Wednesday, 2 November 2016

The Insta Chef’s Halloween Bake-a-thon! (A Snapchat Adventure)

As part of an intricate plot, I will be taking over your next 5 or 6 mouse scrolls down this blog for today.

In light of the Halloween craze, I always enjoyed going out to get free food with friends. Sadly (and apparently), it’s incredibly creepy for adults (which I don’t look that part) to head out and express their inner childhood of trick or treating.

So how can you still take part in an annual tradition while getting to enjoy some food?

It’s simple: Go to culinary school for two years, overuse your oven on a regular basis and initiate a Bake-a-thon!


(This also means that you’ll be in for a trick-or-treat of sugary goodness).

6:50pm – First step: Pumpkin Pie…. With an actual pumpkin, of course! One of my MO’s for home cooking always has to be with fresh ingredients, completely from scratch. That’s right; no bags, no preservatives, no service (because the food is usually mine!).


7:19pm – The Food M.D. is in the house. Latex gloves and a steak scalpel are all I need to pop the top off the pumpkin.


7:49pm – After getting some lovely arthritis from using a silver spoon to scoop out hundreds of seeds and pulp, the Jack-O-Lantern was ready to go! As part of a pie filling, a magically boiling pot of water appeared for me to soften up all of that pulp. I deliberately left the stove fan off. The house smelled like pumpkin, and it was surprisingly lovely!


8:07pm – After 500 infomercials, a Magic Bullet amazingly appeared on my countertop and turned the soft pumpkin pulp into a smooth puree of goodness!

8:39pm – Sculpting time! Only in my household could you leave the kitchen for one second, and then find your dad setting up a power saw. “You’ll thank me later”, he says. So much for old-fashioned then.

10:39pm – The Jack-O-Lantern was done, and I just finished making my 500th evil laugh during the finishing touches. It was back to the Pie Filling, where I also added my secret ingredient:

A knob of nutmeg another classmate was going to smuggle from her dorm for me, until she forgot about it and I ended up paying top dollar for the seventh most expensive spice in the world (Thanks, Tierney!).




12:42am – Yes, it still wasn’t bedtime. If you thought pies and a pilfered pumpkin were just the treats, then you might want to save a soft side for some Marshmallows (for the record, it is possible to make them with sheer human force and a hint of determination). A pot of water is mixed in with clear syrup and enough sugar to start a cane factory in my backyard (and now you know how I’m able to fund my cooking projects).

12:45am – While the syrup water has to specifically heat up at 240F (the peak range for marshmallows to properly solidify with added help from gelatine), I then began to regret missing the gym for weeks. Rolling out pie dough I prepared earlier was going to be a flat-out disaster (every pun intended).

1:08am – The dough is standing by to be used in the fridge and the marshmallows were finally done(ish). The recipe did tell me to use an electric stand-mixer, but I don’t have one!



1:18am - In an action that would’ve shocked every baker (in the same way no man would run on a treadmill for five hours straight), I whisked marshmallow batter for half an hour straight. Both of my arms fell off (Kidding, that comes later). To finish those, they were poured into a pan and left to dehydrate (really!).

2:42am – When the marshmallows are setting, it was finally time to finish the pumpkin pie. Yin meets Yang as the pumpkin filling was poured into the crust. It was time to drop this into a preheated oven.


4:11am – After meticulously checking the oven a few times (because you can’t sleep with the oven on), I struggled to fight drowsiness with taste-testing my marshmallows for that much-needed energy kick. Soon, the products were done!







4:00pm – Following a lengthy coma, the treats are finally dropped on Instagram, surprising my followers after taking a hiatus on cooking from the dreaded midterm season. 

Here’s what they looked like:




A photo posted by Clement Goh (@theinstachef) on


(P.S. That was only half of it. For the full story, check out the entire snapchat adventure below!)


2 comments:

  1. Loved this post! hilarious, and the step through step pics were a nice touch. that pie looks delicious :)

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  2. Thanks! Totally worth sharing online. In-person, worth $20/pie. Add a ghost-mallow for $10/piece

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