Shameful confession of the day: I know a number of people who are very into Final Fantasy XIV. No, that’s not the shameful confession; I haven’t tried the game yet (but might someday), but those who love it love it a lot and let no man cast shade upon them for so doing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Apparently, there was recently a cookbook published featurin<\/a>g<\/a> a bunch of various in-game foods<\/a>. Neat idea, right? Sure. No problem with that either. <\/p>\n\n\n\n However, I overheard some discussion of a recipe for almond-cream croissants. I was quietly a bit impressed; croissants can be a Worthy Challenger for many home bakers, and I haven’t tried them yet myself. I wondered if the recipe might be interesting to take a stab at.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And then someone actually posted it, and the first ingredient was “6 croissants.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n …Really? <\/p>\n\n\n\n As someone who is sitting here planning to spend part of her evening making pastry cream in preparation for a later project involving choux: really<\/em>?<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, yeah. The shameful thing is I am being a food snob about something from a cookbook based on a video game, what is wrong <\/em>with me? <\/p>\n\n\n\n …I don’t know. There are plenty of shortcuts in cooking, and I do not usually judge people for taking them. But this is not a recipe for croissants, it’s a recipe for croissant filling<\/em>. And the notion of someone putting in that labor and looking for uncommon ingredients like birch syrup only to sandwich it into one of those industrial grocery-store croissants is…just depressing really. A quality croissant from the bakery\/patisserie down on the corner or something, sure, that’s probably going to be decent, but there are plenty of places I have lived where one of those “well, it’s not UNcroissantlike” options would be all there was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Shouldn’t the authors at least have provided the instructions <\/em>to make your own if you wanted to? Then the crazy folk like me who might actually want to give such a thing a shot could do it, and the people who look at that kind of thing and go “I cannot even, no thank you” could go in search of an acceptable-to-them alternative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n An offense to aesthetics and to the ambition of the audience, then, I suppose; perhaps that’s why it seems extra-irritating. I mean. Why assume the people who are interested in buying a cookbook in the first place wouldn’t want to at least consider <\/em>making the thing?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Shameful confession of the day: I know a number of people who are very into Final Fantasy XIV. No, that’s not the shameful confession; I haven’t tried the game yet (but might someday), but those who love it love it a lot and let no man cast shade upon them for so doing. Apparently, there … <\/p>\n