A commentary that's actually just a recipe

Hello, friends! It's been a minute--I, a real-life college student, find myself to be much busier than Thai BL college students, who seem to have copious time to focus on the love lives and delicious food. Speaking of which: today, I'm going to share with you a BL-related recipe, suburban-mommy-of-two style. This means I'm going to give a preamble and then actually give the recipe.

Preamble:

One of the big reasons I enjoyed watching Until We Meet Again, which I reviewed last week, was because of all the cool food Pharm made. It was absolutely beautiful, and it was interesting to see all the meaning behind it. Since I don't have an adoreable boyfriend like him (maybe I will when I become a third year college student and hot af), I have to resort to making desserts for myself. So, naturally, I really wanted to make and try the most frequently reoccurring dessert in Until We Meet Again--Leum Kleun.

I found this recipe on the Internet:

Ingredients:

1 cup of mung bean starch
2-3 cups of sugar
5 cups of water
2 cups of coconut milk
6tbs of rice flour
1tbs of salt
Food coloring of your choice (plant-based is more authentic)

STEPS:

1. Put one cup of mung bean starch into a nonstickable pot/pan along with 5 cups of water and mix well on lower heat.

2 Add food coloring of your choice and mix until it starts to boil and get this dough texture.

3. When the mixture starts to boil and has the right texture add 2-3 cups of sugar and mix well for couple of minutes and than turn off the heat.

4. After cooling off a bit put the mixture into container of your choice.

5. For topping you put 6tbs of rice flour into a pan/pot and add 2 cups of coconut milk and 1 tbs of salt.

6. Mix the texture well until it gets thick and once cooled off a bit decorate your previous mixture that u have in containers.

7. Optional step is decoration with dried mung beans.

Final Result:

I didn't have mungbean startch, or coconut milk, or rice flour. So I replaced mungbean starch with gelatin, coconut milk with orange juice (?), and rice flour with wheat flour. However, my concoction when I directly substituted the ingredients was not turning out to be the right texture, so I decided to make something vaguely resembling Leum Kleun in a creative way: mini orange jello pies. If you're a connoseur of Thai cusine, please forgive me for bastardizing your food, but what I made actually tasted pretty good.

The recipe I created, that has very few things in common with Leum Klen now that I think about it:

Ingredients:

Wheat flour

Water

Sugar

Orange juice

Gelatin

"How much?" you may ask. For the first three, mix water and flour until they form a doughy consistency that is dry enough not to stick to your hands, but wet enough to stick together. Add the amount of sugar you think is reasonable. I added about 3/4 of a tablespoon for a lump slightly bigger than my fist (my hands are pretty average sized). Read the box of gelatin to know how much to put in. I am sorry I cannot be of more help.

STEPS:

1. Mix the wheat flour, water, and sugar into a doughy-doughy consistency that is dry enough not to stick to your hands, but wet enough to stick together.

2. Separate the dough into smaller pieces, and roll flat with a rolling pin to about 1/2 cm thick (for those who fear the metric system: <1/4 inch-ish)

3. Line a cupcake pan with metal foil, and form flat pieces of dough into mini-pie crust shapies inside the cupcake divets.

4. Bake at 350 degrees F for about 10 minutes

5. Mix part of your orange juice with all the gelatin. Let sit for a little bit. Almost boil the rest of your orange juice, and then mix it with the gelatin-orange juice.

6. When it's cooled a little bit, pour the orange gelatin juice into the mini pie crusts. Put in the fridge overnight.

Final Result:

In conclusion, did I really make Leum Kleun? Absolutely not. But was it good? Heck yeah!