An Italian food blogger has gone viral for making a cheesecake mid-flight after she whipped out ingredients and a baking tin at her seat.
Federica Rossi, known as @foodfede_ on Instragram, usually posts video content spotlighting food at restaurants as well as recipes for various bakes and treats.
However, on 26 December Ms Rossi uploaded a video on her social media platforms that gained 1.8 million views on Instagram and a further 165K on TikTok, as well as sent commenters into a debate over the cleanliness of her baking challenge.
In the video, Ms Rossi can at first be seen crushing what appears to be biscuits on her fold-out tray while seated on a plane, using the side of a cake tin to do so.
She then pours the biscuit crumbs into the tin, adds a small amount of melted butter into the mix and stirs with a teaspoon.
Next, she whips out a jar of what appears to be syrup or honey and adds it to the biscuit mix.
After that, a tub of formaggio fresco, which is a spreadable cheese, is opened and in she pours an apparent sachet of sugar into it, before mixing and dolloping it on top of the biscuit.
Ms Rossi does not stop there, however, in the creation of her in-flight cheesecake, as she then tops the dessert off with jam from individual-sized tubs.
The food vlogger then takes the walls of the cake tin off to reveal a no-bake cheesecake all made from the comfort of her plane seat, before taking a bite.
The cheesecake creation has garnered some varied responses online, with some saying they loved her dessert-making skills, while others are worried about how hygienic the dessert would be to eat on the plane.
“Finally, someone I would actually enjoy sitting beside,” one person said.
“I love it if I had been there I would have asked you for a taste,” another wrote.
Another user praised the content creator for making a better snack that the usual airplane offerings: “I don’t understand the criticism! The food on the plane sucks, at least you can eat a good cake.”
“Everything very nice.. but the germs on the plane…..” someone else raised, questioning the hygiene in the cabin for such activities.
Others questioned how she was able to get all those ingredients onto the aircraft.
“How did you get cream cheese through security?” one person asked, pondering whether or not it was classed as a liquid.
In response to one TikTok commenter asking about how they could bring food onto the plane, Ms Rossi replied: “you can’t bring liquids, or if you go to destinations where certain foods are prohibited”.
Some commenters recognised that Ms Rossi was on a Ryanair flight. According to the Irish Mirror, Ryanair says that you can take any food or soft drinks (excluding hot drinks) you like on a Ryanair plane, as long as it meets hand luggage dimensions and weight restrictions.
However, not everyone was convinced by the cheesecake challenge, as one commenter wrote: “What a lack of respect. All products that could be highly allergic, and being in a closed space the risk is enormous, not to mention the crumbs that form.”
In response, Ms Rossi replied “I cleaned before and especially after, it took me 15 minutes in silence, I didn’t leave even a crumb and I ate the cake with my two friends who were next to me”.
A similar baking video went viral in August last year, which sparked criticism as a woman attempted to prepare her sourdough on a flight to Barcelona.
What was intended to be a creative video to promote and share her passion for bread-making unfortunately ended in a flurry of comments criticising the act of making bread on a plane, with some people worried about those with gluten allergies.
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