Finishing Cake
Manufacturing process
I know I will hear complaints about this. Everyone has their own favorite recipe for finishing cake. (Thank you, I've now collected enough to fill a book.) I'm only going to describe the most basic, which requires just three ingredients and a minimum of preparation steps.
For each egg, measure out its in-shell weight in sweetener and twice that in grain powder. The sweetener can be anything from honey to cane sap, as long as it is added in a dried and granular form so that it can be mixed in easily and doesn't upset the moisture balance. The grain powder must be fine and smooth; any lumps must be sifted out.
- Crack the shells carefully around the waist. Hold the yellow core in one half of the shell and let the white fall into the stirring machine*, then save the core in a small bowl. In case of accidental mixing, it's good practice to have another recipe planned that uses mixed eggs.
- Insert a wire spoon into the stirring machine and set it to high power. Let it churn the egg white for half of a rest.
- At this point the white should be forming mounds of foam. Without stopping the machine, pour in the sweetener and wait another half rest for it to finish mixing.
- By now the foam should hold its shape around the wire spoon. Reduce the machine's power to its lowest. Add in the yellow cores and let them mix in, stopping once or twice to scrape the sides of the stirring bowl.
- When the cores have fully mixed, turn off the machine and remove the bowl. Scrape as much as you can off the wire spoon, but don't fuss about getting every bit of it. Add the grain powder and mix it into the foam by gentle slicing with the baking edge.
- Scrape the mixture onto the leaf plate. Roll two opposite sides around the mixture at angles so the plate forms a cone with an open tip. Fold the upper end of the plate down to cover the wide hole. Squeeze the mixture out of the cone's tip into the baking molds.
- Place the molds in the heated oven and let them bake. How long it takes depends on how deeply you filled the molds, but two full rests is a good start. Toward the end of the time it's worth checking them to see how the crust feels. If it bounces back when pressed, it's ready.
- Remove the molds from the oven and let them cool to a touchable temperature. Cut each cake into pieces about the size of a thumb-and-finger circle. Store them in a covered container to delay moisture loss.
- Serve the finishing cake with a meal. After you are done eating, take a piece with your tongs or fingers (depending which side of the debate you fall on) and wipe up the remains of your dinner with it. Depending on how messy the meal was, it could take two or even three pieces of cake.
Finishing bread, whole and cut.
Item type
Consumable, Food / Drink
Rarity
I haven't met anyone who hasn't eaten finishing cake, though I've heard almost as many recipes as people I've asked.
Raw materials & Components
Required:
- eggs
- dry sweetener
- grain powder
- oil
- flavoring
- starefruit juice
- mashed jewelroot
- more than is possible to list here
Tools
- at least 3 small bowls
- scraping spoon
- baking edge
- steam- or lightning-powered stirring machine
- square sheet of leaf plate
- baking molds
- oven readied to baking heat
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Comments
Author's Notes
Here's the recipe I used:
- 2 large eggs
- 1/2 cup flour, sifted
- 1/4 cup granulated sugar (half the original amount)
It's a sticky batter that doesn't flow, hence the piping instructions. If you have icing bags, great! Otherwise you can do like me and scrape it into a quart- or gallon-sized zippy bag and cut a hole in one corner. Or try Elan's method, but with plastic wrap if you don't have a banana leaf handy.