As a Chinese American with immigrant parents, I have eaten many Chinese dishes at home and American lunches at school. But what I love to eat most is fusion food, which combines food of different cultures in unique ways. Most fusion recipes focus on cooked dishes rather than baked goods. However, as an avid baker, I wanted to create a fusion baking recipe for my final project. I aimed to make a pastry catering to my Chinese American tastes. I decided to make a rou song (or pork floss) muffin recipe, which combines muffins (an American pastry) with rou song buns (my favorite Chinese pastry).
My baking recipe employs critique by bringing attention to how fusion recipes often overlook baking. Often, when I try to make fusion food at home, I cannot find a lot of baking recipes, only cooking recipes. This discourages me from making fusion food, as I do not enjoy and lack the necessary skills for cooking. This feels unfair to me. I believe that bakers should be able to access fusion food just as easily as those who cook. I wanted to use this project to highlight that the fusion food genre needs an update to include more baking recipes, as fusion baking is just as delicious and no less important than fusion cooking.
My project uses remixing to address this accessibility issue. Remixing occurs when someone alters an already existing piece of work, intending to transform the work into something different. These differences between the original and remixed works come from bringing personal identity into the work, such as the remixer’s own experiences, perspectives, and ideas. In addition, the remixer should appropriately cite the original author to avoid plagiarism. Remixing can function as a form of critique by altering one or multiple original works in a way that invokes reflection about why this change is necessary. In remixing, these changes can challenge an established truth and find an aspect of this truth that needs to be updated. In my project, the established truth I confront is that the fusion food genre mostly encompasses cooked dishes. By remixing the muffin and rou song bun recipe into a fusion pastry recipe, I bring attention to the lack of fusion baking. If fusion baking is this easy, why isn’t there more of it?
To start my project, I searched for the recipes I wanted to remix. I found a Chinese recipe for rou song buns on YouTube and an American recipe for savory cheese zucchini muffins on a recipe website. For the rou song buns, I used a Chinese recipe instead of a recipe in English because I felt that it was more authentic. I selected a savory muffin recipe because pork floss is savory, so I thought using a sweet muffin would taste strange. In addition, I chose to use a muffin in the first place because muffins are one of the least messy pastries to serve to a group of people (I intended to bring the rou song muffins to class).
When combining these two recipes, I used the muffin recipe as the foundation of the fusion recipe, keeping most of the ingredients and instructions the same. However, I replaced the zucchini and thyme with pork floss, scallion, and sesame seeds. I also added a step to reflect how the Chinese recipe calls for those ingredients to be sprinkled on top of the bun.
After making the first batch of rou song muffins with this recipe, I discovered that since I removed the zucchini, the rou song muffins became too dry. In addition, pork floss added salt to the muffin, causing the rou song muffin to be too salty. As a result, I lowered the baking time from 20-25 minutes to 15-17 minutes and removed salt from the ingredients for the finalized recipe.
For the digital media aspect of the project, I used a Canva template. I altered the size, color, and locations of boxes to fit what I thought looked visually appealing. I wrote down the final list of ingredients and instructions. When choosing the title, I decided to go with “Rou Song Muffin” rather than “Pork Floss Muffin” to reflect the cultural fusion in the recipe. Then, I wrote a recipe introduction that touched on the purpose of my project. I kept this introduction brief, not only because I did not have much room, but also because I remembered how my first class project discussed how annoying long recipe introductions are. Finally, I organized the rou song muffins into a visually pleasing arrangement and took a picture for the recipe.
My process of making the rou song muffin recipe reflects the relationship between remixing, originality, and identity. Although my first recipe draft simply mixed the ingredients and instructions of existing recipes, the way I combined them may be different than how other people would, which demonstrates a touch of originality. As I altered the recipe after the first batch, I began to add my ideas. Bringing my identity into the recipe made the remixed recipe more original. Finally, I feel that my digital media aspect was the most original part of the project. Even though I used a template, every visual aspect—the colors, the font, the placements, and the photo—were all chosen based on my preferences. My first recipe, final recipe, and digital aspect demonstrate how bringing identity in remixing makes the work more original.
Overall, this project showed me how remixing can be used to challenge old ideas and create new ones. I discovered that critique does not need to be judgemental of an original work or established truth; it just needs to address a place for improvement. Remixing can bring this improvement to life, integrating change into the established truth. In addition, fusion food itself is the remixing of two cultures. So for my project, bringing my ideas and preferences as a Chinese American into two existing recipes created a more original work, effectively accomplishing my goal of creating a fusion baking recipe.