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You enter YouTube in order to watch another episode of your favorite cooking series on the internet; you would search it by name but every episode the woman that owns the channel insists on naming it something different. Today's episode seems to be about marshmallows; you have never heard about homemade marshmallows before, so this could be an interesting watch. You press play.
"Hello mummies and furries, welcome to a new episode of 'From the oven to the pan'." "That is not how this was called last week nor does it represent the tools that will be used in this recipe" "Shush nerd, you don't understand the vision." "There is no vision, you just made up that tittle"
The episode seems to start with the usual banter between Akarsha, the owner of the channel in a colorful chef uniform; and the woman behind the camera
"Today yours truly will teach you how to make marshmallows from scratch, without corn syrup because I understand that's kind of hard to find outside the US, and I am all for my international besties." The voice from behind the camera interrupts with: "She forgot to buy corn syrup" "I forgot to buy corn syrup. But You do not need it to make some perfect clouds of sugar to roast in a campfire, or in your stove, or with a lighter, or any fire you have access to... roasted marshmallows are too fucking good man. But let's just start with this before I start talking about mushrooms again." You wince remembering that forty-three minutes long video that was supposed to be a quick smoothie recipe, "Please don't, that would be the fourth time this season. And fear not viewer, I will once again make sure this disaster of a woman remembers to actually write down the ingredients once again." Akarsha shakes her hand dismissing what the woman behind the camera said, "Yeah yeah, miss bootlicker" "You are just angry your viewers like me more than they like you." Indeed, the camerawoman is always the one in charge of making sure this channel doesn't implode, "They don't even know your name." "Because I make sure to censure it because I respect my privacy." "What about my privacy?!" "As I said, I respect my privacy." The woman in the chef uniform stares towards behind the camera disappointed in her wife but also strangely proud.
Without another word, the video gets a quick transition to show a table filled with ingredients.
“You can think this is too hard, and honestly? Yeah, you kinda need some basic experience on this. Don’t sue me if you suck at it. I mean—I believe in you! To begin, we will proceed by giving our thirsty gelatine powder some water, make sure to feed the baby in the same mixer bowl where we will mix the marshmallow itself.” The woman quickly sprinkles the gelatine in the mixer bowl and then pours the water on it, mixing a little but not too much, “Once we did that just leave it there to be lonely and sad and think about xer sins” “Why does the gelatine uses neo-pronouns?” You have been watching these videos for so long that you didn’t notice that detail until the camerawoman mentioned it, “Why, xe can’t?” “I am pretty sure that gelatine doesn’t have a gender identity.” “You are just not woke and cool enough.” “Please just continue the recipe.”
“Okey my children, once we have prepared our gelatine, we will proceed to grease a nine-by-nine inches pan with any kind of solid fat, though it’s always better to do it with butter, and then we are going to treat that motherfucker like a superhero girlfriend!” “Translation: Put it in the fridge.” “I am extremely sure they understood.” “I am extremely sure they didn’t.”
"Now we will proceed to finally make the syrup, we grab our pot, we put our sugar, our water and our honey or our agave or our vinegar or our 'motherfucker you really don't have any of these? Go get groceries please.' Once all our ingredients are in the pot, we will mix it a little until all the sugar is wet. My lawyer told me not to do the joke with the word 'wet'." "Good, you are learning." Akarsha nods comically fast at that sentence. "As I was saying, once our sugar is wet, we will start the stove at medium heat until our syrup starts to simmer, as in when it just reaches boiling point if not a little before, once we reach that we will swirl our pot a little—Warning! Warning! Alert! Alert! I said swirl the pot! Not mix the syrup! We will gently move the pot to distribute the heat evenly. Once we do that, we will lower the heat to medium-low before we cover the pot, so the steam kills every evil sugar crystal." The woman covers the pot and like a cartoon dries fake sweat from her forehead with a paper towel, "And you may think we can just rest a little, take a breath and—You would be wrong! We will continue checking every two minutes to make sure there are no more sugar crystals and then gently swirl the pot again." You can see the woman checking the pot every few minutes in a sped-up sequence until there are indeed, no more sugar crystals inside the pot,
"Now that we have murdered every single sugar crystal we will start to do the cold-water test, what is that I hear you say?... I said, what is that I hear you say?" You can clearly hear the woman behind the camera sigh loudly, "What is that, Chef Akarsha?" "Who told you to call me that? Weirdo, but anyways, the cold-water test is when we put a small drop of our syrup in a glass of cold water before pressing it between our fingers and try to do ball with it to check if it reached the stage we want, in our case we want it to reach firm-ball stage, which is when we can make a little ball with our fingers but still be able to bend it without it turning into an absolute mess like my love life." "You can't do those jokes anymore; you are married to me in fact." "Holy shit you are so right bestie!" "I am not your bestie; I am your wife." "Government approved bestie." You can hear the camerawoman sigh again, but this time it holds some warmth to it.
After a few instances of the mentioned test with the glass of cold water, you can see the woman in the chef uniform remove the pot from the heat. "Now, we are so so so fucking close to finally finishing this, we will put our bowl with the woke and cool gelatine, it needs to be woke and cool gelatine, cishet gelatine won't work for this, in the mixer to make the machine gently mix it until the hydrated gelatine is teared apart. Once we beat the shit out of our gelatine because we are horrible people we will start to gently pour our syrup in the bowl while the mixer is running in medium speed, be careful, you do not want to get hot syrup on you." "Trust her on that, I been woken up by screams of pain the night before valentine's day too many times, be careful." "You did not have to expose me on that in front of the global wide web page YouTube.com what the fuck. Anyways, we will speed up our machine to the highest it allows and leave it alone for a few minutes until it gets to Super Sayan Three." "Translation: Until it gets to be three times its size." The camerawoman's translations are, as always, extremely needed.
"You may think you can rest while the sugar is mixed—But you would be wrong again! Wake up, child of mine! The threat of sticky marshmallows never rests and neither should you! We will quickly prepare the powder in which we are going to cover our marshmallows to avoid it getting all weird and evil; this is finally something simple. We will just mix two thirds of cornstarch and one third of powder sugar and boom. You have super powder." The woman quickly mixes the two powders to create the 'super powder' before walking to check on the marshmallow mix.
"Hey! Check this out, our marshmallow mix is big and not pure of heart now, in this moment we will add just a little bit of vanilla, and once that is completely mixed in, we will proceed to pour the marshmallow on the pan." Akarsha pours a little bit of vanilla in the bowl, then a little bit more, then a little bit more, then threatens to add a little bit more but the camera woman clearly threatens her to not do that. As the mixer does its job, she quickly walks to the fridge to get the pan, which she places on the table. "Now, I don't have to explain this step, just pour the marshmallow mix and even it as much as you can." And she does, with an amount of ease that reminds you that this absolute clown does have some level of experience in the kitchen. Before sifting some of the previously prepared powder on top of the marshmallows, "And with this finished we can finally rest, in fact, we are going to rest for a long while, six hours to be exact.
The video transitions to a disheveled and tired looking Akarsha, in front of a plate filled with marshmallows. The camera is static, not moving around like it usually does when the camerawoman is holding it. "Well, everyone, I hope you liked this video, subscribe, comment, like, share if someone still shares videos nowadays, and remember, everyone could cook but if you can cook then you are inherently better than everyone else. Now I must leave before my wife notices that I left the bed to film this, goodbye everyone!"
The video proceeds to cut to an image of the marshmallows in a plate with dubstep in the background, and that's when you know to close the video, there wasn't much else to see here, but you are eager to watch the next episode, even if it doesn't come out until next year...