I Swear I'm Writing...I Promise

Taste: 3/5

Ingredient Cost: 2/5

Prep/Energy Required: 4/5 

Special Equipment Needed? Stand Mixer

Difficult to Find Ingredients? No

Full disclosure: what you are seeing here is my second attempt. It is the better of the two attempts. I KNOW.

I’m not a stranger to baking, but this cake gave me a fair bit of grief. The cake flour did NOT want to sift cleanly, and then the flour didn’t want to incorporate into my batter, resulting in me overmixing it and deflating it. Even after all that, there were still some little specks of cake flour in the finished product.

Honestly, even the stuff I’ve made that tastes good doesn’t look great presentation-wise so far in this project (for example, last recipe’s omurice), so I’m not too broken up about my sub-par icing job. I’ll also note that I was not going to buy a whole new spatula for the specific purpose of putting whipped cream on a cake, because I’m trying not to let this project bankrupt me, thank you very much.

I have a huge sweet tooth, but I have to say, the cake itself didn’t leave much of an impression on me. Obviously the whipped cream frosting and strawberries were delicious, but the cake was about as good (actually worse due to my subpar execution) as one from a box. I’d save yourself a headache and just make one of those instead, then cut it in half and decorate accordingly if you want to make this recipe. I have been severely humbled by you, Ann Takamaki. I’m so sorry. 

Taste: 3/5

Ingredient Cost: 1/5

Prep/Energy Required: 2/5 

Special Equipment Needed? No

Difficult to Find Ingredients? No

Okay so elephant in the room. This looks like shit. I did a very bad job, everyone go ahead and boo me. Get it out of your system.

…okay guys I promise. I PROMISE that the omelet was perfect and beautiful when I put the filling in and folded the edges. This was my first time making an omelet uh…ever, so I actually was very proud of myself! Then, because I was following the recipe, I did as I was instructed when removing the finished omurice from the pan. I got a plate, covered the top with it, and flipped it over. 

So it turns out a little tiny portion of the omelet was still sticking, because apparently, a whole tablespoon of butter wasn’t enough to de-stick the pan. And that omelet was truly torn to shreds in an instant. As you can see, I had to reconstruct the outside from the scraps because I was not going to use three more eggs to make another one. My ketchup job also leaves much to be desired but that I care less about. I’m positive if I gave this another go, I could do it much better, so I’m not too bummed.

Regarding the taste, it was fine. Fun fact, I actually really dislike ketchup. I like tomatoes a lot, but ketchup is just not for me. So if anything, the fact I’m rating this 3/5 for taste is amazing. I wasn’t going to just NOT make this recipe because of personal taste when the whole point of the project is to try new things. There is actually only one recipe in the entire book that I am just not going to make as instructed. But that’s a secret for now!

(No, it’s not the Big Bang Burger. I’m making that. And the macrons. Actually, it’s occurred to me recently that a lot of you must have no idea what horrors I have signed up for with this project if you haven’t read the cookbook.)

Taste: 5/5

Ingredient Cost: 3/5

Prep/Energy Required: 2/5 

Special Equipment Needed? No

Difficult to Find Ingredients? Yes

I had the absolute pleasure of sharing this meal with @sxnnoh the night before we went to anime expo, and we both agreed it was a hit! The flavors are just phenomenal, and the pickled ginger adds a great burst of flavor, and more importantly, makes it look really pretty in pictures so I look like a more competent chef. 

The hardest thing about this recipe is sourcing thinly-sliced ribeye. I was able to find some for sale at my local H Mart, but some of the other asian grocery stores that were closer to me did not have it. If you’re able to find it, this recipe is definitely worth making because wow wow wow wow wow I could have eaten like three bowls of this and am really looking forward to the leftovers. 

Taste: 3/5

Ingredient Cost: 2/5

Prep/Energy Required: 4/5 

Special Equipment Needed? Dutch Oven

Difficult to Find Ingredients? No

No one wants their first experience deep frying to be something you will later have to recount on the internet. Additionally, no one wants to be in the position where you realize you do not, in fact, own three large swallow bowls to fill with flour, egg, and panko, while the oil is almost up to temperature, and you’ve already spent two hours and like four goddamn dishes making the croquettes. Also it’s 11:00pm because your roommate decided she also was going to cook for several hours and it's too cramped for you to be in there too.

I may have lost my mind a little while deep frying. The worst part is that I kind of screwed myself over, I found, while forming my mixture of beef, onions, and potatoes into pucks, because I didn’t spend the time to make them smooth and pretty. I noticed that flour did not want to adhere to the uglier looking ones with nooks and crevices, which seems obvious now, but again…11pm. 

Honestly, it’s a miracle these didn’t turn out worse from my incompetence. After I fried the first two, I didn’t stop to check that the oil temperature was still 350 degrees F, and started the next batch with oil that was too cold. Those ones just turned out soggy, so I chose not to photograph those. Worst of all, I didn’t think to crack open a window or set the oven fan running, so by the end of cooking my eyes got super irritated. Just picture me with red eyes hunched over a plate with a single croquette on it, goblin style, horking down my dinner at 11:45pm before stumbling off to bed to get up at 6:45am for my very serious adult job. 

Taste: 2.5/5

Ingredient Cost: 5/5

Prep/Energy Required: 1/5 

Special Equipment Needed? Bartending Equipment

Difficult to Find Ingredients? Yes

A week ago, while planning out the next recipes I was going to tackle, I said to myself “You know, it’s going to be a pretty busy week for me, plus all of Wednesday and Thursday evenings are going to be dedicated to the Deltarune update, so I should just choose a stupidly simply recipe to knock out and cut myself a break.

Oh, Goro Akechi’s fruity little mocktail? A little sweet beverage? That sounds perfect! All I have to do is buy the ingredients. Peach juice, club soda, easy. Blue Curacao Syrup, I did admittedly, need to buy online, but it was super easy to source. I don’t have bartending equipment, but I can improvise.

Then there’s the edible glitter, or as it’s written in the recipe “Blue Luster Dust”. Just reading that made me want to shove Goro Akechi in a locker. I would have to shell out twelve US dollars at my local grocery if I wanted edible glitter, which I would need only for this one (1) recipe and then would likely never use again. I once again tried to find a good option online as a substitute…but found similar results. So, my attempt is glitter-less.

So, that’s the battle over, right? A small omission, a special order of one ingredient. A little inconvenient, but not so bad, right?

WRONG. YUZU JUICE. 

YUZU JUICE.

Listen. I live in Los Angeles. There’s no shortage of Asian grocery stores and specialty markets here. But NOWHERE, not in ANY of the stores I went to physically or checked online, carried yuzu juice. Most didn’t even have an approximation, like a yuzu beverage mixed with something else. So I thought, oh! I’ll just buy it online then! No problemo!

NO! The cheapest I could find it online was twenty five dollars for 6 ounces!!! Turns out its pretty fucking hard to get yuzu juice if you don’t live in East Asia!

So I looked up what I could use as a substitute and used lemon juice to save myself a stress-induced brain aneurysm.