All photos and illustrations created by Faith Orcino.

With the current situation with the COVID-19 pandemic, plenty of people have been finding themselves staying more time at home. With the extra time, some look to reading more manga while others pursue baking as a new hobby. I’ve decided to combine the two by taking a look at the food-related series from my personal collection and cook some of the recipes inside.

As a novice cook and an anime and manga fan, I thought this challenge would help gain experience making a variety of dishes.

For the first installment of this new segment, I selected the crisp scones recipe found in Volume Two, Chapter 15 of “Today’s Menu for the Emiya Family”.

The manga is based off of the Fate series. Unlike other titles in the franchise, “Today’s Menu” is a lighthearted one that focuses on a particular recipe every chapter.

Top Row: Plain (L), Black Tea (R) Bottom Row: Walnut (L), Dark Chocolate (R)

The recipe for crisp scones was the first time I had to use both cake and bread flour. Usually when I bake pastries and desserts, they required All-purpose flour. I did have trouble with the measurements since they used grams. The manga provided conversions to ounces but I had to estimate with the tools I had. I’d also like to mention that I didn’t have a traditional oven so I had to adjust temperature and cooking time. The book did have a very helpful tip of chilling the mixing bowl since temperatures get quite high in summer.

While making the scones, the original measurements appeared to be small to yield six, but they turned out to be a good large size. The dish used in the photos is about 20 cm in diameter.

Along with a recipe for a plain scone, the recipe listed options for a tea one using black tea leaves, walnuts and dark chocolate. I chose to make each with the maximum amount of sugar listed but they all surprisingly weren’t very sweet. I do admit I have a sweet tooth so it might be different for others’s taste buds. While most of the flavors were clear to notice, the black tea scone’s was a very very subtle aftertaste and I wonder what would happen if I added more tea leaves.

As I mentioned before, I have a sweet tooth so the dark chocolate scone was my favorite.

While the measurements may be a bit of a complication for U.S. kitchens, the recipe was easy to follow, even for me with not that much experience cooking. A bit messy, but as long as you follow the instructions as close as possible, it’ll turn out nicely. It was a treat that was not too sweet but very filling.

The manga of “Today’s Menu for the Emiya Family” is being translated by publisher Denpa. Volume Four is set to be out in October 2020. Head to Denpa’s website for more information. Crunchyroll has the anime series available for streaming. Recently during Aniplex Online Fest 2020 in the Fate Anime Project Online Gathering, the panel talked about the upcoming video game. The game will be out first in Japan and then later translated in English.

Thanks for checking out the first “Fictional Food with Faith”!