Who in their right mind would crave something bitter? Out of all the flavors (even umami who snuck its way into popular media), I would definitely choose bitter dead last. 

I think of myself accidentally zesting too much off a lemon (the pith tastes horrible, I learned the hard way) and Ma ma making random green vegetables (you've probably blown on a dandelion for a wish, but have you cooked their leaves?), and I gag a little bit.

On the other hand, I think of some other foods with the same bitter taste. For bitter melon, stir-fried with some pork belly and pickled vegetables, the bitterness adds to the hearty flavor profile. Especially, for my almost-daily ice-shaken espresso, bitterness brings a mature contrast with vanilla syrup.

I've seen (tasted) that when bitter becomes bittersweet, you get a complex combination that can really improve your taste bud experience. The same influx of confusing feelings comes with the bittersweet emotion.

When I cheered at my last high school football game after a fun three years, when my best friend moved away in Kindergarten after making great memories, when my brother left for college... bittersweet sums up these common fusions of joy and melancholy.

Unlike other emotions, the levels of bittersweet range between two opposite feelings, in this case regretful and content as I show in this Food Pyramid. In between are emotions that encapsulate aspects of each side. A mocha (coffee and chocolate) Swiss roll puts together the flavors of rich chocolate, sweet sugar, and bitter espresso to portray bittersweet. 

My inspiration for this food comes from the Roblox game Restaurant Tycoon 2, my obsession during quarantine. Although I had fun playing video games with my friends staying home all day, I have now moved on for bigger and better. This bittersweet dish fits in with that bittersweet feeling.

In With the Fire on High by Elizabeth Acevedo, the book we are reading in class, protagonist Emoni describes her traumatic encounter with Tyrone. While making plantains after this she "cooked them until they almost burned and the sugar turned bitter," an unexpected result for a skilled chef such as herself (44). 

While plantains cooked in sugar are usually sweet by themselves, the burning of these ingredients parallels the scorched emotions Emoni harbors. These emotions overtake her actions so much that even her food is affected accordingly.

For this mocha Swiss roll, the bitterness of the espresso also seeps into however much sugar there is in the cake, mirroring the emotion of bittersweet.

I've baked a Swiss roll cake before, but it was purely chocolate-flavored. This recipe particularly uses that coffee-chocolate combination to be more complex and suit the theme better.

I made the sponge cake by folding the flour-yolk-chocolate-coffee-and-almost-everything-else mixture in with the egg white meringue. This creates a soft, bouncy cake that I've noticed is common in Asian cafés. After baking, I rolled the cake up with parchment paper to prevent sticking and let that cool.

In the meantime, I set up a double boiler on the stove to melt chocolate and heavy cream together. I used way too small of a bowl so a classmate gave me a towel to transfer the cream. After it was melted, I put the bowl in the walk-in for a while to cool. At this point, I washed the whole class' dishes a few times over, and helped with making mac and cheese. The cream took a LONG time to cool down.

Finally, I whipped the cream up with vanilla extract and some instant espresso. I had the bowl on the stand mixer for maybe ten minutes and it hadn't whipped up much, so I thought I would be safe for ten seconds getting a plate. I was wrong. When I came back to the mixer, the cream had become a little grainy, but luckily it was still fine to frost.

I unrolled my cake and quickly spread a layer of cream all over. Then I rolled it up tightly and cut the ends off. I was a little disappointed that the cake had sagged into less of a cylinder and more of an oblong triangular prism, but it was still pretty cute. Then I sliced it into eight slices and plated the roll cake.

Tasting the "ugly" ends I cut off, I was surprised that the cake really wasn't that sweet. This fit the bittersweet emotion really well, I felt. A classmate was also surprised, telling me it tasted almost like rum. We don't have any alcohol in the kitchen, so I thought it must be the vanilla extract giving it that taste, also making the sweet more bitter.