Delicious in Dungeon #41: The Breakfast Senshi Made

As we say goodbye to the golden country, senshi shows us all how it's done by cooking a mean breakfast.

I don't know what photo to use for this... heres a bunch of different animals hanging out.

We should pick our battles for this one... i hate doing too much at once. I'll but pre-made soup and sausages, and make the scrambled eggs and pancakes myself. It would be really cool to do souffle pancakes, because senshi's pancakes look really thick like that. They are notoriously tricky though.

I bought these tasty sounding "hot honey and chili sausages", i think the sweetness will go nicely with the no-syrup pancakes.. I'm going to go ahead and slow-grill these sausages ahead of time, so we only need to pop them in the pan for a few minutes at the end. Also get a load of that shape in the middle sausage, lol. Also yes the bottom of the grill is messy, ummm i dont care.

I followed a recipe for the souffle pancakes, basically we have to separate the eggs and make a batter with the yolks and a meringue with the whites and combine them at the end...

its a whole step-by-step process of whisking in each thing but we've got yolk, milk, baking powder and flour in here.

Since its nearly ready lets start heating the pan so we can get straight to it before the meringue settles.

Uh, never mind... this meringue is... not meringuing... ugh. Should I not be using a stand mixer, is that bad? is it because my cream of tartar is old as hell? am i impatient? Btw this meringue has the cream of tartar and sugar in it.

UGH its taking so long that the butter in my pan is burning. I guess ill have to tip it out and refresh it. Annoyed now.

Well I give up, I didn't give myself enough time to spend forever whisking, so lets just make some regular degular pancakes and see if they at least rise a bit.

OK these did not rise at all.. maybe I need to refresh all my baking ingredients and stop using ancient shit from the back of my cupboard... but on the plus side, they look like adequate pancakes. Bit small though.

Let's just make some better sized ones and stack em up. that's a perfectly fine pancake, you wouldn't have guessed it was made with a completely different recipe to american style pancakes would you?

I'm still kinda mad though... whatever, lets cheer up with some scrampy egg. I actually have some leftover cream i need to use up, so these are mixed with cream and butter.

Now THATs a scrambly egg!

Things are suddenly coming together, let's throw a small bowl of that soup in the microwave. For some reason its crazy hard to find plain/creamy pumpkin soup around here, but curried squash soup will do.

I didn't forget the sausages, they cooked nicely, ill just re-fry 2 of them because im not gonna eat all this in one meal!

****

I cannot even fathom getting up first thing in the morning and doing all this. I made this at like 5pm. I'm docking a point because i didnt make souffle pancakes. And the soup is fine but it doesn't really fit with the sweet fried breakfast vibe. Though idk, maybe thats not a negative..? The pancakes were sweet and somehow not too rubbery, the sausages were GREAT i would get those again, the scrambled egg was sublime (i seasoned it with salt and pepper).

Stardew Valley #67: Poppyseed Muffin

Ingredients: Poppy, Wheat Flour, Sugar

Item Description: It has a soothing effect.

Muffins! I looked up a typical recipe and im copying that prettymuch. We got our poppyseeds, we got flour and sugar, we got all that other.. cake stuff.

gotta sieve the flour, are you even baking if you havent lightly dusted the whole kitchen?

All the dry stuff together: flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, a hint of salt, and im adding slightly more poppyseeds than the recipe recommends, because what else am I going to do with this bag of poppyseeds? Lets make the poppyseediest muffin we can. I want to fail a drug test for opiates.

In go the wets... to me a muffin means vegetable oil whereas cupcakes are butter. Did I make that up? This recipe had butter and milk, but im cutting the butter with 1/2 oil. in goes that melted butter and oil and milk, and 1 egg.

Lastly, most people tend to add a secondary flavour, and its typically lemon. Sounds good! I'm adding in both some lemon juice and some grated zest as well.

Batters all mixed up, looks good.

Got some cute cupcake liners for extra swag.

First batch goes in the oven for like 15min. Good thing I definitely... remembered... to heat the oven...

This first batch looks promising, but they're actually kind of small, I should put more batter in the next ones so that they can puff up out of the case. Like a mushroom that actually tastes good.

****

Nice! Light and zesty. I don't really know if poppy seeds alter the flavour much or if that's just the lemon zest... I don't make plain lemon muffins very much. These had a nice crispy outer layer and a fluffy inside. Now I have like 2 dozen of these fuckers.

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