Zack The Unknown

NGL, this feels like it would be more like an entire modpack than just a mod by itself. We already got things like xSkills, Expanded Foods, Seraph Levelling, et al. But, if somebody could put something like this together, with everything involved... Oh, man. That would be one heck of a nostalgia trip! Also- how fitting that I'd find this right after suggesting a mod idea for adding cakes to the game (including a cake tin).

I know I'm not the only person who's thought of this - but, since we have pies in Vintage Story, I feel like the next step from that would be actual cake. I recall seeing an old mod from 1.20 called Art of Cooking that adds lavash, shawarma, flatbread, etc. - and, where vanilla would just create pie crust with 2 pieces of dough, it actually utilizes the "clay forming" method for creating other dough products. While this could be a good idea for implementing other dough-related foods (i.e. pizza, bagels, etc.), I feel like a cake tin would make more sense, considering the fact that cakes are usually thick, solid, and any "filling" comes in the form of placing something (usually jam) between two layers, before baking it in the clay oven. TBH, the "cake tin" idea actually comes from childhood nostalgia of baking cakes the way RuneScape does it.

NO FREAKING WAY! SOMEONE DID IT! SOME ABSOLUTE BOSS ACTUALLY DID IT! https://mods.vintagestory.at/chocolate#tab-description

So, I think it goes without saying that, of all the food-type mods out there, there's always going to be at least one person/modder with the gumption to add one particular universal to the game: chocolate and its variants. True to its nature (and, Vintage Story's nature of following immersive crafting lines that line up with reality), the process of creating chocolate starts with finding and cultivating cacao trees; typically found around the warm Equator biomes. In the late spring/summer months, the trees would start producing cacao pods, containing the preliminary cocoa beans, which have to be dried or "cured" for at least a couple of days. After drying, the player would then roast the beans - either in a firepit, or a clay oven - before grinding them in a quern to create cocoa liquor. From there, the "liquor" can be melted into a crucible to be poured into an ingot mold (creating a chocolate 'bar'), used as a topping, or poured into a pie. Optionally, it can even be mixed with milk to make a 'lighter' variant. As far as its shelf-life and satiety goes, 'dark'/basic cocoa has a fairly long default freshness time, lasting about 1 year before spoiling, but is fairly low in terms of satiety. Likewise, 'light'/milk cocoa has a reduced shelf-life of around 6-8 months, in exchange for slightly better satiation due to the additives.