Casual Heroing

Chapter 221: A True Master

I slowly mix some eggs and sugar.

“In my parents’ country, the women want their ‘Spanish Bread’ as soft as it can possibly be – to achieve that, they whisk the eggs with the sugar for a prolonged period. They first whisk the whites and slowly, really slowly add the sugar. If you taste a homemade cake in that country, chances are it will be softer than a bakery-made one. Why? Because housewives have all the time in the world when they are bored. The hasty ones make harder cakes. Obviously, there’s more than one way you can control how hard your base will be, Tiberius,” I look at my assistant on the right.

“And, Quintus,” I look to my left, “it’s normal for something to go astray in the process. The most important thing is to know how to remedy it. No recipe is ever the same. But you have to aim for perfection, not just the reduction of mistakes made. So, you have to know which steps will control the various aspects. Can you tell me how many things we can use to control the hardness of the cake base?”

I see the two slightly panic at the question.

“You have to think in advance when working. If you don’t, how will you be able to remain in control? Again, recipes are always different. It’s like a river – if you get in one time, it’s the same river your father bathed in 20 years ago, but it’s also a different river from the one your skin will touch tomorrow. Horace teaches us that.”

“The [Woodworker], Chef?”

“What? The wood—whatever. No. A [Poet], Tiberius.”

I activate the magical whisks and let the whites slowly rise, watching them in silence.

“This is one of the steps. How fast you add the sugar will influence how soft it will be. And since it’s the first step, you want to get it as soft as possible. We will work toward the desired hardness throughout the rest of the recipe.”

With great patience, I start adding little amounts of sugar as if no one was watching me. What I like about baking is that it’s a meditative process. It’s like performing a great feat of athletics. It brings you to a flow state like no other. It makes your head move.

The people who watch TV while cooking should burn, I swear. Some light chatter is good, but you want to give your head some time to breathe. It has to stay fresh while baking, ready to react at the perfect moment.

“Now, another step is whisking the yolks. This step is even more important. It is at this point when the lazy ones make a cake base as hard as a brick and dense. Christ, there’s nothing more disgusting than an exceptionally dense cake base – sadly, this is way more common than people realize.”

I hear some scribbling on paper and parchment behind me. People are taking notes of my words. Good. Spreading good baking practices will make me sleep more soundly at night; hopefully, no nightmares of rainbow cakes will haunt me.

If you ever baked a rainbow cake, take a page from Silas from the Da Vinci Code and start flogging your back in repentance. Your sins will never be excused, but you might find the pain educational.

“You have to beat the yolks to death. Anything less than fifteen minutes of screaming with arm cramps means you didn’t do it correctly. So, both of you, start whisking manually.”

“Yes, Chef,” they chorus.

“Some say you must whisk until you can ‘write’ on the mixture of yolks and sugar. I say that’s stupid. You have to feel the overall composition with your hands. That’s why you never use magic for this step. You do it with your own hands. And you teach your assistants to do the same. Why? Because if you use automatic whiskers, you might not realize that there’s an uneven distribution of density. The irregular and asymmetrical movements of your hands will help reach a more even distribution instead. And you can feel it. Never trust skills. Use your own senses. That’s the one thing we can truly trust in this world.”josei

I watch the two men stoically endure the whisking process without flinching. They are staring at the yolks so hard that I’m actually a bit sorry for those dead chicken fetuses.

It takes a while before they look certain that their composition is up to my standards. But when I delicately pour it on the whites, they both panic.

“Chef! Chef! Don’t you have to check?!”

“I trust you both. And I’ll be able to feel the consistency while mixing. Pass me the wooden spoon.”

An audience gathered to assist the criminal Human who suddenly returned to his bakery, who threw everything askew, and told the two most dedicated and talented [Chefs] in Amorium that they had absolutely no idea what they were doing.

I hum to myself while mixing the compound. I also add some very finely grounded lemon peel, and that’s it. I don’t want any other flavors to overtake the composition apart from some light lemon touch.

“You can eliminate some of the air you injected during the yolk-whisking at this point. That is, if you think that the mix will be too soft. To me, it feels alright. Now, we slowly add flour and starch flour. But not too slowly. This is a crucial step. If you are too slow, you will do too many movements with your wooden spoon – and that means the air will slowly escape. If you are too hasty, though, you will create an uneven base; also, you will have to mix too much, which, as already said, will make the base much harder and denser. It takes a lot of time and practice before you master this. But since you’ll need a base for every cake, you will learn to get a feel for all the different details.”

“I’ll not go in-depth on the ingredients because I wrote about that in my instructions already. Hell, you could publish a damn book just about the right mixing techniques, the properties of the single ingredients, and so on.”

“It’s important to remember something,” I say, “there are two methods. One is ‘cold,’ and the other is ‘warm.’ I use the cold one because I feel more in control. It takes longer, and it’s much harder to obtain the right softness without a lot of work, but it’s also safer. A flame can help hasten the process, but a flame is never perfectly controlled unless you have skills for it.”

As soon as I’m done mixing, I slowly pour it into two pans and gesture to Tiberius and Quintus.

“Joey? Where is the yeast? Are you going to use skills to make it rise?” Flaminia’s voice comes from the crowd.

“Nope. This doesn’t rise. The softness comes from how you mixed the eggs for so long and how you didn’t destroy that work with a wooden spoon. Yeast has a strong flavor. Too strong. You can use yeast for some compositions, but you absolutely cannot in this case.”

“Now, Quintus, Tiberius,” I declare, “let’s put your ideas together. I’m going to need some magic here to manipulate the ingredients better. You can build tools to do this, though.”

…

While the base was cooking, I had the two make some caramel and whip up some Chantilly-based lemon whipped cream. And a kuvillinae one.

“So, what we are going to do is make caramel beads. They are going to act as a coating for—”

I raise a tiny globe of the cream made of lemons and kuvillinae.

“The caramel layer is going to be insanely thin. It will melt on the tongue. Listen, the cake bases won’t be too tall, so we will use two layers. We will shape it with the petals and a thicker layer of cream on top. But the cream will be barely lemony. The flavor will come from the beads hidden in the top layer of cream. We can’t have the beads in the middle layer because they would be squished. And ideally, you want to place them so that the Chef can cut the cake without breaking the beads. The beads should melt in the mouth. Or, in the worst case, break against the teeth. That shall give us a—”

“What is he even saying?” Camilla whispers.

“Silence!” Quintus shouts to the back. “Chef, please, go ahead. Do you want to use the beads to create some more thickness, a pseudo-layer?”

I smile. Hell, these two have not seen me for quite a bit, but they still know how I think.

“Yep. That’s what we are going to do.”

I slowly model each bead individually, maneuvering the caramel with magic and pouring it on a globe of lemon and kuvillinae cream. I keep them separated, barely mixing them together. God, this will be a masterpiece. Tiberius and Quintus had excellent ideas.

“If the layer of caramel is thin enough, and we keep it in its sugary form without enhancing its flavor, it’s going to help amplify the lemons and kuvillinae.”

…

“Now, after cutting one of the two bases into petals, we slowly wet it with some light liqueur that women love. Maybe something a bit tangy. And we use just a little brush of it. Then, we raise the temperature in the oven and bake the petals again for a few minutes, which will have them reach the perfect consistency.”

…

I dry some of the sweat on my face and exhale.

The Mimosa is one of the hardest cakes to master. It’s insanely complex to make it so that it’s not just another ordinary stupid cake that tastes like every other mediocre baking concoction in the world.

We had to use a few cooling runes and a couple of other tricks to speed up the process. I still have to go back to the academy before it’s night; that means I cannot let everything cool naturally. But it’s still in the realm of things that shouldn’t have too big of an impact on the final product. Sure, it’s better to let everything rest for a while, but magic comes in handy from time to time, doesn’t it?

“Go ahead,” I gesture to Quintus and Tiberius. They both seem to be looking at the cake in awe, scared even to touch it with a knife. “Cut it and taste it.”

“Chef, are you sure?” Quintus asks, looking at the beautiful, bright yellow cake. It’s puffy thanks to its yellow petals and has a strong impact on the eyes. It’s the kind of cake that you want to stand out – women like lively colors. This cake is the equivalent of a diamond in the bakery world.

“Sure. Go ahead. Cakes are made to be eaten, Quintus. Cut it up and tell me if the caramel spheres have melted or if they are too crunchy when it’s in your mouth. That should tell us if I made them thin enough.”

Ideally, the caramel layer should be almost indistinguishable.

After they both fumble with the knife for a minute, I take over and slice the cake.

“Camilla and the others. Do you want to taste it? You already tried theirs, right?”

They all nod multiple times and take some plates from a cupboard.

I start distributing slices, careful not to break the caramel beads. That’s probably the most challenging thing so far. The cream has shifted a little, meaning I lost the exact perception of where I should have cut it. But, as with all things, it’s still food. A few beads break here and there, making the cream a bit darker, like little stains. But thanks to the petals, you can barely see it.

“So, the cake is low on purpose. If you can, try to fit it in your mouth vertically to enjoy the full experience.”

People around me start shoving huge pieces of cake in their mouths, not having understood exactly what I just said. But all is good. This is good. I am good.

I missed them.

A lot.

I missed them much more than I’m even willing to admit.

Camilla goes pale when she tastes the cake and looks at me in bewilderment.

“You didn’t use any skills?”

“Nope. I don’t have a [Baker] class, remember? I used some magic to help keep the caramel thin. I made a little—whatever, it’s not important. No, I didn’t use any skills.”

They all eat in silence, exchanging glances and nodding slightly.

If I did not know the culinary world, I’d be nervous. I was nervous when I was dueling people, even though I wielded great magic, unattainable for most. But magic is something I started doing here by chance. Baking, instead… well, you know I graduated high school early, and I didn’t attend college, right? I went abroad to study under the masters, to learn from the greatest who usually never accept an apprentice as young as me without an insane reference letter from fellow starred chefs.

And the reason I never stayed in a starred kitchen for too long is quite simple.

There’s space for only one master in a kitchen.