Go back to the past to plant trees

After Zhao Jinquan learned how to make cola, he wanted to make cola every day. Unfortunately, it required a lot of ingredients and a large amount of sugar. In this era of scarcity, sugar was a strategic resource and required ration coupons. Feng Cheng's monthly ration was only one pound of sugar. It sounds like a lot, but this is not the future where everything can provide sugar. Now, apart from white sugar, there is nothing else that can provide sugar.

So even though Zhao Jinquan really wanted to make cola, he didn't have the materials to get it for him.

Feng Cheng actually really wanted to drink it too. After all, in this era of bland food, a bowl of sweet soup was really tempting.

But Feng Cheng had no way to get sugar. He could make maltose, but rice wasn't produced here. He had the ability to make glutinous rice, which would allow him to get some white sugar.

Feng Cheng remembered that sweet potatoes could also be boiled into sugar. He had never seen anyone else do it, but he had heard his mother say that they used to make it when they were poor. The method of making it was the same as making maltose with glutinous rice.

However, food is scarce right now. Feng Cheng has money, but it's still difficult for him to buy a large quantity of sweet potatoes. Rural families are reluctant to eat meat like chicken and duck, so they can sell it to him. But when it comes to staple foods like sweet potatoes and potatoes, rural families basically don't have any surplus. Feng Cheng can't just spend money to buy all the villagers' grain, because no one can predict what might happen later.

If it's for eating to fill your stomach, then there's nothing wrong with it. But if it's used to make maltose, purely for one's own cravings, then it's a bit unnecessary.

Moreover, the camp also grows two or three rows of sweet potato starch. If you want to make it, you can wait until the camp's sweet potatoes are harvested, which will only take one or two months. Feng Cheng can afford to wait that long.

Feng Cheng didn't tell Zhao Jinquan about this, so Zhao Jinquan could only worry anxiously, thinking about the taste of cola every day.

He couldn't make cola, but Feng Cheng had something else to make: cakes.

Zhao Jinquan enjoyed the bread he made a few times recently. Feng Cheng had originally planned to make a cake, but there were only two eggs left in the camp, not enough to make bread.

Zhao Jinquan brought back more than a dozen eggs on his trip, which gave Feng Cheng the ingredients to try making a cake.

When Zhao Jinquan heard Feng Cheng say he was going to make a cake, he got excited. He realized that Feng Cheng was like a walking treasure chest, able to do everything, even if he wasn't an expert, he at least knew what he was doing.

Feng Cheng tried making a cake in the kitchen, teaching Zhao Jinquan as he went. From now on, Zhao Jinquan would be doing this kind of hard work, and Feng Cheng was determined to teach him how to do it.

Seeing Feng Cheng crack seven eggs in one go, Zhao Jinquan gasped. This cake uses way too many eggs! He had planned to eat these dozen or so eggs for a month, two for each of them, every four or five days. Now, seven were used at once. If he made it again, all of these dozen or so eggs would be gone!

Zhao Jinquan was heartbroken, but Feng Cheng ignored his expression. After separating the egg whites and yolks, he took out the flour. The flour wasn't low-gluten flour, and there was no milk, so Feng Cheng wasn't sure if he could make a cake.

But since I'm idle anyway, I might as well give it a try. If it doesn't work this time, I can learn from the experience and try again next time. Or I can try to get some milk. For example, I can go to the dairy shop next time I go down to the dam to see if they sell it. This place is close to Inner Mongolia, and there are plenty of cattle and sheep, so it should be easy to get some milk. If that doesn't work, I can wait until the livestock in Shaquan Brigade give birth and then get some milk from them. That would also work.

Beating egg whites is a physically demanding task, and Feng Cheng didn't want to do it himself, so he asked Zhao Jinquan to do it.

Zhao Jinquan worked on it for about twenty minutes, and Feng Cheng glanced at it and thought it was barely acceptable, so he mixed it together with the flour he had already prepared.

"Brother Feng, do you always have to whisk the egg whites like this?"

Zhao Jinquan rubbed his slightly sore arm and asked, somewhat puzzled.

Feng Cheng nodded: "Yes, it has to be stirred to this extent, otherwise the cake won't look pretty after baking."

After mixing the last bit of egg whites and flour together, Feng Cheng put the cake into a clean aluminum pan. "It's done. Turn on the stove."

Upon hearing this, Zhao Jinquan immediately got up and lit a fire.

Feng Cheng sat to the side watching him work. Having baked bread a few times, Zhao Jinquan knew exactly how hot it needed to be to put the cake in.

Without a thermometer, the temperature couldn't be seen, so Zhao Jinquan had to estimate it himself.

A few minutes later, the oven was hot enough, so Zhao Jinquan put the cake in and kept it burning for another ten minutes or so. He even took it out to check on it, but when he found it wasn't done, he put it back in.

"Brother Feng, is this alright?"

Zhao Jinquan pulled out the cake, looked at it, and felt it was almost done, so he turned around and asked Feng Cheng.

Feng Cheng leaned over to take a look: "It should be fine. Try it first, and we'll see if it works."

Upon hearing this, Zhao Jinquan, disregarding the heat, immediately took the aluminum basin to the table.

"Should we eat this while it's hot?"

Zhao Jinquan looked at the cake made with seven eggs and unconsciously licked his lips.

This cake looks pretty good; it's golden brown on the outside, very fluffy, steamed well, and has a small crack in the middle.

"Wait a minute!"

Feng Cheng wanted to see if the cake would collapse after it cooled down, so he could learn from the experience and improve it next time.

After a while, the heat on the cake slowly dissipated, and the cake collapsed at a speed visible to the naked eye.

"Brother Feng, what's going on?"

As Zhao Jinquan watched the cake in front of him shrink in size and become less appealing, he couldn't help but look at Feng Cheng.

Feng Cheng sighed, "What else could it be? We didn't do a good job!"

Feng Cheng didn't know if it was because of the flour, the lack of milk, or some other problem. This was his first time making a cake, so he didn't know how. But it was obvious that his first attempt at making a cake was a failure.

"Eat it, try it and see what it tastes like."

As Feng Cheng spoke, he reached out and tore off a piece, not caring that it was hot. The cake didn't look very appealing, but hopefully it would taste good!

Seeing Feng Cheng make his move, Zhao Jinquan was quick to act as well, tearing off a large piece as well.

"good to eat."

While Feng Cheng was still savoring the differences between this cake and the ones he had eaten in his previous life, Zhao Jinquan had already given him a satisfactory response.

"It's much softer than the bread I made; it melts in your mouth without you even having to chew it."

Feng Cheng smiled. Zhao Jinquan had never eaten cakes from outside, so of course he thought this one was delicious. Feng Cheng had eaten it, so he knew that this cake was actually quite ordinary. It didn't contain milk, so it didn't have a milky aroma. The flour was also ordinary flour, even inferior to ordinary flour from later generations. Therefore, the cake was somewhat rough after steaming. If Feng Cheng hadn't eaten something better, he wouldn't have been able to taste this roughness.

In short, this cake was a complete failure no matter how you looked at it. In later generations, such a cake would only be fed to dogs; no one would have any interest in eating it.

However, in this day and age, no one is so extravagant as to say they would feed a cake made from seven or eight eggs to the dogs.