Chapter 257: Sponge Cakes
“Of course!” Jian Xingxia said with a bright smile.
Knowing that three little ones were coming, Auntie Pang had started preparing the sponge cakes the moment she finished cooking breakfast.
She was currently living like a fish in water at the manor. Eggs, milk, sugar, flour… things she used to be reluctant to use back home could be used here as much as she wanted.
Not only did the Manor Owner never criticize her for being wasteful, but she had even found a master chef for her to learn new dishes from and thoroughly enjoyed tasting her culinary experiments.
Right after she finished coaxing Xu Sanniu, Jian Xingxia had headed straight to the kitchen to fill her in.
“A little wolf pup just arrived, and her stomach is probably in bad shape. Auntie Pang, make some small snacks that kids love and are easy to digest so she can ease into things slowly.”
Feeding her heavy dishes with lots of fish and meat right off the bat would definitely cause problems.
Hearing this, Auntie Pang went into action immediately. “I just learned how to make sponge cakes from that master chef the other day, and it just so happens I cleared out the hearth over the last two days. I’ll give it a try right now.”
Auntie Pang spent a significant amount of time in the kitchen. Aside from preparing the daily meals, she dedicated the rest of her time to messing around with new recipes.
She had read plenty of baking recipes, but since the manor didn’t have an oven, she cleared out the hearth herself. This way, after she finished burning the firewood in the morning, she could use the residual heat to bake things against the bricks deep inside the hearth.
Her equipment was incredibly makeshift; even the molds for the sponge cakes were a hodgepodge of random items she had gathered—bowls, cups, lunch boxes, she used whatever was on hand.
Yet the results were remarkably good. Sponge cakes didn’t require much time, and within a short while, they were fresh out of the hearth.
One by one, the golden, fluffy, plump sponge cakes grew out of the cups, bowls, and lunch boxes. A single poke made them jiggle delightfully.
Jian Xingxia was utterly astounded—you can actually make cakes using a traditional earthen stove? Then what on earth had she been doing eating sweet potatoes, eggs, and corn every single day before this?
Auntie Pang picked out the absolute best one for Jian Xingxia to taste. “Try it and see if it tastes like proper cake.”
Ever since a tourist mentioned “pizza” last time, Auntie Pang had been turning these things over in her mind.
To have someone praise another’s food right in front of a chef was simply intolerable.
Jian Xingxia took a bite. Although it carried a slightly smoky flavor from the wood-fired stove due to the poor tools and was a tiny bit burnt, it didn’t detract from the overall quality; she was still thoroughly surprised by the fragrant, sweet sponge cake flavor.
Auntie Pang looked over the batch and picked out a few that had been baked near the back of the pot. “I’ll take these back with me in a bit.”
The rest she handed over to Jian Xingxia. “Take them. Madame Lin’s two little brats should be arriving soon anyway. Since you all love eating this, take it all.”
Chewing on the sponge cake, Jian Xingxia hurriedly said to Auntie Pang, “Auntie Pang, just wait a couple of days. Once the academy matters are sorted out, I will absolutely upgrade your equipment!”
With that, cradling the basin of sponge cakes, she marched off toward the academy.
People truly were changeable creatures. Initially, her only desire had been to possess a tiny farmstead, to be self-sufficient and earn a bit of pocket change.
She hadn’t expected that more and more people would join, the manor would keep expanding, and now even a work-study academy had appeared, making her want to upgrade Auntie Pang’s equipment too.
With Auntie Pang’s culinary skill and her passionate drive to experiment with recipes, keeping her in the old house’s broken kitchen was truly a waste of her immense talent.
Jian Xingxia led the three children back to the pavilion and handed each of them a sponge cake.
Xing Ya cradled the sponge cake—which was larger than a steamed bun—and took a deep sniff, utterly amazed. “It smells so good!”
Although Taoya had visited the manor a few times, she hadn’t eaten sponge cake either. At this moment, she couldn’t resist reaching out to poke it.
Xu Sanniu clutched the sponge cake, completely at a loss for what to do.
She had never seen anything that smelled this delicious before—fresh, piping hot, and bursting with a sweet egg aroma.
It was only when Xing Ya took a bite, her almond eyes widening into perfect circles, that she squealed, “It’s so fragrant, sweet, and delicious!”
Then she turned to Taoya and her, saying, “You two should hurry up and taste it! This is the most delicious thing I’ve ever eaten in my life—it tastes even better than meat!”
Xu Sanniu didn’t believe it.
Could anything in this world truly taste better than meat?
It wasn’t that she had never tasted meat before. In the past, whenever someone in the village hosted a banquet, she would seize the opportunity to slip inside and steal a piece or two.
Or if someone’s chopsticks slipped and a piece fell to the ground, she would rapidly snatch it away.
Nothing is more delicious than meat, Xu Sanniu thought to herself.
Carrying her skepticism, she took a bite. In the next split second, her eyes widened even further than Xing Ya’s!
This… this was simply too delicious!
What on earth was this? It was more fragrant than meat, sweeter than a steamed bun, and melted the moment it entered her mouth. Taking bite after bite, she finished the bowl-sized sponge cake in an instant.
Xu Sanniu: !
Delicious!
It just didn’t last very long.
Jian Xingxia looked at the three little ones with a warm smile. Sponge cakes perfectly targeted a child’s palate; no kid could possibly resist them.
However, considering Sanniu’s physical condition, Jian Xingxia didn’t let them eat too much at once.
“Class is about to start. Focus on your studies. In a bit, I will ask Madame Lin; whoever learns the fastest and performs the best today will get an extra piece of sponge cake.”
The three children instantly sat up straight.
Jian Xingxia adjusted the academy’s boundary coverage on her virtual panel, which also allowed her to configure individual access permissions for the students.
Currently, Jian Xingxia had only granted permissions to Taoya, allowing her to freely enter and exit the academy to go to other areas of the manor.
She withheld permissions from the others for the time being, restricting the boundary of the “Manor Academy” on the virtual panel to the area extending from behind the thick wild grass down to the foot of the mountain.
After all, so many newcomers had arrived for the first time. Aside from the three little ones, three of the older ones were also new.
To say nothing of the six apprentices over on the bamboo weaving side, two of whom were male; she needed to handle the integration of all parties more prudently to ensure safety.
Fortunately, everyone was highly compliant with the arrangements, appearing perfectly accustomed to restrictions like “there are certain places they cannot go.”
When Jian Xingxia and Lin Sanniang instructed them that they could only move within the academy and the wild field at the foot of the back mountain, not a single person voiced any objection.
While this saved Jian Xingxia a lot of worry, it also made her feel a bit bad.
Yet looking at Xing Ya and Xu Sanniu—one filled with novelty and excitement, the other guarded and alert—both were driven mostly by curiosity and didn’t feel slighted at all.
It appeared that every era and dynasty possessed a different understanding of “freedom” and “restrictions.”
When Jian Xingxia thought about how even she, living in the modern world, was subject to numerous restrictions and rules, she didn’t feel as bad anymore.
After all, there was no such thing as boundaryless freedom; what existed was a vast world discovered through everyone collectively adhering to rules.
Qin Hua and Fan Shishi arrived together.
Earlier this morning, while the two of them were washing clothes in the eastern courtyard of Shaoyin’s house, Qin Hua had felt that something was slightly off.
She wasn’t sure if the sun was too intense or if she had been bending over to wash clothes for too long, but her vision felt a bit blurry.
“Shishi, why do I feel like there’s a reflection in this water?”
Fan Shishi was currently striking the clothes with a wooden baton, sending water splashing everywhere. They had divided the labor—Fan Shishi did the striking while Qin Hua did the rinsing. The water in her basin wasn’t as clear as Qin Hua’s, so she hadn’t noticed anything unusual.
However, she was used to this. Qin Hua’s birth name wasn’t actually Qin Hua; the children of the Dayong Dynasty didn’t have formal names when they were small, usually just called by their birth order like Dalang, Erlang, Daniang, Erniang, or simply Brother and Sister.
Only when they reached adulthood would they take a formal name.
Qin Hua had been given the name Qin Hua precisely because of her exceptional talent in painting, and Fan Shishi was much the same.
Fan Shishi had long grown accustomed to Qin Hua’s eyes being different. Even with identical objects, she could always discern something extraordinary.
Thus, she smiled and said, “Has your urge to paint flared up again?”
Thumping the clothes, Fan Shishi continued, “Shaoyin said that the garments we are making over these two days were all ordered by that Manor Owner, and we will be given wages. Let’s save up first to pay off Yinyin’s rent, and after saving for another stretch, we’ll buy some paper, brushes, and ink so you can satisfy your urge to paint.”
Qin Hua felt that Fan Shishi’s words made sense. She had probably been washing clothes for too long and her head was spinning; after all, remaining bent over to wash clothes was far from a comfortable posture.
Even so, she declined Fan Shishi’s proposal. “Forget about the brushes and ink. Painting can’t put food on the table anyway. In the past, when the patrons at the tavern flattered me, a single painting could fetch a few cups of spiced wine… Yesterday when I went out to the streets to check, the calligraphy and painting shops didn’t think much of our work.”
Fan Shishi fell silent.
Over the past few days, while clearing out the courtyard that had been left in a mess by the previous tenants at Shaoyin’s house, they had been stitching garments while also finding time to go out and see if there was any other way to make a living.
Tragically, their mastery of the zither, Go, calligraphy, painting, poetry, wine, and tea… was merely an allure manufactured by Feiyue Pavilion. It could entertain, but it was useless for earning a livelihood.
The two buried their heads back into washing the clothes, and the atmosphere grew somewhat heavy for a moment.
But the more Qin Hua looked, the more she felt the water in the basin was wrong. She abruptly stood up, pulling Fan Shishi over. “No, my eyes really aren’t playing tricks on me. Come and take a look—there is an image in this water!”
