Jelly day 16

[stardustofdawn]

Who: Xingchen and you!
Where: Kitchen, dining car
When: Jelly 16, on platform day, today
What: Helping assemble a belated birthday party!

[With his vision and sight returned, Xingchen discover a simple joy of learning to cook again. To see food, working with food and utensils in the kitchen, he can feel being more useful. Wearing an apron, the kitchen is starting to smell really good, but he realized he needed help]

Hello? Hi, everyone. You know, I not good at aligning the days with the calendar, but I realized my birthday is actually last week on the 25th. While it was belated, I was exhausted from the last mission. I don't celebrate my birthday for years from where I'm from, considering I lived in poverty, so there wasn't much to eat.

I would like to assemble a lunch and dinner, a birthday party today. I haven't baked a cake yet, but this is where you can help. You can meet me in the kitchen. I'm looking to assemble ice cream as well.

If you like to eat, come a little later today to join me. It's on me and my treat.

Comments

[stardustofdawn]

[Xingchen is in the kitchen, reading a recipe book about how to make different kinds of cake. He looks up and smiles with a wave]

Hello, I'm Xingchen, on team blue. [He's wearing a blue hoodie] Are you here to help out? I am thinking of a chocolate cake. But if we're feeding the whole train, might as well make vanilla too.

[firewalled]

[Rich has a blue hoodie on as well, but that's only because he's stolen it from Otoha. Teams don't really matter all that much to him.]

Chocolate is good! I mean, both are good, really. I'm not going to complain about any cake I happen to get.

[stardustofdawn]

[No matter what color team everyone is on, they're in this together]

All right, you start with chocolate and then vanilla. We just have to mix the ingredients together to make it into a batter and then put it into the oven to bake it.

[There's ingredients from milk, eggs, sugar, a bowl, and a whisk to get started and mix]

I never baked a cake before, so this is my first one and I'm going to bake two to start it off. Hopefully, the cake will come out well.

[firewalled]

It's not too hard to make a simple cake! Do you have flour and baking powder? I think the best practice is starting with your dry ingredients, and then whisking in the wet ingredients.

[Rich has learned quite a bit about cooking, as much as he could to take care of himself over the years. Cakes were a little too fancy for him to make most of the time, but he's read a few recipes.]

[stardustofdawn]

That sound like a good idea. I got instructions from this recipe book. [The book was open and laid out with a picture of the cake]

If you know a thing or two about making a cake, you can help out. We have everything on the counter including flour and baking powder to get us started.

[So he start to get to work, starting slowly with the dry ingredients and moving onto the wet until there's a cake batter in the bowl]

Okay, I got it, so we have to whisk it.

[firewalled]

For sure!

[Rich looks over the recipe himself, at least just for the measurements. He works on a second batch, but looks over when Xiao speaks up.]

Oh, damn. I don't suppose we have a stand mixer, huh? You're gonna need some real muscle to mix that by hand. Lucky you've got me around if you get tuckered out!

[He flexes one of his arms and winks. What a little show off.]

[stardustofdawn]

[It's Xingchen! Xiao is the surname. Xiao simply stared as he flexes his bicpes and just smiles, and remains focus on the task.]

I think we do. Where I'm from, everything is done by hand, so I don't mind over using the mixer machine. I appreciate your help. Once we finished with the batter, we just have to put it in the oven.

[Like so! He pours the batter into the bowls and puts them into the oven to bake, turns the knob to set it at a specific heat]

I think we have to wait for at least half an hour for the cake to be baked.