64: Snow mooncake making

Snow mooncake making

However, before the child could taste them, Nanny Mulan rushed out of nowhere and swept the plate of biscuits off the table before she gave Chef May a deafening slap on her ear.1

The lady suffered hearing loss for two days as a result of that slap from Nanny Mulan.

Ever since, Chef May kept the mooncake molds away, thinking they would never be useful until today.

She handed the mooncake molds to Maya to wash and went to stand beside Jeslyn to help her out.

Chef May had a prejudice against Jeslyn before today. When she was informed that the master had brought his new wife home, she wasn't happy, thinking the new bride was just another desperate woman like Nanny Mulan, but after watching her and seeing that the new bride couldn't care less about pleasing anyone, her fondness for Jeslyn started to grow.

But with what's happening right now, Jeslyn has become one of her favorite people.

Once the ingredients were ready, Jeslyn placed a spotless frying pan on a low-heat stove and added the desired amount of glutinous rice flour into it.

The chef and Riya watched her stir fry the powdered rice with their lips flattened.

After a few minutes, Jeslyn turned off the stove and took the flour off the stove. The flour was starting to turn a little yellowish, so she smiled.

Jeslyn transferred the hot flour into a clean bowl and let it cool down before she took out a little bit of the yellowish flour into another clean bowl to be reserved for molding.

On the stove, Jeslyn started to cook 12 eggs.

While the eggs were cooking, Jeslyn mixed the rice syrup with a little bit of water until it dissolved before she added it to the larger portion of the cooled fried flour.

She added a little bit of groundnut oil and started to mix them until it formed a soft white dough.

Jeslyn divided the dough into four equal parts and started to add colorings.

One dough was light pink, another was light yellow, then the third was…

"What color does Valen love?" She asked no one in particular as her focus was on what she was doing.

Riya and the chef couldn't answer as they were blown away by the weird stuff Jeslyn was doing.

Not hearing an answer, Jeslyn turned back only to see the two looking at her doughs of different colors.

"I asked you two something." She brought them back from their daydreaming.

"Sorry ma'am, we were…"

"I asked what Valen's favorite color is," she cut Riya off.

"Oh, well, Ma'am, nobody knows what the little master likes. We only know what he dislikes," Riya responded.

"Ah?... Ok, what color of cloth does he wear often?" Jeslyn asked. She wasn't surprised to hear that answer and she would also not be surprised to hear it was black.

"Black," both Riya and the Chef said simultaneously.

Jeslyn sighed. How can she use black on a moon cake?

"Have any of you ever gone to his… Ah, white and…" she didn't say what the color was and took a purple coloring.

Jeskyn made a purple dough and then cut half of the white dough and mixed it until the dough started to give two colors. Purple and white.

The day she went into Valen's room, she saw a purple and white pillow on his bed. It was just one and also the only odd color in his black and white room.

"Ma'am, are you not going to color the half dough?" Riya asked.

"No," Jeslyn answered while mixing the color to integrate itself into the dough.

Once she was done, Jeslyn took out the eggs from the stove and called the Chef to help her peel off the shell while she searched around for something else.

Jeslyn picked one of the dough she made and flattened it with a rolling stick on the board. She used a round cutter to cut out three pieces each from the flattened dough.

Separating the cut-out dough from the leftovers, Jeslyn coated the dough with the date paste while giving instructions to the chef.

"Separate the white egg from the yolk and pass me the yolks you took off."

The Chef did as told and Jeslyn added the egg yolks into the cut-out doughs with date paste, before stretching the dough to cover the yolk and rolling it on her palm to form a round ball.

She did the same to all the other twelve doughs.

Jeslyn pulled over the stored fried flour she kept aside a while back and dipped a dough inside it. Once the flour had covered the dough, she would bring the dough out and place it inside the mooncake mold and press the top to push the dough out.

Her purpose in rubbing the round dough inside the flour was to prevent the dough from sticking to the mooncake mold.

After the round dough is pushed out of the mooncake mold, the round dough would come out with a different shape.

Jeslyn used different shapes of the mooncake mold. Some had the shape of flowers, some came out with the shape of little creatures, like bunnies.

Others came out as different shapes with Chinese characters on top.

Once she was done, Jeslyn arranged the twelve appetizing snow mooncakes into a small tray and stored them in the fridge for a few hours to cool off so they'd taste more delicious.

"Let's make a small cake," she suggested with a bright smile.

The two helpers nodded before the cake-making process started.

After about an hour and thirty minutes, the sponge cake was ready.

Jeslyn didn't use icing on the cake. Instead of icing it, she melted dark chocolate and spread the syrup on the cake.

She used buttercream to write an apology on top, then added fruits around the edges of the cake.

Chef May and Maya couldn't help sighing after seeing the apology. Is this truly an apology or a way to anger the child even more?

"It's done and set!" Jeslyn clapped in excitement.

"Riya, help me get the snow mooncake from the fridge. Take out two for you and Chef May, then bring the rest with me."

"Thank you, Ma'am," they both chorused. Chef May and Maya also wanted to taste the snow mooncake, so they were elated.

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