Keroppi Matcha Macaron

Our June school holidays start today, yay! The last day of school was yesterday. Both my boys have done well for their exams. LT only had some small reviews, the actual exam for him will come at the end of the year. IT had quite a fair bit of careless mistakes, but since his grades were pretty good, I don't want to fret over all those marks he lost due to his carelessness. I hope he can continue to maintain his results and strive to do even better. For now, we'll enjoy the holidays first, have booked a short getaway in mid June, so looking forward to it. :)


For today, let me share these matcha macaron I made. I filled the macarons with red bean buttercream.


These matcha macarons were yummy, ok, I'm bias as I love all things matcha, lol.

It's Keroppi again, I decorated some of the matcha macarons as Keroppi for my boys.


I made these a day after the Hello Kitty macarons I shared previously. If you missed that, you can click HERE to check out the recipe for the Hello Kitty macarons.

KEROPPI MATCHA MACARON RECIPE
Ingredients:
74g ground almond
6g matcha powder
160g icing sugar
60g egg white, separated for 24 hours in advance

Buttercream:
60g egg white
110g butter, room temperature
110g fine castor sugar
200g red bean paste

Icing:
60g egg whites
330g icing sugar
2 tsp lemon juice
pink food colouring

Method:

1. Sieve 80g icing sugar together with ground almond and matcha powder twice. Alternatively, you can also use a food processor to pulse them till fine before sieving them once. Set aside.


2. Beat egg white on low/medium speed until foamy, sieve 80g icing sugar in 3 batches, change to high speed and beat till soft peak form. You can turn up the speed and continue to beat till stiff peak, if you prefer a thicker macaron.

3. Add step 2 icing sugar/almond/matcha mixture into egg white in 2 batches, folding well to combine.

4. Scoop batter into pipping bag with nozzle tip #1A attached. Pipe small circles on a non-stick baking sheet. Use a toothpick to prick the air bubbles. Dry the macarons shells for 30 minutes under room temperature.

5. Preheat oven to 150 degrees celcius. Bake macarons at middle rack for around 12-15 minutes. Once the feet appears (they should do so before 5 minutes) , place an oven rack above the tray of macarons and continue baking till 12-15 minutes is up. (this is to prevent the top of the macarons from browning) When baking is complete, do not remove the macarons from the tray, allow them to cool for a while before removing. 

6. To make buttercream filling, combine egg whites and sugar in a mixing bowl. Whisk over a gentle simmering hot water bath, till all the sugar have melted. Remove from heat.

7. Place on mixer and whisk on high till stiff peaks are formed.

8. Turn down the speed and add in the butter gradually, mix well.

9. Mix in red bean paste. Fill in pipping bag, refrigerate around 15 minutes before pipping onto your macarons. If you are not decorating them as Keroppi, you can sprinkle some matcha powder on the macarons before serving.

10. To make icing, beat egg white with lemon juice till combined.

11. Sift icing sugar, add to egg white and whisk on low speed till combined.

12. Scoop out 1/3 of icing, mix in a little pink colouring using a toothpick. 

13. Pour icing into piping bags. Pipe two circles using white icing for Keroppi's eyes. 

14. Pipe on pink icing for Keroppi's cheeks. When the icing has dried, use a black food marker to draw Keroppi's eyes and mouth.

Note:

• The measurements for the ingredients is crucial. It is also important to whisk the egg whites and fold in the sugar/almond mixture correctly.
• The need to use aged egg whites is debatable, but you should at least use egg whites at room temperature. I usually separate them the night before, leave in a bowl covered with cling wrap at room temperature.
• Please ensure equipments are dry when beating egg whites, else you will have problem beating them till stiff peak.
• It is necessary to leave the batter to rest for at least half an hour before baking, this is for the macarons to form a shell on top.
• It's important to use a non-stick baking sheet, I usually bake mine on silpat mats.
• Macarons taste better the following day, so if you can wait, keep in fridge and eat them the next day.

Where to get same item used in today's post:

Keroppi Matcha Donuts

I've been busy baking the past two days for LT's birthday, according to what he requested. I did not plan well this year, ended up multi-tasking too much, and it was a mad rush to make his birthday food art. Hiaz, was rather unhappy with how it turned out, wished I had allocated more time to do it nicely. I'll share more next week when I update the post about his birthday.


I made a combination of baked matcha donuts and plain ones sometime back. I decorated one as Keroppi, it was a last minute idea and I did not have any suitable ingredients at home. I ended up using cheese, nori and ham but I would suggest using bananas, strawberries and chocolate instead, as they go better with these donuts.


Please click HERE for the donut recipe, I divided the batter in half and added in 2 teaspoon of matcha powder to one. The picture of the moulds I used can be found in this post HERE.


I should not have stacked them up like this, my boys said I made snake donuts, not Keroppi. :P


Here's a shot of the rest of the donuts in the other box. :) My boys had some for after dinner desserts and I kept the rest for them to bring to school for recess the following day. :)

Where to get same or similar items used in today's post

Boys Over Flowers Bento

If you are not a fan of Korean drama, you will probably have no idea about the bento I'm sharing today. The drama that inspired today's bento is the korean adaptation of the smashing hit "Boys Over Flowers". It's not a recent drama and not one I would recommend as must-watch even though it was very popular.


If you have watched the drama before, you might recall that Geum Jan-di (Ku Hye-sun) made two bento for Gu Jun-pyo ( Lee Min-ho). I chose to remake the second bento, the one they brought for their picnic.

I did not copy the contents of the original version entirely. I made seaweed tamago and veggie meat rolls which were also present in the original bento. I added on spicy korean chicken in the bento, made this for my boys' dinner but this is a bento I don't mind having, contains all my favourite food.


The hair was made using rice mixed with grinded black sesame. I used nori, sakura denbu and tomato for the facial details.

Where to get same or similar items used in today's post:

Piggy Butter Bread Roll

Ah....I've so many recipes waiting to be updated, I don't know which ones to choose. -_- I've been putting them off as they take longer to update.

 
Decided to update about these piggy butter bread roll first. Trying out a new recipe this time, it's a dinner butter roll recipe, with a crispy buttery crust. If you prefer, you can also substitute with any of your favourite bread buns recipe or use any of the previous bread recipes I shared before.


Piggy burger for dinner that night. :)


There's actually an eatery in Singapore selling similar piggy burgers, saw Honey Bee Sweets sharing about them on her Instagram account. She also baked piggy buns and turned them into piggy burgers, they looked so cute, I had to bake some too.


The teriyaki pork patty I made for the piggy burger.


I kept some piggy buns for breakfast the next day. This time, we had them with luncheon meat, egg and lettuce.


I used melted chocolate to draw the eyes. However, I had wanted to use raisins, but forgot to buy them. -_-

PIGGY BUTTER BREAD RECIPE

Ingredients:
Bread Flour 450g
Instant Yeast 14g
Warm milk 250ml
Sugar 2 tsp
Butter, room temperature 40g
Salt 1/2 tsp

Method:

1. Mix all the ingredients, except butter, in a large bowl to get a dough. Add in butter and knead until dough is springy and soft, this takes around 10 minutes. If you have a bread maker, you can just use the dough function for this step, as well as step 2.

2. Cover the dough with cling wrap and keep in a warm place for it to rise. This takes around an hour and the dough should double in size. 

3. Dust your work table with some flour, place dough on it. Punch out the air from the dough with your fist. 

4. Divide the dough into 6 portions. Roll them out and form them into balls. Cover with cling wrap and let the dough rest for 15 minutes.

5. Roll out bread dough and shape them, place them on a baking tray lined with parchment paper. Use one portion of the dough to shape piggy's ears and nostrils. 

6. Cover with cling wrap and let dough rise for 40 minutes.
7. At the end of 40 minutes, poke 2 holes on piggy's snout using a straw. If you are adding raisins for the eyes, you can do so at this step.
8. Brush bread with melted butter.

9. Bake at 180 degrees celcius for around 20 minutes or till they turn golden brown.

10. If you did not use raisins for the eyes, you can draw in the eyes using melted chocolate.