The Cheat Emperor of the Culinary World

Looking at the messy kitchen counter, and the piling orders.

Fu Yu could increasingly understand why Pang Bowen would think of asking him for help at such a critical moment.

The current situation is not something that can be solved just by bringing in anyone who can make desserts.

Xue Yuli and Zou Anna are jointly baking on the cake side.

If Fu Yu can just manage to support the dessert section, Pang Bowen would at least have some relief from the urgent problem.

With the previous baking experience, Fu Yu was relatively familiar with the dessert shop here.

After taking the orders and going through them carefully, Fu Yu couldn’t help but sigh inwardly, realizing that becoming a qualified dessert chef is not easy at all!

So many types of desserts need to be made.

Just the immediate needs for baking include egg tarts, cake boxes, macarons, donuts, croissants, caramel pudding...

Fortunately, through repeated drilling and learning in the teaching practice class, these were still very simple for Fu Yu.

The baking operation wasn’t difficult; the trouble lay only in the large demand and heavy workload.

Fu Yu asked Pang Bowen to help sort all the dessert orders according to the pickup times customers had reserved.

Then he arranged the steps of the baking operations according to the dessert types.

He utilized all the time differences to the utmost.

Preheat the butter, add water, salt, sugar, and mix with a whisk...

On a baking tray lined with baking paper, place the pressed dough flowers one by one at intervals.....

Bake...

Sift on icing sugar...

During the baking time, knead the dough, mix cheese filling...

Filter the pudding egg mixture into the molds...

Use a blowtorch to caramelize the surface...

The oven brought out tray after tray of steaming egg tarts, smelling sweet and rich, not needing a taste, just looking you could tell they must be soft and delicious.

Each baked cake base was cut to box size after cooling.

One layer of chiffon cake, one layer of cream, one layer of mango/strawberry/durian, and then another layer of cake.

Stack it as it is until the box is full, covered with a thick layer of fruit dice on top.

The box cake’s shape was not difficult; after Fu Yu made a sample, he handed it over to Pang Bowen for processing.

Rich in taste and color, the vibrant macarons.

The soft, sweet, and cute-looking donuts.

The crispy and tasty croissant bread filled with a milky aroma.

Sweet as honey, the smooth and delicate caramel pudding.

...

The busier the times, the faster it always seems to pass.

Fu Yu had been busy from arriving at the shop at three in the afternoon until six in the evening before he finally could straighten his back, breathe a sigh of relief and take a break.

Pang Bowen was sweating profusely, looking over at the front hall service staff who were busy yet orderly serving customers while speeding up his packaging efforts, striving to deliver in the fastest possible time.

Seeing that the backlog of orders was completed one by one, Pang Bowen’s long-tensed mood finally eased.

While packaging the finished cakes, he joked with Fu Yu: ”Xiaofu, you’ve worked hard. Once we’re done with this batch, let’s take a break as well. We haven’t even had a chance to eat dinner yet. I’ll order some food right away, what do you usually like to eat?”

Without waiting for Fu Yu to respond, he continued, ”To be on the safe side, let’s not go for stir-fry; there’s a place on this street that makes particularly authentic dry pot. Xiaofu, if you can handle spice, maybe try that place.”

Fu Yu didn’t mind; he was fine with anything to eat, though he wasn’t actually hungry now.

He had eaten before coming in the afternoon and had tasted almost every dessert he baked earlier.

On one hand, it was to try the taste of the desserts; on the other hand, the aroma was quite tempting.

It was important to realize that these desserts, small as they seemed, sold at really high prices.

To someone who usually thought a bingguao pancake was an improved diet, this was considered a rather luxurious snack.

Fu Yu nodded, ”Sure, let’s have dry pot, I can handle spicy.”

Having gotten Fu Yu’s opinion, Boss Pang asked the other two, and once the cakes were packaged, he took out his phone to order food.

Baked goods from the finished baking section were sent to the front desk one by one.

The pace in the back kitchen gradually slowed down.

Just then, a service staff came over from the front, calling for someone: ”Boss!”

Pang Bowen greeted them with a smile, saying to Fu Yu, ”It must be the delivery that arrived, their place is nearby, just...”

The service staff had already stepped into the baking area.

”There’s a customer saying the milk dates we made taste wrong, and they want a refund.”

The smile on Pang Bowen’s face froze as he frowned and looked over, ”The milk dates taste wrong? What’s going on?”

The service staff said: ”This person bought a can of milk dates in the afternoon, but now they’re back, insisting on a refund. But the milk dates are already opened and eaten, so we can’t refund them!”

Pang Bowen hurriedly put down what he was holding and walked out quickly, saying as he went, ”Let’s go, I’ll have a look. But the milk dates made in our shop, in terms of ingredients and freshness, are top notch, how could they taste wrong?”

Fu Yu was still busy piping cream puffs with a piping bag, and from afar, he heard the service staff say, ”The customer said, the kind of dessert she had didn’t have date skins...”

...

Pang Bowen followed the service staff to the front hall.

There he saw a middle-aged woman around her forties standing at the cashier, arguing with the cashier.

Beside the middle-aged woman, an elderly man with graying hair was calmly persuading her.

The cashier was a young girl, with delicate features, speaking softly and gently.

However, at this moment, being rebuked by the middle-aged woman, her eyes were turning slightly red as though on the verge of tears, but she still insisted on reasoning with the other side.

”Your dessert has already been opened, we really cannot refund you. Besides, the milk dates in our shop are made fresh every morning, never kept from the previous day. We use fresh large dates, and the milk powder is from a major brand, so both the taste and quality are guaranteed, you...”

The middle-aged woman wasn’t loud, but insisted justly, ”The stuff from your shop just doesn’t taste right, what I want doesn’t taste like this at all! This type of shoddy stuff is sold so expensively, why don’t you just rob people?”

The cashier felt quite wronged and wanted to retaliate further but was stopped by the rushing-in boss.

Pang Bowen walked up to the middle-aged woman full of smiles, apologizing and speaking gently: ”I am the owner of this shop; whatever the case may be, I must apologize to you! I am truly sorry that you had an unsatisfactory shopping experience.”

”May I ask, what made you decide to return the product?”

The middle-aged woman’s anger subsided significantly when facing the friendly and polite dessert shop owner.

It’s often said that one doesn’t hit a smiling person. Facing someone with such a good attitude, it indeed became a bit hard to remain angry.

The middle-aged woman controlled her temper and complained: ”The desserts made here don’t taste right, this is not how the milk dates should be. When buying, I specifically asked if these were the ones popular online, your staff said yes, and that’s why I bought them. But after tasting them, they’re completely different!”