“I think it’s important to have a good hard failure when you’re young.” ~ Walt Disney
I won’t sugar coat it as I write this shortly before I ship this week’s Cooking Eorzea over to my editor: Whatever could go wrong with this week’s Cooking Eorzea dish did in fact go wrong — despite my best efforts for it to go otherwise. It has been a long, long while since I have had a true failure at making a dish as part of this column, and it reminds me I still have a long way to go to be a truly competent home chef.
While I am surprised (spoiler, I guess?) the overall dish still tasted good, I think that was more luck than anything else. After the dish fell apart at the very end, Walt Disney’s words came to mind. I think failures shape who you are as a person and help you learn to deal with adversity. It would have been very, very easy for me to just chuck it all into the trash or to downplay my failure at making Princess Pudding, but that feels dishonest to myself and to this column. Instead, I am going to try to learn from it.
I definitely got nowhere near the pretty picture in the cookbook, and…that is okay. There is another recipe for me to try out next and there is another opportunity to make something new and see if it turns out better next time. Everything I make is done with Love, Eorzean Style no matter what, after all.
If you’ve missed an installment of Cooking Eorzea, you can check out all the prior recipes here.
Recipe of the Week
This week’s recipe is for Princess Pudding, and it is the 64th recipe in The Official FINAL FANTASY XIV Online Cookbook Volume I. It is a hard-difficulty recipe that comes out of the La Noscea Region of Eorzea, and while I have made cakes before (see the Chocobo Cake!), I am excited to see how this week’s dish turns out. If nothing else, I will have a ton of fresh fruit left over to enjoy throughout the week!
This is what Princess Pudding looks like in the hands of an expert. I definitely do not have the holiday-themed bells on hand, but I think it looks absolutely gorgeous:
Featured Ingredient of the Week
Even though I’ve used this before in a handful of recipes, I’ve never actually looked into what Amaretto is, and I had never heard of it before until I started Cooking Eorzea. Amaretto is an Italian liqueur that comes from Saronno. It has an almond-like, bitter-sweet flavor that comes from apricot kernels, almonds, or peach stones that has an ABV somewhere between 21% and 28%. Personally, I do like how it tastes and I will mix into other drinks if I am having that (admittedly very rare) mixed drink.
It is a very unique ingredient and one that was a natural fit for Featured Ingredient of the Week!
My Cooking Attempt
As always, let’s take a look at all the ingredients that I used for this week!
The first thing I did was make the ganache filling. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that each square of the dark chocolate was a half-ounce in size, and so it made it easy to measure out the appropriate amount needed!
I added together the dark chocolate squares, the salted butter, heavy cream, and a pinch of salt all together inside of a pot on low-medium heat. As the chocolate and butter melted down, I started to blend it all together.
When the chocolate and butter finally was smoothed out and everything was blended together, I transferred it to an airtight container, and I put the ganache filling into the refrigerator to solidify up.
The recipe said I should let it chill for at least an hour…But I think I let it chill far too long because it was frozen SOLID when I pulled it out. I ended up having to let it hang out for a while to completely warm up before I could shape it. I think I let it warm up too much though, because it was absolutely NOT workable into a ball shape when I split the ganache filling up into four equal portions on top of a parchment sheet.
I covered the ganache filling with plastic wrap, and I put it into the freezer. Midway through the 20-ish minute rest period, I got the bright idea to try to shape them into balls at that point and it worked! Mostly. But at least it wasn’t a glob on the parchment paper anymore, and I popped them back into the freezer to finish solidifying up.
While the ganache filing was hardening, I started on the cake portion of this week’s Cooking Eorzea dish. I cleaned out the saucepan, measured out five more ounces of dark chocolate, and then added in one-third cup of unsalted butter. I mixed them both together, watching the butter melt incredibly slowly, until they were both well-blended together. At that point, I pulled the sauce pot off of the heat.
I preheated the oven next to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.
While the oven was preheating, I generously coated the inside of each of the ramekins with more unsalted butter.
I separated two egg yolks from the whites by letting the whites drain through my fingers, and then I added two more cracked eggs in with the yolks into a large bowl. I successfully had no shell incidents this time!
I added in the granulated sugar and the packed brown sugar, and I blended it all together with a whisk until it was all mixed, pale in color, and thickened together.
Once that was ready, I whisked in the cooled chocolate and the amaretto.
It didn’t take long to get it all blended in.
I then folded in the all-purpose flour and the salt while still whisking everything together.
I blended everything together until it was all just combined.
I started to measure out the cake batter into the ramekins, and I filled each of the four of them up halfway.
I shaped the ganache filling into even more of a ball shape next. I was actually quite happy with how those turned out by the end of it.
I then placed each ganache ball into the middle of the ramekins and then trying to cover up the rest of the ramekins with the remaining batter.
It was then that I realized that I had a real problem: there was not enough batter to get the ramekins filled to within a quarter-inch of the top.
I definitely panicked, since I clearly wasn’t going to be making this dish as it was currently. In fact, I really didn’t even have enough batter to make sure all of the ganache balls were properly covered up. I ended up scooping out the ganache balls from two of the ramekins and moving the batter over into two of the other ramekins. The hope was that I would at least have two serviceable Princess Puddings to try out, since this clearly was not going to work as a dish.
I then baked the two ramekins in the oven for 15 minutes to hopefully let the cake bake through completely.
I pulled them out, let them cool for a couple of minutes, and then I used a knife to edge the cakes around to help loosen them up.
I then tipped the ramekins over onto a plate…and half of it fell out while the remaining half stayed inside the ramekin. It looks like the cake did bake through, but the ganache filling leaked through everywhere and split the cake in half. It was an absolute disaster, and the cake itself turned into a complete mess once I scooped it out of the ramekin. I then tried it again on the second one, and it was just as much of a disaster.
I was undeterred, and so I topped it off with whipped cream and fresh blueberries and raspberries.
And here is what the final Princess Pudding looks like for this week’s Cooking Eorzea column!
Even though the Princess Pudding looks like a complete mess (because it was), it tasted delicious. I was very, very surprised that it turned out to be something edible. I was firmly expecting it all to be awful with all the disasters that happened and how nothing seemed to go right with this dish. The ganache filling was thick and oozed everywhere and the cake was actually done. It just looked awful, and I felt awful for how it turned out.
The decoration is an autographed album for FINAL FANTASY VII: Remake that was sold as part of the Tokyo Game Show 2020 online lottery. I thought it was appropriate to include as I had just visited FINAL FANTASY VII’s Seventh Heaven Experience at Boba Bear in Koreatown, Los Angeles. I am still thinking about my experience there, even weeks later, and I wanted to save the Materia cup itself for later on in Cooking Eorzea.
Afterword
If I was to make Princess Pudding again…I don’t know what I would do differently. This was just such a difficult dish for me to make, and I feel like things kept falling apart despite me doing everything correctly. I’d maybe use more ingredients to make more batter? Maybe not let the ganache filling solidify that much in the refrigator? I just don’t know how to fix this dish, and I am frustrated by that.
Let’s move into the ‘thank yous’ for this week. I want to open by thanking Victoria Rosenthal for writing The Ultimate FINAL FANTASY XIV Online Cookbook Volume I and Volume II. I honestly cannot wait to dive into Volume II with this column series. I also want to thank the staff over at Insight Editions for giving me permission to use the photos from their book to show how these recipes are actually supposed to look and always being so helpful. Furthermore, I owe Brandon Rose a special thanks for creating the logo for this series on short notice and for being around as needed. You should check him and his works out over on X.
Finally, I want to thank both Hiromichi Tanaka and Naoki Yoshida for producing FINAL FANTASY XIV Online in both iterations of the game. As I am writing this, today is officially patch day for Patch 7.4: Into the Mist. I cannot believe how this MMORPG is still trucking along as strongly as it is, and I am excited to dive into it as soon as possible once this week’s Cooking Eorzea is all written up!
Next Time
Two more desserts left, and then it is about the drinks for Volume I. Next time is Rolanberry Cheesecake, and the whole thing looks delicious. I love cheesecake and I cannot wait to try my hand at making my own.
I really think that dish will be a lot of fun to make, and I hope you’ll tune back in for it!
How do you handle failure- in the kitchen or otherwise?
Have you visited Seventh Heaven in Koreatown, Los Angeles yet?
Let us know in the comments below!
