Stardew Valley Cookbook Achievement Pictures
- Thread starter KailaKai
- Start date
Umbra of Emberspike
Farmer
To celebrate a local Halloween Festival, my mom and I decided to make a couple new batches of Evelyn's Cookies. Recap: these are "hybrid oatmeal/chocolate chip cookies" which makes them heartier and more filling than usual chocolate chip cookies. Because of the number of people in attendance, we made the cookies a little smaller this time and made twice as much dough. We had to run 7-8 trays of cookies in the end
And my mom also had a separate recipe of lemon zest sugar cookies to go with them.
Image 1: fresh batches out of the oven
Image 2: cooled off batches ready for bagging and eating
Image 3: an experimental batch which I will soon describe
We were on a tight schedule, so my mom thought it would be a good idea to cook them right after forming the dough balls, but I talked her into testing with 1 tray to see how different it was. And the difference isn't so much in the taste as the texture. When forming cookie dough balls, they have to cool in the fridge for at least 1 hour so the flour is fully absorbed and moist. The experimental batch was considerably more dry as a result. So we made extra time for the others.
Overall, they turned out great, and making the cookies smaller made them last a lot longer than I expected, even accounting for the oats. Happy Halloween!
EliteDangerGamer
Farmer
I want cookies 
FilthyGorilla
Local Legend
Ooh those look really good, I'll make sure to cool mine in the fridge too, I didn't realize it makes such a big difference for the texture
Umbra of Emberspike
Farmer
Decided to take a new crack at this recipe with my mom helping this time. Recap: the filling is a mix of preserves and fresh blackberries and the dough is topped with turbinado sugar
On one hand, since it was just one recipe today, time wasn't an issue. On the other hand, we didn't have any 2-quart-sized pans at my mom's unlike at my dad's, so it's a little shallow this time.
Also ran into a small mishap early on. I forgot to say so last year, but the dough needs grated frozen butter, so it can be dangerous if you're not wholly focused. My grandmother was on the TV since her old one's network adapter conked out, so I was distracted.
As a result, I lost a small chunk of my pinkie finger and had to take some time to get it treated. But luckily, there was no contamination in the mix.
In the end, the recipe turned out great, though I may consider budgeting for a properly-sized pan next time. The cobbler pairs great with either vanilla ice cream or whipped cream, but needs some time to cool off after coming out of the oven, or it's tongue burn central. A lesson Abby always learns the hard way.
Umbra of Emberspike
Farmer
For this year's Thanksgiving, I revisited the Stardew Valley recipes for Stuffing and Pumpkin Pie.
The cooking and prep were pretty chaotic, so I got distracted at a few steps that fortunately didn't impact the final results too badly. Both dishes turned out great.
Other dishes we had were a green bean casserole with a nice crunchy crumble on top, yam casserole topped with marshmallows, turkey, gravy mashed potatoes, cranberry dressing, bread rolls, and an experimental mashed parsnip recipe.
I will say the mashed parsnips were the only thing that didn't meet our expectations. Either the recipe wasn't executed properly or it needed more butter or salt. Maybe next time, I'll stick with the roasted parsnips that I had for the Farmer's Lunch or on a salad. Still, it was fun to try.
Umbra of Emberspike
Farmer
I forgot to mention: the order I placed for the blanched hazelnuts for the recipes was cutting it so close that I did something totally experimental: blanching some more easily accessible hazelnuts myself. The process requires boiling water and baking soda. It's a little time consuming and tedious, plus, the hazelnuts need to dry out a bit, but the flavor of those hazelnuts was actually a big improvement over the ones I ordered, which were saltier. hazelnuts should be more on the earthy side.
Contented-Slime
Planter
I made the eggplant parm recently, though I don't have any photos. It was AMAZING. I am absolutely obsessed.
Umbra of Emberspike
Farmer
The Eggplant Parmesean is one of my all-time favorites. I've always loved Italian food and this was a great one to try.
Umbra of Emberspike
Farmer
Felt like revisiting the Cranberry Candy since we had some leftover cranberries and they keep for a fairly longer time than most other fruits I'm used to.
Recap of ingredients: fresh cranberries simmered and burst in a pot, mixed with some brown sugar and vanilla extract, strained to make a syrup with some leftover jammy pulp from the bottom of the strainer. (You can either toss the leftover skins and seeds or eat them; they taste delicious but they don't go in the mix) Then the syrup is mixed with some sparkling apple-cranberry cider and garnished with more fresh cranberries.
Still tastes as great as I remember and really easy to make. But it packs a strong enough sugary sweet punch that it's recommended to only drink them in small glasses.
Umbra of Emberspike
Farmer
A week late, I know, but things have been weird in my family lately to say the least. Anyway, I revisited the Poppyseed Muffins for Christmas morning this year, so the family and I have locked doing this in as an annual tradition.
We had to wake up early to get them ready on time, so we did as much ingredient prep on Christmas Eve as we could and finished early the next day. Also had some summer sausage, hard cheese, and cranberry sweetbread alongside the muffins.
The muffins are flavored with lemon zest and lemon juice, and topped with turbinado sugar to make the tops a little crunchy and a little sweeter.
Slimeglasses
Local Legend
I need those poppyseed muffins!!
Umbra of Emberspike
Farmer
Stardew Valley Chocolate Cake, favored by Abigail, Evelyn, and Jodi. (The latter of whom has an interesting blurb in the book about maybe convincing Kent, Sam, and Vincent to try their hand at making one for one of her birthdays...)
This one, I have A LOT to say about. We have plans to bake this around Valentine's Day and figured we could use a "dry run" now to see if we could learn anything important before then. Turns out, more than we thought.
First challenge: finding the right ingredients and tools. We had to look for bittersweet chocolate, a kind we don't normally use for anything. We had to get a posted cake slicer since a bread knife would not only be too short and unwieldy, but the bottom layers were huge. We also had to get new cake pans of varying sizes: 10, 8 and 5 inches respectively. Then we needed to buy an icing spreader.
Another challenge: 'finely' chopping the bittersweet chocolate that would eventually go into the frosting, which in this case is a chocolate 'ganache'. After chopping the chocolate with knives and cutting boards, we decided to use our food processor, which helped but still took a while due to the nature of chocolate. And this was just for early prep work.
Next, over yesterday, we made the cakes themselves. The batter consisted of a mixture of cocoa powder, butter, and 'strong' coffee, and other dry powdered ingredients like flour, baking powder, etc. Now keep in mind, this is a 3-tiered cake, which means A LOT OF BATTER! With the bowls we had, the mixture, needing to be all done together at once, almost overflowed our largest bowl, but we barely avoided that. Next time, we will use a bowl with over twice the capacity that we just got afterwards.
Next challenge: baking the 3 cakes in the different pans. After dusting and greasing the pans and laying some parchment paper, we were luckily able to fit them in the oven all at once. But we had to use a lot of timing because different-sized cakes require different cooking durations. Plus, even after taking them out of the oven, they each had to be left on a wire rack for a while, inverted after another while and removed from the pans. That required different timings, too.
And that was just day 1. Today, we did the ganache frosting and assembled the full cake. That required warming some heavy cream and using it to melt the chocolate we cut previously. Then it had to sit for an hour, then chill in the fridge, all while being mixed at certain times until it reached a very thick consistency. Once the time came to trim the cakes and assemble them, we also had to cut the cakes in half for a total of 6 layers.
Despite the recipe calling for a certain amount of ganache, it was actually just barely enough for each layer, and some of the top layers got less than the book thought we could use. Turns out, ganache is so thick and sticky it's hard to use it all. And we had to sprinkle semi-sweet chocolate chips every other layer. We also had some spare chocolate chips from the holidays to decorate the outside with.
Finally, the cake has a cute little maraschino cherry on top. I decided that I'd take pictures with and without the stem. Final height: 8.5 inches!
Now for the million-dollar question: will it fit under the glass dome? LMAO
AverageVillager
Cowpoke
Wow, this thread is amazing, im so hungry right now 
, you're a really good cook, it shows.
, you're a really good cook, it shows.
Umbra of Emberspike
Farmer
Thanks. I had a lot of help from my mom with nearly all of these recipes. This has become quite a familial bond rekindling experience over time.Wow, this thread is amazing, im so hungry right now
EliteDangerGamer
Farmer
you somewhat took over the thread
Umbra of Emberspike
Farmer
Well if anyone else is regularly posting their own experiences with the cookbook, I haven't seen any others but whatever is said in this thread.