Chapter 340 - 145: This Is a Pastry? I Don’t Believe It! It’s a Walnut

Chapter 340: Chapter 145: This Is a Pastry? I Don’t Believe It! It’s a Walnut

"My filling uses walnuts, peanuts, cashews, sunflower seeds, and almonds—it’s a five-nut filling. I then mix it with oil and cooked flour."

At this point, all the fundamental secrets of the pastry walnut had been revealed.

In essence, it was just a pastry with a dough wrapper around a five-nut filling. That was its true nature!

No matter how exquisitely it was crafted or how beautifully it was described, its fundamental nature remained unchanged. This meant its flavor and texture were more or less set in stone.

Su Chen pinched off a piece of dough, rolled it into a ball, and flattened it with his palm. He indented the center slightly and placed the toasted five-nut filling inside.

There wasn’t much to say about the wrapping process; like most things, it was done using the ’tiger’s mouth’ technique, cupping the dough between the thumb and forefinger.

However, Su Chen’s method was slightly different. After sealing the dough, he didn’t roll it into a perfect sphere or pinch off any excess. Instead, he pinched the seal into a small point, then continued pinching downward from that point, creating a complete ridge around the entire ball of dough.

Once that ridge was formed, many people in the audience understood.

The small, cocoa-colored ball now vaguely resembled a walnut.

Albeit, a walnut without any of its characteristic grooves!

Su Chen then took a small, dull knife and pressed it into the ridge he had just created. Then, he pressed down on the top of the ridge.

These two simple steps made the pastry look even more like a real walnut!

"Brilliant! Simply brilliant! I’m already itching to try making one myself!"

"Heh, I already sent this livestream to my mom. I expect I’ll be eating one of these pastry walnuts by tonight!"

"I’m suddenly starting to understand the significance of traditional Chinese pastries. This is the culmination of our ancestors’ wisdom, passed down through millennia. It’s a form of cultural heritage!"

"It doesn’t look that hard. I’ll give it a try once Boss Su puts out a tutorial video."

The viewers in the livestream chat were watching with rapt attention.

Many were even secretly screen-recording the broadcast.

Once Su Chen began crafting, he had no mind for anything else. The words he spoke were merely a narration of the movements of his hands.

"Now that the rough shape of the walnut is done, it’s time to rely on this. You can’t buy this gadget in any store; it’s a little tool I made myself."

While developing this pastry walnut, Su Chen had spent a long time in the Gourmet Practice Room, just staring at a real walnut.

The grooves on a walnut’s surface look chaotic, but they actually follow a pattern. It wasn’t hard to figure out how to replicate it, but the key question was: what tool could create those textures?

So... he’d taken a long metal strip, bent it into a U-shape, and used scissors to cut four or five teeth into the ends. He gave it a try, and it worked surprisingly well!

No wonder you couldn’t buy one in a store.

He first used the teeth of the U-shaped tool to press circular patterns all over the pastry’s surface. Then, he pinched the spaces between those patterns to create messy, uneven ridges. After repeating this process three or four times...

Su Chen set down the tool and flexed his fingers.

This work was truly exhausting!

But what felt like a minor chore to Su Chen was an entirely different matter in the eyes of the viewers!

When Zhao Huilian saw Su Chen finish a walnut and place it on a plate, he was utterly dumbfounded!

’Is this for real?’

It started as a plain, unremarkable little ball of dough. After a few marks with the dull knife, it did start to feel a bit like a walnut.

But what the hell was that clip? He just poked and pressed it all over the surface, and after that flurry of activity, the little ball of dough had become...

"That’s a real walnut! Holy crap, the pastry walnut Su Chen made is even more beautiful than the pair I’ve been hand-polishing for over a decade!"

"Incredible! What kind of brain does he have? To even think of something like this... I’m completely blown away!"

Lu Yongliang and Cui Yufen chatted openly, making no effort to hide their astonishment.

Every so often, their eyes would dart over toward Zhao Huilian.

Meanwhile, Sweet, who had been feeling rather disgruntled, was now also staring dumbfounded at the Meiweilai Company livestream on the big screen.

She now had only one thought.

’Since Zhang Jiayi was the first person to eat Boss Su’s walnut pastry, I have to be the second!’

’Yep, as soon as this stream is over, I’m flying to Jingzhou!’

With her keen eye for trends, she knew that after this livestream, she couldn’t speak for his other creations, but this walnut pastry and the lotus from before were absolutely going to blow up online!

Anyone who could get the scoop at a time like this, by personally visiting the shop to taste and admire the creations, would definitely become a hot topic online!

’Looks like losing to Zhang Jiayi wasn’t so bad after all.’

Sweet’s mood wasn’t nearly as foul as it had been moments ago.

On screen, Su Chen rested for a few seconds before lowering his head and continuing to craft the walnuts.

In reality, only the first one had taken a while because he was explaining the process. He finished the next few in just three to four minutes each.

Su Chen made five in total.

"This pastry walnut is cooked by baking. I’m putting them in the oven now. They aren’t very big, so ten minutes should be enough!"

Lord knows how agonizing that ten-minute wait was for the audience!

But when the oven let out a DING, that agony instantly transformed into eager anticipation. He Shuting, for her part, seemed to have finally regained her composure.

She held the phone mount, keeping the camera aimed steadily at Su Chen’s hands.

From the moment he opened the oven, to when he took out the baking sheet, and finally when he placed it on the work surface—every shot was perfectly steady.

Anyone with a discerning eye could see that the baking process had brought about another change in the pastries.

It was as if a matte finish had become a glossy one!

The gleaming pastry walnuts looked even more like a set of prized collectibles that had been hand-polished for many years!

But what was even more baffling was...

It was just as one of the comments scrolling across the screen said:

"If you hadn’t watched him make it, who the hell would ever guess this thing was a pastry?"

The five items resting on the small baking sheet were the spitting image of five real walnuts!

How could they possibly be pastries?

Zhang Li rubbed her head. "I squished one, but it was pretty tasty."

Su Chen rolled his eyes at her.

He placed the remaining four pastries onto four small, individual wooden plates, which immediately gave them an artistic, refined air.

Then, taking the one extra pastry, he walked up to the camera.

"I recommend letting them cool before eating. They’ll be much crispier that way."

As soon as he finished speaking,

Su Chen’s hands found the seam of the pastry walnut.

CRACK!

He broke it in half.