Chapter 79

I borrowed the kitchen of the inn and paid the maid working there to run errands and buy the ingredients needed for cooking.

Once I confirmed that all the ingredients for the dish were gathered, I quietly focused my mind.

The dish I was going to make today was a strawberry cream cake.

Naturally, it was something that could be called a dessert.

To be honest, I had been deliberately avoiding desserts until now.

It wasn’t because I personally disliked sweet foods.

In fact, I quite liked sweet foods.

The reason I had been avoiding desserts until now was related to the history of desserts.

In the history of cooking, desserts began to develop relatively recently.

Around the time when the development of agriculture and commerce began to shift the word “starvation” from an everyday fear to a surreal one.

Humans, no longer worried about starving to death, began to think beyond developing recipes to make staple foods taste better and started evolving recipes for snacks to a higher level.

It was only then that the history of desserts began to develop.

As a recipe that appeared in the latter half of human history when people began to live more prosperous lives, most dessert recipes required ingredients or tools that were closer to modern times.

Examples include an enormous amount of white sugar and an oven that could evenly distribute heat.

And all of those things were difficult to prepare by this world’s standards.

It wasn’t for nothing that desserts remained the exclusive domain of the upper class until modern times.

Sugar could be bought by pouring money into it, but cooking tools couldn’t.

But today, I wanted to forget all that and just feel like eating cake.

I steeled my resolve and began cooking.

First, I started with the sponge cake, the base of the cake.

I used flour, specifically low-gluten flour, which has the least stickiness when kneaded.

To that, I added about three eggs from a three-legged fowl.

And white sugar.

The ratio of these ingredients was measured at 1:2:1 for flour, eggs, and sugar.

In desserts, precise measurements are crucial.

While other dishes also require measurements, they aren’t as critical as in desserts.

Even a slight deviation in ratio could cause the batter to burn, undercook, or result in uneven baking, which isn’t just a matter of taste but can determine the success or failure of the dish.

Using a scale, I carefully measured the ratios, then cracked the eggs into a bowl and stirred them thoroughly to mix the yolks and whites.

Once the whites and yolks were fully mixed into a single egg mixture, I added the measured sugar and mixed it again.

This mixing process had to be quick, or the sugar wouldn’t dissolve properly in the egg mixture.

But that wasn’t the end.

The sugar needed to be dissolved by applying heat, which was another delicate step.

At too low a temperature, the sugar wouldn’t dissolve, but too much heat would cook the egg mixture, rendering it useless.

Even in my past life, using a gas stove to control the temperature evenly was tricky, but in this world, I had to use a wood-fired stove, making temperature control several times harder.

But I carefully adjusted the flame and brought another bowl, filling it with water.

Once the water was appropriately heated, I placed the bowl with the egg mixture inside the water-filled bowl for a double boiler.

I melted the sugar while ensuring the eggs didn’t solidify, carefully adjusting the flame until the egg mixture turned a deep brown, signaling that all the sugar had dissolved.

Once the sugar was fully dissolved, I immediately removed the bowl and stirred the egg mixture again.

This time, the stirring wasn’t to mix ingredients but to create foam.

In my past life, I would have used a whisk for this, but of course, such a thing didn’t exist here, so I had to rely on pure manual labor.

Fortunately, while this would have been backbreaking work for an ordinary human, for someone like me who had reached a transcendent level, it was merely a tedious task.

After stirring for a while, the egg mixture turned into a fluffy foam.

Then, by slowing down the stirring speed, the larger bubbles died off, leaving only small, fine bubbles.

Now it was time to make the batter using flour.

I sifted the measured flour to prevent clumping and gently mixed it into the batter, ensuring the foam didn’t disappear, and mixed it slowly again.

To this, I added butter, melted to about one-third the amount of flour, and mixed it into the batter.

The butter couldn’t be too hot, or it would cook the egg mixture, nor too cold, or it wouldn’t mix properly, so it had to be kept at a temperature slightly higher than body heat.

Hoo……

With all the ingredients mixed into the batter, the first hurdle was roughly over.

Desserts really do require a lot of effort.

If I hadn’t recalled memories from my past life, I would never have made this.

Perhaps I should earn some money and acquire convenient artifacts for cooking next time.

Anyway, I lightly greased a pot suitable for baking the cake to prevent sticking, then poured in the batter.

When making bread, the dough becomes a stretchy, solid mass, but cake batter remains a highly viscous liquid that you could almost drink.

Then, I placed the batter into the preheated oven and baked it.

The ideal oven temperature was around 170 to 180 degrees, similar to the optimal oil temperature for frying meat.

This was the second hurdle.

Unlike modern ovens that bake evenly from all directions, the oven in this world was a simple earthen stove heated by firewood.

This made it difficult to control the flame and maintain an even temperature inside the oven.

So, I had to keep an eye on the oven at all times, adjusting the firewood and rotating the pot to ensure even heat distribution.

And of course, there were no special tools for this, so I had to use my body.

Periodically, I stuck my hand into the oven to gauge the temperature and sometimes even reached into the fire to rotate the cake batter.

At least, with a transcendent’s body, I could manage this step, but for someone with mediocre strength, it would have been an impossible feat.

After 20 to 30 minutes, I took out the batter, and despite the harsh conditions, the sponge cake turned out surprisingly well.

I sliced the sponge cake exactly in half, top and bottom, and let it cool.

While the sponge cake cooled, I made the whipped cream, the crowning glory of the cake.

In this world, whipped cream existed, but the commonly used cream had a thick, milk-like texture rather than the fluffy, airy one I was used to.

Using that would have just resulted in a soggy, white liquid poured over bread.

So, I mixed a bit of sugar into the liquid cream and whipped it until it foamed, just like when making the cake batter.

At this point, the cream was sensitive to heat, so I prepared another bowl with cold water for an ice bath to keep the temperature low.

After whipping for a while in the cold, the cream turned into the fluffy, airy texture typically associated with whipped cream.

Now, I spread this finished cream evenly over the sponge cake.

I thinly sliced strawberries, a specialty of this city, and placed them firmly between the layers of the cake.

There might have been monster strawberries out there, but today, I deliberately chose ordinary strawberries.

For some reason, today I wanted to eat a normal dessert from my past life, not one made with this world’s fantasy ingredients.

After spreading the cream, I stacked another layer of sponge cake and repeated the process.

Once the sponge cake was fully covered in cream, I placed the strawberries, stems removed, upside down in a circular pattern on top.

Using a piping bag to add cream decorations would have been the cherry on top, but…

I’ll worry about that later. For now, it’s complete.

The finished pure white cake shone beautifully with the vibrant red strawberries in contrast.

Tonight’s dinner:

A celebratory strawberry cream cake.

Uh…

But I made it because I wanted to eat it, but is it okay to just have cake for dinner?

I guess it’s just cake instead of bread.