this post was submitted on 14 Nov 2023
64 points (95.7% liked)

No Stupid Questions

35848 readers
1310 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Is it all from the same company? Or do multiple terrible cake companes all just share the same terrible formula?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I'll have to look into that idea! Honestly I never even imagined that these were even vaguely related to actual Chinese desserts; I entirely assumed they were just Western cake ideas, but impossibly cheap.

Like the pizza that's always on those burgers. Even less authentic than the rest of the stuff, and somehow cheaper tasting than even Cici's. (Not knocking the restaurants for that; gotta have something for the picky kids.)

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

In America in particular we use a ridiculous amount of sugar in everything. People used to eating Chinese food -- like, the kind they eat in China -- in my experience are typically unprepared for it. I worked for a Chinese restaurant for a while and my boss, who was Cantonese, tried and subsequently declared a wide array of American foodstuffs to be completely inedible due to being too sweet. Including stuff we don't think of as being "sweet," like ketchup.

I'd doubt the horrid sponge cake you find at the Chinese buffet is actually related to any imported Chinese confection, but it's probably made according to the sensibilities of whoever is running the place. Especially if they ever plan on eating it themselves. (You laugh at this prospect. And yet: one of my boss' favorite things to do on the rare holidays we were closed was to go to other Chinese restaurants that weren't.)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Had clients from CJK countries, can confirm. First complaint is everything being too sweet or salty, and second complaint is the rice being undercooked for their tastes... and also salty.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

For the record, ketchup is sweet as fuck. Delicious. And sweet. So is bbq sauce.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

But is shouldn't have to be, ketchup without any additional sweeteners, apart from the natural sugar from tomatoes, is really good.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Heck, even just plain tomato puree is really good if they're made with good tomatoes.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I just rub great tomatoes on my fries.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

It’s all that corn syrup and (if you’re lucky,) molasses

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You're almost certainly correct that it's just cheap cake. Is Betty Crocker cake really a traditional Chinese dessert? Furthermore, most buffets like this are Americanized ethnic food not traditional dishes.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Depends on where you go. American-chinese cuisine has its roots in authentic Chinese food, brought by immigrants; immigrants who came to a new place finding unfamiliar ingredients and adapting those ingredients to their old ways of cooking.

It’s a fascinating history; though the way they were treated was downright awful. (Story of our nation: “Exploit the new guy.”…)