The bakery she opened as an adult wasn’t big. The business was just enough to support her and Tao Guangzhi. But she had her principles: she never used pre-made products, including egg tarts. No pre-made tart shells, no day-old shells either. Everything was baked fresh daily and sold the same day.
A small bakery could never outcompete a big chain by scale—the only way was through reputation and handmade innovation.
So in her previous life, her bakery didn’t offer a huge variety of products, and quantities were small. But she put her heart into it, with precise ratios and clean ingredients. That kept her business stable, with many regular customers.
Today, Tao Tao planned to bake just a few for the family to try first.
Since it was already evening, she didn’t want to waste ingredients by making too many. She didn’t dare use the big four-tier oven her dad had gotten from the food factory—first, because she was afraid she’d break it and lose her life, and second, for just ten egg tarts, firing up that massive oven would be a huge waste of gas.
She decided to use the small built-in oven under the gas stove on the other side.
This was also a gas oven, completely different from electric ovens. Inside, it used an open flame, with no precise temperature control.
The oven had a row of knobs—some of which controlled the gas burners on top. Yes, the top of this oven had four gas stovetop burners and a baking pan.
The actual oven control knobs only had three settings: low, medium, and high. Turn one way for top heat, the other way for bottom heat. As for the exact temperature? That depended entirely on the baker’s experience and feel.
This showed just how skilled old-school bakers had to be to make good breads and pastries.
Tao Tao hadn’t used this kind of oven in ages. She’d have to fumble around and relearn it.
As for how she “figured out” Portuguese egg tarts, she’d say… she was bored and playing house with Yu Luan, and just happened to see a Portuguese egg tart segment on TV, so she roughly followed what was shown and messed around until she got it.
Back then, you could find quite a few cooking or baking shows. Not only did they have chefs demonstrating live, but they also invited celebrities to appear. For example, there was the local “Home Encyclopedia.” And since they had a satellite dish, they could even pick up Hong Kong or American shows, like Hong Kong’s “Fang Tai’s Living Plaza” and “Urban Leisure,” or even America’s “The Julia Child Show”… As for why she could replicate them after watching once? She’d been helping Tao Guangzhi since she was little and already knew how to knead dough. So copying what she saw on TV would be normal… right?
She’d try that excuse for now, maybe tweak it a little. With Tao Guangzhi’s brain and the filter of being his beloved daughter, he probably wouldn’t be too suspicious.
Luckily, they had big bags of flour at home that Tao Guangzhi used daily for pastries. Tao Tao dug them out and checked the brands: Meimei low-gluten flour, Jinshang high-gluten flour. What nostalgic old brands.
She’d even used them later in her own bakery.
She kept rummaging. The butter was Wheel brand, the white sugar was Taikoo, the whipping cream was Nestlé, the condensed milk was Eagle Brand, and the custard powder was Lion brand. Tao Tao nodded approvingly. Tao Guangzhi used good, honest ingredients. Her family’s bakery had gone under, but the raw materials they used were absolutely fine—all reputable, well-regarded brands.
But they didn’t have any egg tart molds. Tao Tao thought for a moment… then started digging through the cabinets again. She found a roll of aluminum foil. She tore off pieces, shaped them into small cups with her hands. Her hands were small and weak now, so the shapes came out crooked and uneven in size, but they’d do in a pinch.
At least they’d be easier to unmold than ceramic cups or something.
Tao Tao stood on a small stool, gathered all the ingredients, and started kneading the dough by hand.
They had a dough mixer at home, but it was way too big. Hand-kneading it was!
Before kneading, she had to mix the low-gluten flour, high-gluten flour, sugar, and salt evenly; otherwise, the tart shells would have lumps. Just as Tao Tao was about to grab a pair of chopsticks to mix them, the ending theme of “Popeye” came from the living room.
She turned and looked back.
Yu Luan was sitting on his little stool, hands on his knees, back perfectly straight, staring at the TV.
The credits were rolling up the screen. Tao Tao watched him for a moment.
When the ending theme finished and commercials started, Yu Luan looked lost. He stood up, looked around, spotted Tao Tao in the kitchen, and immediately walked over.
He stopped at the kitchen door.
There was a sliding glass door at the kitchen entrance. It was usually left open, but there was an aluminum track threshold. Every time he encountered a threshold, he would pause, then step over it in slow motion.
Tao Tao watched him—such a tiny little bean, with a serious expression, slowly lifting his leg like a sloth, then slowly putting it down. She couldn’t help but laugh.
He was so cute. How had she never noticed before in her previous life?
Once he made it over the threshold, he stood quietly and curiously beside Tao Tao, watching her stir the flour in circles.
Yu Luan rarely spoke unprompted. Before going to Hong Kong for intervention, he also rarely made eye contact with people.
But oddly enough, Yu Luan seemed to have had no major issue with avoiding her gaze from the very beginning. He could respond to her, too.
“Taro, perfect, come here,” Tao Tao said, thinking for a moment. She beckoned to him, then fetched another small stool. She placed the chopsticks into a bewildered Yu Luan’s hands. “I’ll teach you how to stir the flour. It’s really easy.”
Yu Luan lowered his eyes, looked at the chopsticks in his hands, but didn’t lift his head to look at Tao Tao.
“Just stir slowly in the same direction like this…” Tao Tao took his hand and guided him through the motion.
The family didn’t have much money right now, and Auntie Yu and Tao Guangzhi hadn’t yet realized there was anything different about Yu Luan. But he was already seven years old. Even if his position on the spectrum didn’t seem too severe, the earlier he started daily life skills training, the better the results.
That was her thinking: since they didn’t have the means for professional rehabilitation yet, she’d focus on home-based training first.
Yu Luan was actually fine with basic self-care. His main issues were social communication and repetitive behaviors. Tao Tao planned to work on both of those areas with him.
As for these two problems… well, Tao Tao didn’t have many strengths, but she had one good thing going for her.
She’d been talkative since she was little! And bold, too!
From eighty-year-old grandpas to newborn babies—there wasn’t a single person she couldn’t communicate with. Even in her previous life, when she disliked Yu Luan so much, Auntie Yu had thanked her sincerely several times, saying that ever since she met Tao Tao, Yu Luan had become much more cheerful, and it was all thanks to her.
Although, in Tao Tao’s memory, she hadn’t wanted to play with Yu Luan at all. She only did it under Tao Guangzhi’s watchful eye—too bored to do otherwise, and not daring to act bossy, she’d just chatter away at Yu Luan. But even after she talked until her mouth went dry, Yu Luan would only give her a few innocent looks. It was so boring.
Now, of course, she didn’t see it that way. She was extra patient teaching Yu Luan to stir the flour, repeating the instructions several times. When she saw him start stirring stiffly and clumsily, she gently helped steady his hand. Once he could control the strength on his own, she let go, patted his head, and praised him in an exaggerated tone:
“Good job! Our Taro is so good!”
After a few repetitions, his soft, fine hair was quickly roughed up by her into a messy chicken nest.
He let her tousle his hair without resistance. He didn’t understand why Tao Tao was playing with flour anyway—he couldn’t make sense of a lot of her sudden behaviors. Like how she’d suddenly burst into loud singing in the bathroom while taking a bath, scaring him half to death.
Yu Luan looked down and stirred silently. When he finished, he just sat there holding the chopsticks, staring into space.
Tao Tao picked up the evenly mixed flour, turned, and placed it on the counter. Then she looked back, her eyes curving into a smile. “That’s it. Thanks for helping me. When the egg tarts are done, I’ll give you the very first one!”
Yu Luan didn’t react much. Actually, for him, making eye contact was already a significant response.
Tao Tao smiled at him, then turned back around, stood on her stool, and continued working.
Yu Luan’s gaze slowly followed Tao Tao.
He’d never liked making eye contact with people. Even with his mom, he’d unconsciously look away mid-conversation. His mother would always tell him seriously that you had to look at people when talking to them, otherwise it was impolite.
He understood that. He was trying his best to improve.
But he still couldn’t get it right.
Yet somehow, making eye contact with his sister felt a little easier.
Even though she’d only been his sister for sixty-three days.
His sister had a pair of crescent-shaped smiling eyes. When she wasn’t smiling, the inner corners of her eyes were round, and the outer corners drooped slightly inward. Usually, nothing seemed particularly special about them. But when she smiled, her eyes turned into two curved crescent moons.
She had just lost her front baby teeth, and the new ones were a pair of not-so-obvious rabbit teeth—slightly tilted inward and whiter than her other baby teeth.
When his sister smiled, she looked like… like a sticker.
Yeah. His sister was a very happy smiling-face sticker.
He liked curved shapes. The moon was curved, bananas were curved, and his sister’s eyes when she smiled were curved too.
He liked eating bananas. And he really liked it when his sister smiled.
Tao Tao had no idea what Yu Luan was standing there thinking about. He often spaced out like that.
She had already started making the flaky pastry.
She stood on her stool, placed the mixing bowl on the counter, added small chunks of softened butter, plus some shortening and lard, then called Yu Luan over to stir for a few more minutes. When the flour mixture resembled coarse cornmeal, she quickly turned on the ice water dispenser and filled a pitcher with ice water.
Making the tart shells required adding ice water in batches, stirring until the dough was smooth and no longer sticky. Then she wrapped it in plastic wrap and put it in the freezer to rest. Otherwise, the butter would leak out during the lamination process.
Normally, while waiting for the dough to rest, Tao Tao would clean the counter and tidy up. But right now, she was a little kid in a “chaotic kitchen,” so she left the counter a mess. She even sprinkled extra flour on the floor and smeared some on Yu Luan’s face and her own. She deliberately walked around, leaving floury footprints everywhere, until the place was an absolute disaster. Then she took Yu Luan to the living room to play with puzzles.
Sorry, Tao Guangzhi. She was just too young right now—this was the only way.
Auntie Yu had bought Yu Luan many puzzle sets—some with hundreds of pieces, some with thousands. Tao Tao grabbed the smallest box from the shelf, a landscape puzzle, opened it, and poured the pieces out for him to play with.
Yu Luan had a narrow range of interests, but puzzles were one of them. He was especially focused when doing puzzles. If no one interrupted him, he could do them all day without moving or eating.
Tao Tao couldn’t handle that. Just sitting there for a short while nearly put her to sleep.
By now, the hour hand in the living room had reached eight o’clock. Tao Guangzhi and Auntie Yu—this unreliable pair of parents—still hadn’t come home. Tao Tao sighed helplessly, glanced at the clock, and went back into the kitchen to prepare the butter.
She took a piece of butter, placed it directly on plastic wrap, and slowly rolled it with a rolling pin until it became a thin, even square sheet. Then she put the butter sheet—still wrapped in plastic—into the freezer to chill for 15 minutes, until it was completely hard.
The butter was ready. The dough was just about there too.
She dusted the counter with some flour, rolled out the rested dough into a square that was thinner at the edges and thicker in the middle, then placed the chilled butter sheet in the center. She folded the four corners over the butter, pinched the edges to seal, then rolled it out again. After that, she folded it like a blanket—bringing both ends toward the center, wrapped it in plastic wrap, and put it back in the freezer.
After repeating this process of rolling, folding, and chilling twice to complete the lamination, Tao Tao rolled the dough out evenly one last time.
She picked a round mold that her dad used for making mung bean cakes and pressed it into the dough to cut out ten circles. She placed each circle into a foil mold and carefully pressed it into shape with her fingers.
When baked, they would puff up in layers, turning into mille-feuille tart shells, ready for the egg custard.