Chapter 54: A Major Survey of Sweet Treats
Making desserts is quite different from blanching vegetables.
Although both require mastering timing, after several failed attempts to make caramel crisps, Grandma Guo had no choice but to reluctantly announce that she was giving up on learning this dessert.
She took a bite of the caramel crisp she had made and grimaced at the bitterness.
But I couldn't help thinking that it was made with the best ingredients, and I tried to finish all of this cloyingly bitter caramel crisp.
Guo Baiwen stopped him.
"Grandma, you don't need that little bit of sugar, don't force yourself to eat it." He snatched the caramel crisp away with a serious expression, broke it into crumbs without a word, and threw it over to the chicken coop. "So you don't make yourself sick."
Whether those two hens ate the bitter sugar crumbs or the ants on the ground carried them away, just don't eat them yourself.
This was the first time in Grandma Guo's life that she felt so frustrated by a dessert.
Whether she was learning to make pudding or milk dates, she almost always succeeded on her first try.
I never expected things to go wrong here.
However, in contrast to her, Guo Xiaohua surprisingly mastered this dish very well.
In Guo Xiaohua's own words, "It's just heating up the sugar and then adding a little baking soda on top at the right moment! What's so difficult about that!"
But seeing her grandmother's defeat, she dared not say such things again.
She just kept questioning herself. When did she become more talented at cooking than her grandmother?
Overall, the two of them mastered it quite quickly.
They made a lot of sweets in one go. Besides having Xiaohua take some to Lin Niangzi's house, Guo Baiwen also gave some to Yang Qiaomai to take home for tasting, hoping to choose their favorite dish from among them.
Surprisingly, in the end, it was the caramel pudding that won unanimous praise.
In Lin Niangzi's words, 'This looks a bit like steamed egg custard, but how come I can't taste any egg flavor at all?'
Abao and Tianqiao's comments were much simpler: "Delicious! Want more!"
However, this requires more eggs, so the price can't be set too low.
Currently, maltose costs six coins per ounce, while cane sugar costs thirteen coins per ounce, with higher quality maltose costing even more.
Guo Baiwen adjusted the prices of the different dishes he planned to sell on the paper again and again, worried that they would be too cheap compared to other dessert shops, but also afraid that the prices would be too high.
So when his shop wasn't open during the day, he would wander around and try other places.
At that time, there weren't many dessert shops, but there were still five or six in the county town. The dessert shops in the north of the town catered to ordinary people, so the desserts they made were relatively simple and unpretentious.
They basically use coarse products like maltose or sucrose, and process grains and vegetables by boiling, frying, or steaming.
Foods like jujube paste cake, candied radish and lotus root, and rice candy are mostly brown or dark brown in color and are not expensive because they use less sugar and are made in a coarser form.
It has a slightly sweet taste, but not much; a little bit is quite filling.
Guo Baiwen spent a dozen coins to buy some food and ate it while strolling along the road to the two restaurants in the south of the city.
These two shops are indeed far superior to the dessert shops in the north of the city. Regardless of the taste, their products are much more appealing.
The jujube flower cake is indeed shaped like a flower, and the square pieces of lactose cake are also imprinted with orchid and plum blossom patterns.
And what about rock sugar lily bulbs? Doesn't that sound a lot like the name of a sweet soup called "rock sugar pear"?
He also thought it was a sweet soup made by stewing lily petals and rock sugar together.
The result was that a large chunk of white rock sugar wrapped fresh lily petals inside. After steaming, the outside was translucent, and you could still see the whole, fully unfolded lily flower inside.
That's exactly the feeling we're going for: 'fresh food wrapped in crystal'.
It's delicious and looks beautiful.
These kinds of desserts are actually just some of the more basic items in their shop.
Not to mention things like candied fruit carvings and sugar molded fruits; no matter how simple the design, they're all expensive.
Guo Baiwen could only afford to buy three or four pieces of jujube flower cake and lactose cake, and even these few items cost him almost a hundred coins.
He tasted it and found that the jujube flower cake was indeed much sweeter than the jujube paste cake in the north of the city, indicating that the ingredients were generous. However, he felt it was too sweet after only two bites.
I took another bite of the lactose cake. It did look pretty, cut neatly, and looked a bit like the milk squares from my past life.
But they didn't sprinkle coconut flakes on it.
Guo Baiwen's comment on this was simply, "It's too sweet."
This thing is practically a candy made with the same sweetness as a certain rabbit milk candy, but they just don't want to add too much milk.
It had such a faint milky flavor that he could only taste it after eating several if it weren't for the name "lactose cake".
But eating too much at once made it even sweeter, and as he ate it, he felt that this thing was not even as good as a certain rabbit.
He was a little overwhelmed by the sweetness, so he ordered a pot of tea and sat down at the tea stall across the street to continue looking at the pastries. The appearance of the pastries was indeed very elaborate, but also very attractive.
While he was sitting there for a while, a number of butlers and errand boys came in one after another and bought a lot of things from the shop.
These are probably all for the wealthy.
But no matter how beautiful the candy looks, the difference between refined sugar and unrefined sugar becomes apparent once you actually taste it.
Although cheap sweets like glutinous rice sticks taste best with coarse sugar, the so-called refined sugar used in these high-end sweets is still too coarse compared to the sugar in his system.
Moreover, because high-quality refined sugar is now more expensive, and the rent for shops in the south of the city is also high, the price of sweets made with more sugar can only remain high.
The relatively 'affordable' sweets he bought from these shops seemed to be made with less generous portions of ingredients.
No wonder both of them are putting so much effort into the design of their dessert molds.
Guo Baiwen didn't intend to compete with these two businesses. After looking around and getting a general idea of what was going on, he paid the tea stall owner for the pot of jasmine tea and then strolled home with the unfinished sweets.
These sweets were too sweet for him, but Grandma Guo and Guo Xiaohua seemed to really enjoy them.
At this time, there are not many ways to obtain sugar, so people nowadays are more fond of sweets than people in his previous life.
The desserts he had prepared according to his taste were now a little not sweet enough.
It seems the only solution is to double the amount of sugar when making it.
However, the prices of the pastries in the store will also be adjusted upwards accordingly.
While checking how much sugar and honey he had left, he unexpectedly found several packets of rice cakes in the box. It was truly a case of being lucky to have found the right thing at the right time.
Although bowl-shaped rice cakes are still sold now, this old-fashioned bowl-shaped rice cake is not only troublesome to make, but also mainly uses glutinous rice flour, wheat starch, or tapioca starch.
The purpose of using these ingredients is to make it smooth, delicious, and slightly soft.
However, the bowl-shaped rice cakes made with ordinary glutinous rice flour are far from having the crystal-like texture produced by steaming with special bowl-shaped rice cake flour.
The steamed rice cakes made this way look somewhat similar to the 'rock sugar lily' he had seen in the south of the city before.
They all look like 'crystals' anyway!
Not at all shabby!
Although such 'crystal' pastries are already commonplace in the two confectionery shops in the south of the city.
At that time, crystal bowl cakes can also become the signature dish of their own shop. Although there is a lot of powder, since the rewards from the sign-in system are hard to come by, they should be used sparingly.
Making only six or eight a day, just enough to put on the counter in the shop to make a good impression, should be sufficient regardless of whether they sell or not.
We can always keep it for our own dinner tonight.
In his past life, he loved to buy one or two of these after school and eat them at the school gate. Among the various flavors, he especially liked the fruit and osmanthus flavors.
Unfortunately, none of them exist now.
That's fine too—I'll make two raisins, two mung beans, two brown sugar, and if I have extra, I can make two more red bean ones.
Although it doesn't look as exquisite as the 'rock sugar lily', it's more in line with the eating habits of the northern part of the city.
A serving like this in the south of the city costs seventy-five coins.
Although he also has 'crystal' in his offerings, they are still just small bowl-shaped cakes, and they don't have such pretty lilies inside. So he sells them for a third of the price, and to add a touch of good luck, they are 26 coins each.
Caramel pudding will also be a signature dish, so let's set the price at 18 coins each.
Caramel crisps and milk dates cost fifteen coins per ounce, which is only slightly more expensive than buying an ounce of cane sugar directly. Half an ounce can also be sold for eight coins.
That way, perhaps someone will be willing to buy some and try it.
The price of sweet rice porridge and sweet soup is set at six coins per cup, but the price of licorice water and sour plum soup remains unchanged at the original price of two coins per bowl.
They have a distinctive brand, offer both inexpensive and more expensive items, and their products are different from those sold in other candy shops.
I bought a large earthenware pot for holding sweet soup and porridge, spoons for eating, and small bowls for holding pudding.
Although they switch to selling sweets in the summer, the bamboo bowls used for hot pot can still be put to good use.
Everything is ready now, except for the final push.
He wanted to wait until the confectionery shop opened before going to the academy, but his grandmother was too anxious.
Now that the mala tang restaurant is only open at night, he doesn't know when she sneaked off to Yangzheng Academy, which he had mentioned to her before, and secretly enrolled him.
By the time Guo Baiwen found out, the tuition and fees had already been paid. He was just waiting to go through the apprenticeship ceremony on the day of Lixia (the beginning of summer) before he could officially start school.
Even though she was the one who went to school, she was the last in her family to find out.
Even Yang Qiaomai knew about this news earlier than him.
Guo Baiwen felt ostracized!
It looks like Grandma is about to send him away!
He's going to get angry!
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