Chapter 25 Mung Bean Cake

This was the first time Qin Huai had ever been stumped by buns.

From childhood to adulthood, whenever Qin Huai learned to make pastries—whether it was learning vegetable buns from Dean Qin at the welfare home, or after being adopted and learning basic breakfast items from Qin Congwen, or even during New Year visits to the countryside making rice rolls with his grandmother, or when Qin Luo’s wildly imaginative requests forced him to flip through The Complete Book of Pastries or search recipes online—he had never been this troubled.

Although Qin Luo’s cravings were sometimes abstract, at least there was always something concrete. No matter how outrageous, she would point at a scene in a TV show—say, a government official traveling to Yangzhou holding a pastry with chopsticks—and shout, “Brother, I want that! It looks delicious! Please make it for me, brother!!”

Because what Qin Luo pursued was at least something tasty. Whether it matched the original didn’t matter—the key was that it had to taste good.

But what Chen Huihui wanted…

…was a bit too abstract.

Stories about wealthy children who grew up eating delicacies suddenly being amazed by plain wild vegetables are the kind of cliché tales found in cheap magazines sold at old book stalls for two yuan per jin. At Huihui’s age, she shouldn’t have been influenced by such things.

Qin Huai frowned, his expression serious as he returned to the cooking station.

Qin Luo had already finished pressing a batch of rabbit-shaped buns and was now sneakily holding a bowl of mung bean filling that had just been taken out of the freezer and wasn’t fully thawed. It looked like she was planning to quietly press another batch of mung bean buns.

“Today we’re making mung bean cake,” Qin Huai said.

Qin Luo: !

If conditions allowed, she would have immediately sealed the filling container with plastic wrap and claimed she had suddenly developed red-green color blindness and picked the wrong filling.

Qin Luo felt she still had a chance to salvage the situation. “Brother, I’ll help you peel the mung beans.”

There were many types of mung bean cakes on the market, broadly divided into northern and southern styles. The north is represented by Beijing-style mung bean cake, while the south is known for Su-style and Yang-style varieties, with even more subtypes including traditional, modern, Yunnan-style, and even international variations.

Qin Huai didn’t know what style his mung bean cake would count as. According to industry standards, it would most likely be Beijing-style, since Beijing-style mung bean cake requires at least 50% mung bean content—Qin Huai’s version was close to 80%.

With such a high mung bean content, the quality of the beans themselves became extremely important.

However, quality was only part of the issue. The most critical step was peeling the cooked mung beans after they had been steamed and mashed. Peeling mung beans was a very tedious task. Even after soaking them for over 12 hours, rubbing and washing couldn’t completely remove the skins. Beans that still retained their skins had to be picked out one by one and peeled by hand.

Sorting through a large basin of mung beans one by one would make one see double within half an hour.

This kind of painstaking work was impossible for Zhao Rong, who had poor eyesight, Qin Congwen, who had a bad back, or Qin Huai, who simply didn’t have the time.

But Qin Luo could do it.

Ever since Qin Huai first attempted mung bean cake when Qin Luo was in sixth grade, she had taken a liking to this task.

This girl had had 5.0 vision since childhood.

Her hands were quick and efficient.

If she were in a palace intrigue novel, she would have been the perfect person to be punished to kneel and sort beans.

For Qin Luo, peeling mung beans meant she could watch TV while working, and the results were immediately rewarding—freshly made mung bean cakes that were fragrant, non-sticky, with sweetness perfectly adjusted by Qin Huai’s custom molds.

Moreover, mung bean cakes didn’t crumble easily. They could be eaten on the go, secretly packed into a school bag, and most importantly, shared with classmates while bragging: “Tasty, right? My brother made this specially for me. Awesome, right!”

Seeing Qin Luo volunteer enthusiastically, Qin Huai gladly accepted and pointed to a corner, signaling her to get to work.

Qin Luo marched over confidently—then froze.

There were three large basins of soaked mung beans.

And the basins were the size of children’s bathtubs.

Of course, Qin Luo wasn’t working alone—she had a coworker: An Youyou.

Seeing An Youyou not very skillfully peeling beans, Qin Luo suddenly felt reassured. Even though her brother had risen in status, inherited wealth, upgraded his situation, and become the boss, she was still the best mung bean peeler in the Qin family!

An Youyou looked at the suddenly energetic Qin Luo and thought silently: The boss’s skills are unpredictable, and so is his sister’s mood.

The Qin family really was hard to understand.

Qin Huai also found Chen Huihui hard to understand.

As is well known, people tend to lose focus when thinking. When distracted, the body keeps working while the mind drifts away.

Earlier that morning, while packing delivery orders, Qin Huai accidentally packed 8 bags of buns incorrectly—swapping 1.5-yuan meat buns for 25-yuan two-piece three-filling buns from Qin Congwen.

The lucky workers who received the “blind box” nearly cried while eating, marveling that blessings had truly fallen from the sky. Meanwhile, their coworkers who didn’t get the lucky upgrade felt bitter and envious, staring at their own buns, their salaries, and bank balances with frustration.

Qin Huai, completely unaware of this, continued kneading dough while absentminded.

“Brother, the mung beans are ready!” Qin Luo reported, carrying a large bowl and placing it on the counter. “This bowl is mine.”

Qin Huai immediately understood—this was Qin Luo’s carefully selected batch for personal consumption, with no impurities. The three basins were for general use.

He nodded and didn’t mind.

Careful processing could enhance taste and texture, but even average processing wouldn’t make mung bean cake taste bad. Most people didn’t expect anything overly astonishing from mung bean cake anyway, and many wouldn’t even notice the subtle differences.

“Tell Dad to steam the mung beans when he has time. I’ll start making the mung bean cakes around 10 o’clock.”

Qin Luo relayed the message and soon returned, asking, “Brother, what desserts are we making today?”

“Yesterday, fried dough twists sold well, so we’ll continue today,” Qin Huai said absentmindedly. “The glutinous rice was prepared the day before yesterday, so we’ll make rice cakes today.”

“The weather’s hot these days, so we should eat something that clears heat and detoxifies. Since we’re making mung bean cake, we’ll also make some chilled mung bean desserts.”

“As for the ingredients on the table, they’re for Crab Shell Yellow pastries. We’ll make shrimp-filled, meat-filled, red bean, and white sugar versions. Make more so they can be sold into the afternoon.”

Qin Luo began mentally planning how to maximize her pastry intake for the day.

“Luoluo,” Qin Huai said, putting down the dough. “Let me ask you something.”

Qin Luo straightened up.

“Hypothetically,” Qin Huai continued, “if our family had always been very wealthy—parents never restricted what you ate, you could fly anywhere to eat whatever you wanted, growing up with delicacies as everyday food…”

“In that case, your favorite food has always been coarse grains.”

Qin Luo: ?

“But you don’t actually know which coarse grain you like specifically. What you’re really after might be something natural, simple, rustic—something rough yet honest, something that, even if it doesn’t taste great, somehow feels freeing.”

“But since you’ve never found your ideal food, what you currently like is the not-so-tasty buckwheat buns. So, what do you think you might truly like?”

Qin Luo: …

She felt her brother was probably overwhelmed by the reality of waking up at 4 a.m. every day to make pastries after suddenly becoming wealthy—and had lost his mind.

She scratched her head, thought for a moment, hesitated, thought again, and finally grimaced.

“Maybe…” Qin Luo said, “wild vegetables?”

“Like… things that are simple, natural, and unprocessed?”