Fields of gold

Chapter 346- 350

A thick envelope was soon delivered into Yu Hai's hands in Dongshan Village. The Yu Family always completely supported his daughter's plans. Before long, the piggery was quickly built up. Yu Hai took some strong fellows from the village and together they worked to build a tall stone wall around the piggery. The stalls of the piggery were simple. They were constructed with lower stone walls and on top was a wooden roof to shield the stalls from rain and snow. There were a total of forty-some small stalls constructed in the end. At the perimeter wall, they also constructed a simple two room dwelling for the people looking after the pigs that was built completely of stone. Inside was also a kang bed and everything was constructed very sturdily.

Yu Xiaocao longed to go back home but she still couldn't leave the capital because her younger brother's first birthday celebration was around the corner. Her godfather and godmother both treated her like their true daughter. When she was in the Imperial Palace for those few days, her godmother was so worried that she didn't sleep well and ended up with canker sores in her mouth. She also became markedly thinner. Yu Xiaocao had previously missed Little Linlin's hundred day celebration. If she missed his first birthday as well, it wouldn't be good.

Before long, it was the day of Fang Haolin's birthday celebration. Because Fang Zizhen had been well regarded by the emperor this year, other than his close friends and family, there were a lot of other colleagues who came by to participate without an invitation.

Zhu Junyang had come over early in the morning and he was currently in the kitchen being used as hard labor by Yu Xiaocao. He, Head Steward Liu, and two bodyguards were all assigned a large basin of cream for them to beat!

That's right, Yu Xiaocao was planning on giving an enormous three-layer cake to Little Linlin as his birthday present. How could she make a birthday cake without whipped cream frosting? If she was able to buy whipped cream frosting in the Great Ming Dynasty, that would have been the best. However, since none was available to buy, she could make it herself ah!

When she was in the imperial kitchen, Yu Xiaocao discovered they had cow's milk there. It was rumored that the emperor had brought over dairy cows from foreign countries to the country when he hadn't taken the throne yet. These cows were all raised in the capital's farmstead and provided the imperial kitchen with different types of dairy products.

Yu Xiaocao had asked the empress to give her a lot of cow's milk from the imperial kitchen. Making whipped cream required a lot of milk. Furthermore, she also needed eggs, vegetable oil and white sugar. Other than the milk, the rest was easy to obtain.

In order to make whipped cream frosting, the person making it needed to whip it constantly at a high speed. Yu Xiaocao originally planned on asking her godfather for a few bodyguards to help her. However, who would have thought that Zhu Junyang would voluntarily come to the door and act as free labor. It'd be a waste not to use him.

Yu Xiaocao took out a few large and sturdy basins and first placed some egg whites in them. She had Zhu Junyang and the others continuously whip the egg whites in one direction. The four of them all were skilled martial artists who had beaten many experts in the capitals. They all stone-facedly used the bamboo tools in their hands to whip the egg whites.

Once the egg whites were foamy, Yu Xiaocao told them all to stop. She added a bit of milk, oil, and sugar and then had them continue. Zhu Junyang leveled an angry glare at her. If he wasn't looking forward to trying her new food creation, he would have long thrown a tantrum and stopped working. Anyone who was willing to give him orders willy nilly truly had guts! Zhu Junyang vented all of his pent up anger into whipping the egg white mixture.

When Yu Xiaocao saw him working 'so hard', she heavily praised him and instructed the other people to follow his lead in order to work hard to reap rewards. Head Steward Liu had a face full of suffering as he thought, 'My little ancestor ah, please stop adding fuel to the fire. Can't you see that his royal highness has an expression so dark it's dripping ink ah? When the master loses his temper, it's more scary than natural disasters and fierce beasts ah!'