Gudetama Pull-Apart Bread Bun Recipe

I meant to update this last week, but I fell sick again. -_- This time it was a bad cough, had difficulty breathing and could not sleep the entire night, as the breathlessness becomes worse when I lay down. In the end, I gave up and woke up at 4am to iron clothes, very random, lol, there was a huge pile waiting for me to clear anyway, so I thought I might as well make better use of my time since I can't sleep.

I went off to see the doctor after the clinic was open and doctor said it was bronchitis, put me on the nebuliser and sent me home with lots of medicine. Seeing the nebuliser reminded me of my boys when they were babies/toddlers, I remembered carrying my boys and administering it for them and they would always cry without fail. I have never used the nebuliser myself before this, and always wondered why they cried, I guess it was due the noise because there really isn't anything uncomfy about it. And the roles were reversed now, as my hubby instructed my boys to help me hold the mask, I shooed them away after a while because I had no problem handling it myself, lol. I'm a lot better by now, almost recovered,  I don't want to fall sick anymore, my trip is coming soon.

I know some of you are waiting for this recipe. I'm sorry I took so long with the recipe for these Gudetmama pull-apart bread buns, thank you for your patience. The reason was because I was playing around with a new recipe when I made this, and I needed another round to try and take down the measurements and steps.


This has got to be one of my favourite pull-apart buns designs, along with the Totoro and Baymax ring ones which I did much earlier.


The yellow portion is done by mixing in steamed mashed pumpkin. Please choose those with a more yellowish flesh, so the colour of the dough won't turn out too orange.


The benefit about pull-apart buns is that they stay soft and fresh longer because there is less exposed surface area.


This lazy egg is just too cute, hope you have fun making him.

GUDETAMA PULL-APART BREAD BUN RECIPE

Ingredients:
500g bread flour
2 tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt
50g butter, at room temperature
1 tsp instant yeast
375g milk
50g steamed mashed pumpkin
8g butter, at room temperature
Pan-fried bacon
Black food marker

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. Do a finger test to check if it's ready.

3. Take dough out and punch out the air from the dough with your fist. 

4. Cut out around 100g of dough and mix with 50g of steamed mashed pumpkin and 8g of butter. Knead till the colours are even, you can add in a little bread flour if it is too sticky while you are working on it. When it's done, roll it out and form into a ball. Cover with a damp cloth or cling wrap and set aside for 15 minutes. 

5. Using the plain dough, roll out the 16 portions of 50g, one at a time and form them into balls. Cover with a damp cloth or cling wrap and set aside for 15 minutes.

6. Roll out the white dough of 50g each, one at a time and form them into balls. Grease a 20cm square tin, and place them inside. At this point, there will still be space, as the dough will double in size after proofing. 

7. Using the yellow pumpkin dough, shape into 16 Gudetama and place on top of the white dough, use a little water to "stick" if needed.  You can do them in different variations like what  I did. Cover with cling wrap or damp cloth and let the dough proof for 40 minutes. Preheat oven to 190 degrees celcius and turn down to 140 degrees celcius. Place the tray at the middle rack and back for around 15 minutes. After 5 minutes of baking, cover the bread using aluminium foil.

8. After the bread has cooled down, place bacon blanket on some of the Gudetama, you can use pasta sticks to secure them if needed. Draw on the features using a black food marker.

Inside out Bing Bong & Joy

A little overdue in posting this on my blog. After we caught the movie Inside out, the character that left the most impression on me was not any of Ripley's emotions, but Bing Bong. Bing Bong is an imaginary friend of Ripley, he sacrificed himself in the end, I know it's very typical Disney movie style but I still could not help crying.


There you go, Bing Bong bento I made after I watched the movie. I had made the emotions Sadness and Anger before I caught the movie, they can be found here.

Bing Bong was made using rice coloured with pink sushi seasoning. Other ingredients used were cheese, ham, nori, lettuce and red cabbage. I used a hat cupcake topper on him.


Also packed a fast chicken and bell peppers stir fry and tamagoyaki in this bento.


I also made the emotion Joy, which I don't really like, I find her rather useless and selfish towards the end,lol. The emotions I liked best was Sadness, she was a little irritating at first, but I still find her cute and I liked how she was able to empathise for others.


I'm not too happy with how Joy turned out though, I know it does not really resembles her, was rushing that day and don't have time to alter. I don't think I will be remaking this again though.


Ingredients used to make Joy were rice(coloured with some ketchup), somen and ham dyed blue in butterfly/blue pea flower water cheese and tomatoes.

Pray for Paris Baguette

I'm sure everyone knows about the terror attacks in Paris by now. I really cannot understand this cold blooded murder of our fellow human beings and their idea of peace through taking innocent lives. I'm not good at writing, so I won't go on. The only thing I want to say is that Terrorism is not a religion, these extremists are just cowards using religion as an excuse for their actions. The real Muslims around us are all peace loving and would not condone such acts too. 
I made a #prayforparis food art here, but I'm not implying that only Paris needs our prayers. I mean pray for world peace in general because there are just too many crisis unfolding across the world. I made a Paris themed one, because the event just happened.


The choice of baguette for the food art was intentional, since it is one of the symbols of French culture. Other symbols for France I chose were their flag, Eiffel Tower and a girl wearing a beret.


Paris is such a beautiful city. I visited Paris almost around 15 years ago, still remembered getting all excited over all the famous landmarks. Hope to visit again with my boys in the near future.

Gudetama Burger & Hotpot

It's been so so long since I last had a fever, I've forgotten how bad it felt. I now remember again because I was down with fever on wednesday, no idea what the cause was, my guess is either a virus or food poisoning. I was practically in bed the entire day, only getting up to cook and send/fetch my boys to/from school. At times like this, I'm happy my boys are no longer babies or toddlers and can look after themselves. IT was fine but LT caught the same virus too, as he had exactly the same symptoms as me. He was feverish at school but did not call for me to pick him up as he wasn't sure if he was running a fever. Silly boy, he must have felt terrible in school, he just laid on the floor once he entered the house, he said he had no more energy to move. We are both fully recovered today, really feels good to be well again, because there are so much stuff at home waiting to be done.


More Gudetama food art from my archive to share. I can't stop making him, lol. I still have more ideas, which I'm trying to space out, else my whole feed will just be on Gudetama.


This is a ramen burger, the usual burger buns are replaced by ramen instead. Gudetama is made just by cutting and placing nori on a sunny side-up. The white portion for his mouth is a white blob on the egg yolk, it wasn't intentional, it just happened to be there, so I tried to position the mouth there.


The only problem with ramen burger is it does not taste good when cold, you have to serve it soon after cooking, so the ramen will be crispy outside and soft inside.


Gudetama in a hotpot, hotpot is one of my favourite one dish meal, just throw everything inside one pot, not much washing up too.


Gudetama was made from grated radish, the yellow portion is radish mixed with a little mashed egg yolk. The egg shell is just an empty egg shell, which I washed and put it there to take a photo, I removed it before boiling the hotpot.


Yay, Gudetama will be happy it's weekends again. Time for me to catch up on my sleep. And I hope you have a great weekend!

Peanuts Baguette & Snoopy Curry

The Peanuts Movie has just been released in US. It's only coming to cinemas in Singapore in December. We'll be away for 2 weeks in December, looks like we have to wait till we are back to catch the movie. I've some charaben inspiration from the movie trailers and posters, but yet to find time to craft my ideas out. Not sure if I've time before I leave for my holidays as I still have some commissioned work to clear, if I don't, I'll definitely work on them after I'm back.


Meanwhile, I'm going to share two of my earlier Peanuts themed food art instead. Snoopy and friends baguette, which one do you like?


Love eating these bite sized baguette with various toppings, I actually don't know what to call them, as I'm not sure if they can be called Bruschetta. To make these, I toasted the sliced baguette first, before I place the different toppings on it.


It's quite fun making the characters out of the various ingredients. I love how they turned out, especially Lucy Van Pelt and Peppermint Patty, I used bacon and caviar for their hair respectively. All of them tasted really good too, lol.


Snoopy soaking in Japanese pork curry. Both my boys love Japanese curry, and it's quite easy to cook too. I used thinly sliced pork meant for shabu shabu for this.


Snoopy was made out or rice, nori and olive. Can you spot woodstock on top of snoopy's head? Woodstock was made out of mashed potato mixed with egg yolk.


I'm trying to eat less for dinner, and now I feel so hungry looking at this curry, I better go and sleep soon, lol. Good night. :)

Pooh Bear Pumpkin Pull-Apart Bread

Happy weekends! My boys have gotten all their exams results back, the teachers are really efficient, lol. LT did fine, still plenty of room for improvements, but I think he still did better than IT's Primary 2 results overall, will have to wait for their report books to know. IT did well, he practically improve by leaps and bounds in English, he now has a distinction in English as well, along with Science and Maths. This is definitely no effort of mine, as I've always struggled and is still struggling with English, lol. This is all thanks to his English teacher this year, she is really good, very strict and teaches really well, we are both hoping she will follow the class up next year. He did improve on his Chinese as well, but not good enough for a distinction, it's still an A grade, never mind though, it's good enough for me. This round, I got him to do the bulk of the revisions without my supervision as well, I was a little worried at first for taking this risk, but thank goodness, his results turn out well. I hope he can keep it up next year.


I'm sharing another chigiri pan, or pull-apart bun recipe for today. This time I shaped them into Pooh Bear. I used mashed pumpkin to colour the dough and I was quite surprised with the lovely orange colour, no food colouring was used at all. I used the Japanese pumpkin which has a more vibrant orangey flesh.

And this is a slight variation of the previous pull-apart buns recipe I shared before. I shaped one of it as a full sized Pooh, strawberry jam was used for his shirt. The buns were filled with pumpkin fillings, I like the fillings, it has a nice buttery flavour and is not too sweet.


Not sure if you can tell, but I actually overturned the pan while removing it from the oven. I really have butter fingers, hiaz. Some parts broke apart, but I managed to place them back together on the tray.


One of this is not like the other, spot the difference. Pooh is wearing a sleeveless shirt here, lol. This is the initial version, then I thought he looked a little funny and realised he was missing his sleeves. But now looking at the photo, I think this sleeveless version with his chubby arms is rather cute too,


If you do not like pumpkin fillings, you can change it to chocolate, custard, etc. You can also leave out the fillings.

POOH BEAR PUMPKIN PULL-APART BREAD BUN RECIPE

Ingredients:

Bread dough:
250g bread flour
20g caster sugar
1 tsp salt
3g instant yeast (about 1 teaspoon)
120ml milk
100g mashed pumpkin
25g unsalted butter
Melted chocolate
Strawberry jam

Fillings:
300g mashed pumpkin
30g sugar
30g unsalted butter

Method:

1. To make filling, pan fry mashed pumpkin in a pan till fairly dry. Add in butter and sugar and pan fry till well mixed. Dish up and leave to cool. Do not add in the butter and sugar too early as it will cause the mixture to burn easily. Divide into 10 portions and set aside.
2. 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.

3. 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. Do a finger test to check if it's ready.

4. Take dough out and punch out the air from the dough with your fist. 

5. Divide the dough into 11 portions. Roll them out and form them into balls. Cover with cling wrap and let the dough rest for 15 minutes.

6. On a lightly floured work surface, roll each dough into a round disc. Press out any trapped air as you flatten the dough. Wrap each dough with pumpkin filling. Pinch and seal the seam tightly. Do this for the 10 portions of dough. Place 9 portions in a lightly greased baking tin. At this point, there will still be space, as the dough will double in size after proofing. Place the last dough with pumpkin fillings on top of one of the bread dough in the tin, we will be making one full size Pooh. Pinch off dough from the last portion and shape into ears for Pooh, also shape out hands and legs for the full size Pooh. Cover with cling wrap and let the dough proof for 40 minutes.

7. Preheat Oven at 200C. Lower the heat to around 150C and bake the bread for 17mins at the middle to lower rack. Once the bread starts showing signs of browning, cover the bread  with aluminium foil to prevent over browning.

8. After the bread has cooled down, use chocolate to draw on the details. Spread on some strawberry jam for Pooh's shirt.

Rilakkuma Burger & Toast

I was so busy the past few days with chores, I did not have time to blog. -_- Exams are finally over, can't wait for the holidays, we are going to Hogsmeade for maybe half a day, lol. I'll have to start planning the rest of the itinerary soon. :)


It's been quite sometime since I last shared about Rilakkuma. He used to be my favourite to craft, along with Totoro, but these days, Gudetama seems to be taking over his position.


Rilakkuma, Korilakuma and Kiiroitori burger set but none of them were made out of burger buns. Rilakkuma was made out of rice, Korilakkuma was made out of chicken egg and Kiiroitori was made out of quail egg.


I was actually rushing to get this done before fetching LT from school that day, could not make it in time, so I left out the blush on Kiiroitori. I ended up being late by just a minute that day and LT was a little upset and told me not to do it again, lol. I've to manage my time better so this will not happen again.


This was my brunch, I have this bad habit of skipping breakfast on weekdays. I know I should not but I'm always busy doing chores and cooking lunch in the morning, I always end up eating only at lunch.


Rilakkuma was made out of bread, cheese, nori and ham. Kiiroitori was made from scrambled eggs, carrot, nori and ham.


I ate this with sausages, tomatoes and wasabi sprouts. I'm in love with wasabi sprouts lately, it has this light spicy taste and it is now a regular item in my grocery bag every week.