mushrooms, 2 generous tablespoons of red curry paste (because it looks kinda thin and unconcentrated to me)... and 2 big teaspoons of galangal because i bought it specially for this so we BETTER make it count!

Now we let it simmer for ages, topping it up with water if needed. The prawns can go in in the last 10mins or so because they're pre-cooked and we dont want them to get rubbery.

Prawns are looking thawed and everythings looking kinda tasty. I quickly checked my herb garden to see if I had coriander, but it turns out I didnt actually, so i picked a bit of parsley to garnish. Close nuff.

*****

Y'know at first spoonful I felt a little oversold by its description. I was like its a tad weak, its just fine... but as i kept eating the flavour really grew on me, it has a really pleasant heat that never gets too spicy but feels perfect to warm you up and clear your sinuses. And that wonderful sour, fruity flavour comes through the more you eat. Maybe I could have gotten more depth with some extra stock and that lime and coriander... but as it is this is still easily a great soup that id happily make again.