Chapter 472 - 306: Chinese Desserts

Chapter 472: Chapter 306: Chinese Desserts

Lin Chen had been a little anxious, but after getting the approval of a local like Erica, he felt more confident. While he couldn’t guarantee it would go viral, attracting a large number of tourists was now a sure thing.

If he released the design blueprints and a teaser, then filmed the construction process, letting fans watch the facilities be built from scratch, he could accumulate a considerable number of potential customers.

Just releasing a promo video of the finished product was outdated. The current trend was to attract customers from the very beginning, building a sense of anticipation throughout the construction. That way, when it was finally completed, people would get the illusion that they had participated, making them eager to come and see it in person.

By the time he finished editing the video, evening had arrived without him noticing.

He figured the market was probably about to close up. Feeling a bit guilty for not having done business there for several days, Lin Chen decided to go see if any of the stalls had leftover scraps they didn’t want.

Just as he walked through the main entrance of the market, he saw Bella at the fruit and vegetable stall, clearing away produce that wasn’t in good condition. Several small bags filled with a random assortment of fruits and vegetables were piled on the empty tabletop.

This produce wouldn’t be thrown away. Instead, it was set aside and sold at a half-price discount. People from less fortunate families often chose to buy these discounted items.

They weren’t spoiled, just that their skins had become wrinkled or darkened from being out for too long, or they were the ones left over because they didn’t look perfect.

The market wasn’t like the pristine produce section of a supermarket. To put it bluntly, this was a place that bought directly from farms and sold the ingredients as they were, at most giving them a thorough wash beforehand.

"Hey, Bella. Getting ready to close up?"

Hearing the familiar voice, Bella nodded with a hint of grievance. "Yeah. You haven’t been open for the past few days, and it feels like foot traffic in the market has dropped. Look, all this produce is getting old and no one’s buying it."

Ever since Lin Chen made that eggplant dish, she had started stocking eggplants on her shelves. Though she didn’t get many in each day, they always sold out completely.

"Haha, sorry about that. I was just too busy with work over there. I just finished, so I came right over. I was hoping to find some inspiration. By the way, is there anything you’re craving?"

"Dessert!"

Bella grabbed his hand, her face full of sincerity. "After eating your eggplant dish last time, I got curious before bed and looked up nearby Great Xia restaurants on my phone."

"And I saw so many delicious things, especially the desserts! They made my mouth water so much I couldn’t sleep well all night. They looked so tempting, but the closest restaurant is over an hour’s drive away. I was even thinking about closing the shop for a day to go check it out."

"Can you make them? If you can’t, I’m going to have to start planning a day off."

"Dessert, huh... I can make it. How about this, let me walk around and get everyone’s opinion. If you’re not in a hurry to leave, wait for me for a bit."

He suddenly remembered that someone else had asked him about making desserts not too long ago. Plus, Erica was also very fond of Great Xia’s desserts. If he did a special dessert episode, the results would probably be even better than he imagined.

He wandered around the market, passing by Kardashian the seafood vendor, Zack the chicken vendor, Mr. Beef at the beef stall, as well as the egg and dairy stall, the pork stall, and so on. Almost everyone was cleaning up, getting ready to close and go home.

The quicker ones had already cleared off their counters entirely, so he found almost no inspiration.

When he asked what kind of dessert they wanted to eat, almost everyone’s answer included the same flavor.

Chocolate.

Besides chocolate, which was a universal favorite, the rest of the requests were a wide variety: blueberry, raspberry, strawberry, banana, matcha, cinnamon bark, caramel, and so on. They were basically the most common flavors found abroad.

"I’m back."

When he got back to the market entrance, Bella was still sitting in front of her shop. The rolling shutter door behind her was already mostly down, and a few men and women in tattered clothes were buying the bagged, imperfect produce from her.

Having run the shop for so many years, selling half-priced items at closing time had become a fixed routine. These regular "NPCs" would show up on schedule, perhaps even more punctually than she closed her shop.

After taking care of them, Bella pulled the shutter door all the way down, locked it, then straightened up and rubbed her hands together excitedly as she looked at him.

"So, how’d it go?"

"As you wished. A chocolate dessert."

"OMG!!! WOO-HOO!!~!"

Bella pumped her arms fiercely, a strong wave of excitement flushing her cheeks, making her look almost drunk.

"Tomorrow?"

"Yep, tomorrow. But I haven’t decided exactly what to make yet. I can’t guarantee it’ll be in the morning; it might be the afternoon. But there will definitely be something tomorrow."

"Please make a dessert we can’t get around here, thank you!"

After saying that, Bella gave him a light, polite hug on the shoulder, then turned and walked away, humming a happy little tune.

’A dessert you can’t get in Canada, huh...’

He stroked his chin in thought as he started walking back.

His rented house wasn’t far from the market, only a ten-minute walk or so.

When he got home, Erica, fresh from a shower, was tilting her head as she blow-dried her long, flowing hair.

"So, did you find any inspiration?"

"I asked around. Everyone wants a chocolate-flavored Great Xia dessert. After that, fruit flavors were the most popular. Do you have any suggestions?"

"A chocolate-flavored Great Xia dessert?!"

Hearing that combination of words, it was as if some kind of keyword had been triggered, and Erica’s eyes instantly lit up.

"I don’t know much about Great Xia desserts, so you decide! Anyway, I get to be the first taste-tester. You’d better save a big portion just for me!"

The thing she bought near the hot pot restaurant last time was just a Great Xia-style bread. She had never eaten a proper dessert.

Hearing that there would be chocolate dessert tomorrow, she felt her stomach start to rumble uncontrollably.

"Let’s go. We’ll find a place to eat and stop by the supermarket to buy some ingredients. I’ll think about it over dinner."

As expected, Erica, who hadn’t had Western food in days, chose another steakhouse. She also ordered a full rack of American-style barbecue pork ribs, the kind slathered in sweet and smoky barbecue sauce.

It got to the point where the server had to confirm multiple times that there were only two of them, not three, before walking away with the menu, looking puzzled.

A full rack of pork ribs like that might look huge, but eighty percent of it was actually bone. Once you took those away, the amount of meat left was about the same as a ten-to-twenty-ounce steak.

To put that in perspective, twenty ounces is about 570 grams, or a little over a pound.

Two people ordering three of the largest meat dishes—totaling over three pounds of meat—plus appetizers and desserts, yet neither of them looked overweight. An appetite like that was a rare sight for the staff.

When two ordinary-looking slices of mousse cake were served, Erica was the first to fork a piece of the blueberry one into her mouth.

As she savored it, she suddenly looked up at him.

"You guys in Great Xia have similar cakes, right?"

"Of course we do. Wait, cake?"

Lin Chen froze, then, as if he’d just thought of something, slammed his hand on the table.

"That’s it! I can just make a cake! The cakes here are different from the ones back home."

Back when he worked in a restaurant kitchen, he’d often helped out the slow-moving pastry chefs and had learned quite a bit in the process.

Although he hadn’t had any professional training, his dessert-making skills were good enough to handle the needs of a typical restaurant.

Many popular varieties in his home country were American-style cakes, like the most common ones: Black Forest, red velvet, and mousse, as well as many types of cheesecakes, chocolate cakes, pies, and mille-crêpes.

Just hearing the names, you might think they taste the same as the ones back home, but once you actually ate them, you’d know the difference was quite obvious.

Cakes from Great Xia were primarily soft and light, focusing on being refreshing and not too rich.

American cakes were mainly heavy and moist, using large amounts of sugar and butter to enhance the texture—after all, their target audience was Americans, who can’t live without their sugar.

Even if it was the same type of cake, it would be a completely different experience for these foreigners to eat.

Besides, he wasn’t planning on making the most basic version. That would be too ordinary. He had to add a little something to level it up.

"Made up your mind?"

Seeing his expression, Erica knew he had a plan. She quickly finished her cake in a couple of bites and started pulling him out of the restaurant.

"Let’s go, let’s go! To the supermarket to buy supplies! It’ll be a problem if we go too late and it’s closed!"

While shopping, Lin Chen pushed the cart and wandered around, weaving between different aisles, his eyes scanning all sorts of ingredients.

And wouldn’t you know it, this aimless wandering actually gave him a lot of new ideas.

By the time they got home, it was already past eight in the evening.

Once the ingredients were organized, Erica raised the camera at just the right moment and filmed each of them.

"Friends, welcome to Lin’s Baking Classroom! This is a new series I’m starting, where I’ll mainly be making baked goods and desserts, focusing on Great Xia flavors. I hope to bring you all a new kind of visual experience."

"The recipe for each episode will be displayed at the end of the video. If you’re interested in trying it out, don’t forget to like and follow, and remember to take a screenshot to save it."

After the short intro, Lin Chen rolled up his sleeves, took a few eggs from the refrigerator, and separated the yolks from the whites.

He added a few drops of lemon juice and several large spoonfuls of sugar to the egg whites and whipped them. He then mixed milk, oil, all-purpose flour, cornstarch, and cocoa powder with the egg yolks until smooth, before folding that mixture into the meringue.

"Making a chiffon cake is actually very simple for me, not as complicated as they say online. Just mix the egg yolks directly with all the other ingredients until smooth. You don’t need to worry about technique. The only thing you need to pay attention to is the moisture level—it can’t be too dry or too wet. When you lift the whisk, the batter should drip down like a waterfall of honey."

"Room temperature egg whites are fine. Chilled ones are easier to whip, which is better for beginners. You have to use fresh lemon juice, but if you don’t have any, white vinegar or rice vinegar will also work. They help reduce the eggy smell."

"Start whipping on high speed. Once the egg whites have clearly expanded, switch to medium-low. This will give the meringue a fine texture, and the baked cake will have a better mouthfeel. Whipping on high the entire time results in a rougher texture."

"So when do you stop whipping? Like this. Turn off the mixer, manually swirl it twice, then lift it. If the meringue forms a stable, curved peak, you’ve succeeded."