Instagram Soba & Steam Cake

I have been rather inactive on social medias in recent years, namely Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Instagram. I hardly check Facebook unless someone tags or messages me. I only share links to my new blog post on Twitter and Google+, I don't check them at all. I am slightly more active on Instagram, as I love looking at photos, but I don't check it very often as well.


An Instagram food art has been on my to-do list for a long time. I've always wanted to do a bread and rice version, but I've seen plenty of those around, so I decided to do the Instagram logo using soba instead.


As usual, soba is served cold, with a dipping sauce. I air-fried some wings for the sides, just rubbed on some sea-salt and cajun seasoning before dumping them in the fryer.


I used a mix of soba and somen here, the other details were done using nori, cheese, capsicum and purple cabbage.


I've been experimenting with one of my steam cake recipe that does not use pancake mix. This was one of the cakes I made using that recipe. I've updated the recipe and post, please click HERE to see.


I won't be sharing the recipe for this, as it's not nicely done, I added on too much cocoa powder for the brown batter and too much charcoal powder for the black batter.

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

Dream High Bento

I've been watching lots of Korean dramas recently, I love quite a few that are currently airing. For today, I'm sharing a bento, inspired by a older drama, Dream High. I've to admit I was quite apprehensive about watching Dream High, as it's not the usual genre that I fancy. The only reason why I watched it was because I like the main actor, Kim Soo-hyun. However, I ended up liking the drama. quite an engaging show with a satisfying ending.


If you have seen the drama, this scene I made was the one of Sam-Dong sending Hye-Mi off to Seoul. I love how this scene appears again in the ending, but in the opposite way, with Hye-Mi sending Sam-Dong off to US. I chose to make the earlier scene, instead of the later one, because I like   Sam-Dong with his curly hair.


The side dishes were Korean spicy chicken wings and  Korean pancakes. Lol, a Korean drama bento needs Korean side dishes. Ingredients used to make the two characters were rice, abura-age, charcoal noodles, egg sheet and nori.


Apologies if you are not familiar about Korean drama and have no idea what I'm talking about in this post. Just treat this as a Valentine's Day bento, lol.

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

Totoro Butter Cookie

Do you still remember the Rilakkuma butter cookies recipe I shared earlier? You can click HERE to check out that post if you missed it. The Totoro cookies in this post were made using the same recipe. The basic recipe is the same, but I've updated the recipe here with steps on how to cut out the Totoro cookies.


These were all the cookies that I could used for photo taking, lol. I actually baked much more in my first tray, but LT was fussing that day, I totally forgot about the cookies after attending to him. By the time I remembered, the cookies were burnt. -_- I''m so absent-minded these days, hiaz.


You can see my first tray of cookies in the recipe pictures below, that was the tray that got burnt. :(


You do not need a cutter to cut out these cookies and you can easily modify this method to create whatever cookies design you like.

TOTORO COOKIES RECIPE

Ingredients:
237g plain flour/cake flour
3g cocoa powder
100g unsalted butter, softened at room temperature
100g fine castor sugar
pinch of salt
2 egg yolks
Wilton blue colouring gel

Method:

1. Cream butter and sugar till it turns pale and fluffy, adding in the sugar in 3 additions.

2. Add in egg yolk and mix well. Weigh and divide the mixture into 3 portions of 150g, 80g and 10g.

3. Divide plain flour in portions of 150g, 80g and 7g.

4. Sift in 150g of plain flour to 150g of the mixture in step 2, mix well till a dough is formed. Add in some Wilton blue colouring gel using a toothpick. This will be the blue coloured dough. Sift in 80g of plain flour to 80g of the mixture in step 2, mix well till a dough is formed. Sift in 7g of plain flour and 3g of cocoa powder to 10g of the mixture in step 2. Mix well till a dough is formed, this will be the chocolate coloured dough. Wrap the dough using cling wrap and refrigerate for half and hour.

5. Sketch/trace out Totoro on baking paper and cut it out, this will be your template to cut out the cookies. Remove dough from fridge, roll out the blue dough between 2 pieces of parchment paper. Keep rolling till the dough becomes softer. Place cut out template on blue dough, use a knife to cut out the dough.

6. Roll out the plain coloured dough and cut out oval for the tummy. If you do not have a cutter, you can use knife to cut out the dough.

7. Using your hands, mould eyes and nose using the plain and chocolate coloured dough.

8. Using your hands, mould out the inverted V on Totoro's tummy from blue coloured dough. Line tray with baking paper and bake at 170 degrees celcius for around 15 minutes.

9. After the cookies have cooled down, you can add in the details using black food marker or chocolate pen.

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

One Piece Luffy Seaweed Bento

My boys used to be quite crazy over the anime, One Piece last year. The craze has died down a little this year, and I don't see them watching One Piece as often now. We brought them to J-WORLD in Tokyo for a visit last year. J-WORLD is an indoor theme park by Namco, it's based on popular manga characters like One Piece, Dragonball and Naruto. My boys actually asked for a Dragonball bento when we came back, I've yet to get that done, oops. -_- I ended up making Luffy from One Piece instead.


This Luffy bento was made while I was doing examinations revisions with IT in May. Speaking of exams, my boys exams are coming again soon, not so many topics covered this round, so revisions will be much easier.


Luffy is just seaweed, which I cut out using a pair of scissors, and placed it on a slice of cheese. Sunny is made using hard boiled egg, cheese, carrots and nori.


The side dishes were carrot meat patties and stir-fried pea sprouts with mushrooms.


Sharing some food photos I took at J-WORLD. Even though my boys had a great time there, I won't exactly recommend the theme park, unless you are a manga fan. The entrance fees were cheap, but they charge for every ride. The theme park is also rather small, not worth making a special trip down. However, Sunshine City, where the theme park is located in, is a great place to shop.


Some of the food we ordered, taste wise was just so-so, not fantastic, but not horrible either.


If you are heading there, do try the giant takoyaki outside Sunshine City. My boys are huge fan of takoyaki, it's our second time eating trying this stall, love this twist to the usual takoyaki. :)

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

Cuddle Palz Hamster & Tiger

Have you joined my CuteZCute Cuddle Palz giveaway on Instagram? It's closing after today, if you would like to take part, you can still click HERE to join now. The Cuddle Palz cutter is so easy to use, I made quite a few creations using it. I'll share two in this post and I'll leave the rest for future posts, don't wanna squeeze too many photos in one post.


The next animal I tried out using Cuddle Palz was the hamster. She has heart shaped ears, how adorable.


Did not take much effort to make this bento box, I merely added on a bow for the cutie hamster, and cut out 2 ovals from ham using the eyes of the tiger cutter.


This snack box was filled with grapes, strawberries, lettuce and chicken tsukune.


This was a last minute idea, I had cooked tomato soup that day, so I thought I should just add in a quick decor using the Cuddle Palz.


I chose the tiger cutter, used it to cut out the wrap and toasted it in the oven for a while before placing on the soup. I hope you like these two kawaii animals from Cuddle Palz, have a good weekend! :)

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