#i've just been watching masterchef for the last. something. hours | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

thescarletgang · 4 years

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Hey it's me again! i guess i'm evil anon now huh? i like it, i'm very evil *hides away soft toys and Mr. Yoghurt* Fandoms huh? ooh i do read i guess, but not a lot :/ although with how much Chai posts about this Matthew person i think i need to read whatever that book is, i like Marvel! and legends of zelda! i'm basic, but i've been reading fanfics lately so likee, wbu? any new fanfics? or any stuff recently?

Hii! (Oh no! Not the soft toys!)

Aha yes! Matthew is from The Last Hours (Chai, you're posting about him, right?) from The Shadowhunter Chronicles,,,, apparently a very very very long way away if you read in the publication order.

I should start watching Marvel, shouldn't I? I'm always just starting at something else when my irl friends talk about it 😂😂

Legends of Zelda, never heard of it 😅 but it reminds me of Aunt Zelda from Chilling Adventures of Sabrina...

Reading fanfics that's what I'm doing the whole day too as I ignore my growing pile of homework!

I think I'll be able to post one new fanfic tomorrow! But it's of the same series as of Matthew :(

N stuff! Let's see, the TV show I was watching got cancelled in the middle of a cliffhanger (I'm not crying about that, I swear) n now thus, I'm just watching MasterChef previous seasons.

U tell me what to watch!

#asks #evil anon #anon

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taihorror · 4 years

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April 29, 2020

I've never been a baker. The last time I baked something, I was in a home econs class with 40-something other bored teenagers and a scary old teacher who directed the last of her life energy towards glowering at us rather than teaching us any useful life skills.

That was misleading, by the way. I didn't actually bake. I was just one of the students crowding around that teacher watching her bake. The joys of a neighbourhood school...

The last time I actually baked was probably when I made Shepherd's Pie as a kid. You can tell I don't really have a sweet tooth.

Another reason for my mild aversion to baking: I've always hated being judged, being compared to girls who bake. You know: the pretty girl who brings cookies and just happened to make a personalised chocolate lava cake for everyone at the office, and can sing and cook and crochet and do karate and hand lettering and gets called "wife material"(Getting a bit personal here). More power to her, and she is living her best life! The problem is society expects us all to do that. And I hate it and have always thought baking was the gateway activity to catering to the people who unironically use terms like "wife material". And if I'm being perfectly honest, I am a little jealous too! I know it's internalised misogyny and I shouldn't be comparing myself to others. But I am also not the kind to want to outdo others when jealous of them, mostly because I am lazy AF. I am Jaye Tyler. Modern female slacker but without the hot guys hanging around (and without looks to attract said guys).

And yet, as I binge-watched Masterchef (after I binge-watched Community for the third time, Superstore, etc etc), the macaron episode made me sit up. I love macarons. And it made me crave them. Being in the hilariously termed "Covid-19 circuit breaker", it's impossible to just get them at a store as we did in ye olde capitalist times.

And so I dared to dream. Could I, a complete noob at baking, actually make macarons - one of the most challenging desserts to make, ever, and yet the easiest to scarf down?

Thankfully, I was equipped with an old electric mixer (none of us knew how it got there), an oven, and wifi. So I set about doing copious research on this tricky treat, getting vicariously high on others' successful macarons (hm... just an "i" away from macaroni? Just occured to me). A quick dash to the supermarket to buy the ingredients needed and a really nice dad who queued for more than an hour at an overtaxed baking supplies store later, I made my first attempt.

It ended in abject failure. Never in my life had I failed this hard. I made unforgivable blunders. Namely, I somehow accidentally added water to it mistaking it for egg whites. Speaking of egg whites, I broke a few eggs trying to seperate them like they do on Masterchef. Bad idea. The smart way was just to crack an egg normally and then seperate the yolk and the white into two different bowl using a spoon. But this, like many other common sensical things, did not occur to me at the time. And so I made the sweetest, hardest almond cookies of my life. I think if there were a hall of fame for how badly one can screw up a macaron, I'd be in it.

Crushed by failure, I slept on it. The next day I was really bored and decided to try again, very chanto style. There were significant improvements: for one, I didn't mistake water for egg whites. I made sure to follow every step as best as I could and remembered where I made mistakes. The piped batter even looked pretty! And so I waited for it to dry, for it to form that dry film that's so important.

An hour passed. Another hour. The fan on full blast, my poking at the batter increasingly desperate. I'd forgotten to account for the humidity of Singapore. I googled some solutions, and solutions there were! Bakers are some incredible geniuses. Obviously, these bakers were from Singapore and did all the thinking for me.

One of them suggested drying the batter in the oven to achieve that dry film (seriously. Brilliant.) Like magic, after 10 minutes, the oven gave me that dry film that the two hours of naturally flowing time could not. I almost cried tears of joy.

And in the oven, I watched my babies excitedly like a mom secretly watching her kid at their first day at school. They were doing well. Growing up fast! They were rising, and even dare I hope developing those beautiful feet! And then they suddenly deflated. Pockmarks appeared. Was this puberty?! I thought I should let them find their own way - surely they'll rise again, right? No. They started getting BURNT.

This was the end result:

And kids, that's when I learnt that oven settings are so important... I had just used to default setting I was so used to (the all round heating PLUS GRILL) that I didn't even think that could affect it. Basically, the oven was way too hot.

Also, they might not have developed feet because I'd let them rest for way too long (is this a metaphor?).

So today. Today I finally tried again. I made some decisive changes:

I aged my egg whites 24 hours in advance

I used a "drier" recipe from a Singaporean baker

I blended the dry ingredients

I changed my oven settings

And it worked. I'd have to say it was the recipe that really did the trick! Because of the scaled down egg white proportion, the batter developed that dry film (I never thought I would say these words so much) within 15 minutes, even without that oven trick! Thanks to that they weren't over-rested and were able to develop feet.

And what happened next made me so emotional. I actually jumped for joy.

Look at those beautiful feet! (No pornbots pls) They were still a little burnt but they were still beautiful. Just need to adjust the oven settings even more next time.

And that was my journey into the world of baking. It really does take a lot of effort and preparation. And when you're ready for it, it will change your life. I will never be that girl, but I have so much respect for her now. You put yourself through this for other people if you really care about them.

Me, I just wanted to eat macarons. And that's self love 2020.

#char siew bakes #macarons

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