Wagashi and Mashed Potato Duck

Thank you very much to all those of you who emailed to ask about my upcoming book. Sorry for not talking about the book earlier, I started working on it in June, as I'm working on it slowly, I was hoping to wait until I submit the manuscript before talking about it online. However, due to the interviews, the news came out earlier. Just to share a bit about it for now. The book is a bento cookbook, with lots of bentos and food recipes, and all bentos come with step-by-step photos. It is estimated to be out in US in fall next year, I'll update more in due course. :)

I started making Halloween bentos this week, but I'll only be updating them next week. Meanwhile, if you need ideas for Halloween bentos, you can click HERE to check out those I made previously, I've plenty of old Halloween bentos.


The duck sitting on top of the mini pancakes stack is a type of wagashi ( traditional Japanese sweets), I made it using white bean paste and shiratama flour.


I won't be sharing the recipe for this, as you can't get white bean paste here. I've not seen it being sold here, if you know where to get it in Singapore, please let me know.


However, you can easily create these ducks using mashed potatoes, and I'll be sharing how to make them in this post.


The mashed potatoes ducks are sitting on ham and egg mayo sandwiches, and there's also prawn salad packed in the bento.

Please continue on for the detailed tutorial on how to make these.


Finally, the mashed potato tutorial I promised. Sorry for taking so long to get it done. First, peel potato, chop into small pieces and steam for around 10 to 15 minutes or till soft.


Mash them up with a fork or potato masher. I usually add a pinch of salt and half a teaspoon of butter so that it taste better. Please do not add too much butter, and please do not add milk.


You can colour the mixture using gel colours. To make the duck, I divided the mashed potato and coloured them yellow and orange.


To make the duck, roll yellow mashed potato into 2 balls, one slightly bigger than the other, using the palms of your hands.


Take the bigger ball, flatten the front a little and mould out the duck's tail at the back.


Place the small ball on top.


Take a bit of orange mashed potato, mould out the duck's bill and mould it onto the duck.


Punch out a circle from nori, using a hole puncher. You can stop at this step.


Or you can get some yellow mashed potato and mould on the duck's wings.


I chose this duck to demonstrate the step-by-step as it's very easy to make, but you can use this same method to mould into other things you fancy. You can also use sweet potatoes and purple potatoes. You can even fill it in a pipping bag with a pipping tip and use it to pipe on designs for sushi cake. :)