Hello and welcome to the first of my "cooking Sims 4 food because I fed it to my Sims so much I started craving it" series! Today's recipe is Pan De Muerto, arguably the food that makes up most of my Sims' diet.
(Spoiler; the cover image of this post is from Disney because of how pretty it is but, fear not, I will be placing images of my own later in this post. If you want to see the page I got it from click here, although its not the recipe I used.)
Why did I chose Pan De Muerto as my first recipe seems like a good question to start on, doing a quick Dr. Doofenshmirtz childhood backstory; I was around the age of nine years old in computer class stuck on the educational program installed on the laptop. I traveled to the part of the program that had snippets of educational videos and the moment I saw the word "dead" I was intrigued. The full title was "Day of the Dead" and I don't think I'd ever been more excited about something on that educational program.
My jaw dropped to the floor as if it was a loose jaw falling from a skeleton (I already know that joke did not land but I'll leave it there anyways). The beautiful colors mixed with the wonderful looking decorations, outfits and food all in honor of those who have passed... it was wonderful, amazing, breathtaking. I loved it and to this day that love has not faded.
So when I googled "What is Pan De Muerto?" after feeding it to my Sims daily because of it looking and sounding cool in-game, I learn of its connections to Day of the Dead and knew what to do!
I picked the recipe for which I could most easily get a hold of the ingredients- a wonderful recipe from the website "allrecipes", which if you would like to read click here.
I got all of the ingredients and set to work. The orange zest has to be the biggest pain I have ever endured in all my time of baking. It took way too long with my fussy grater and thick skinned oranges. I also used way too much flower and got into a bit of trouble with my family that had plans of using the flour I wasted for some muffins- nevertheless I felt like a contestant on Masterchef the way I made the glaze and boiled the margarine and milk. The long-winded shaping of the bones from my super elastic dough also got on my nerves and took a lot more time than I thought but overall it went well.
As someone who has never made bread before, leaving my two rolls of dough in a warm place and watching it gradually grow seriously blew my mind like, wow, food is cool.
I did have my worries of my bread going to waste because my family is not that outgoing so the sound of "orange flavored bread" really sounded unlikely to be a fan favorite.
I reluctantly tasted a bit of the dough (before putting eggs, safety first!) and OH MY WORD it was delicious! Like mind blowingly! Maybe its because I'm hungry and dieting (by reducing my calories) that made it taste like ambrosia, but I loved it.
Once risen and shaped I placed it inside of the oven;
Cool, isn't it? I sent a bunch of angles of it to my best friend, perhaps one too many angles of my bread.
It took 35 minutes of baking before I zipped it out of the oven- using the last few minutes of the 35 minutes to make the glaze. I was skeptical of boiling orange juice, sugar and some of my hard earned orange zest but it was a hit!
Here's a picture of the finished goods!
My second one lost its head, but that's okay. I tried by best and the first one looks pretty darn good! (Even if it’s exponential growth made it look a bit like a chubby dinosaur.)
Now for the GRAND FINALE! What was my family's verdict of my Pan De Muerto?
Mom; loved it and had a few more slices and had it for breakfast the next morning, too.
Ouma: took the tiniest of bites, gave a facial expression of disgust and handed it back to me.
Dad: I don't know. I walked away and it dissapeared before I returned but he said he liked it.
Sister: Ate a big slice, a bunch of the topping decorations and happily ate my Ouma's regarded slice.
Me: I loved it. Shamefully even had it as a midnight snack after already having a two slices right after it was baked and then for breakfast the next morning too.
My Ouma doesn't trust my baking because there was a time everything I made was a failure and potentially dangerous to consume and she isn't a fan of trying new things. My dad is still a mystery.
I may have had Pan De Muerto for the first time but I'm sure I did a good job or, even if I didn't, I'm proud of what I did and I know it was indeed tasty, at least to some people, and that's a win.
So thank you for sticking around for my story and fun baking outside of my comfort zone. I hope you enjoyed your stay, the story and that you get to taste the wonderful food that is Pan De Muerto for yourself!
Lots of hugs,
Kerry-Ann
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