Star Wars Bento & Baguette

Star Wars are my boys' current favourites, thanks to The Force Awakens. These days all they watch are Star Wars related videos, so are the toys and video games they play. I'm not a Star Wars fan myself, but due to their obsession, I decided to make them some Star Wars themed food.


First up, I made this chibi Stormtrooper, ingredients used was just rice and nori. I also made a bb-8 out of quail eggs, nori and carrots.


Both the boys wanted their hands in the picture, lol. That's IT holding the bento, and LT holding the light saber bento picks.


I had placed the light saber picks in the bento, but my boys took them out because they said Stormtroopers do not use light sabres. -_-


Star Wars themed baguette, can you recognise the characters? I made Stormtrooper, Chewbacca, Princess Leia and Yoda. I wanted to make bb-8 and C-3PO, but was rushing that day, so I left them out eventually.


I was not even done making these, and my boys came over for a look and they could already guess the characters, shows how familiar they are with Star Wars now, lol.


It's fun to make and eat these, we usually have them for tea time, something to fill their tummies a little before dinner, as they are always asking for food to eat in the afternoon.


IT asked for a Star Wars cake for his birthday last month, and he chose this icing sheet. I did an awful job with the icing though, but the birthday boy did not seemed to notice when I showed him the cake, thank goodness, lol. I did not make a sushi cake for his birthday like I always did in previous year, because I remembered my lesson from last year, I did not want to rush again, this time, I just concentrated on making the birthday cake and cooking his favourite food.


I forgot to update about this, flowers my boys bought for my birthday last year. I'll probably take a photo of the cards they drew and update here for my own records too.


They bought the flowers in Japan, here's another picture of it with our favourite combini breakfast items, which we have for breakfast almost everyday there, my boys' onigiri, and my sandwich. My hubby's breakfast is missing, because he was actually having his breakfast on the go, while in the long queue to get the fast pass for my boys's favourite ride at Disneysea, lol. Yes, the ride is so popular that there is even a ridiculous long queue just to get a fast pass. -_-

Tsum Tsum Easter Food Art

I'm updating my Tsum Tsum Easter creations today. I want to get this done before Good Friday, as I'll "disappear" for the next few days to catch my K-drama, the new episodes I've been waiting for all week is finally coming again, lol. I did not managed to make much Easter creations this year, if you need more Easter ideas, you can check out all my past ones here.


The first Easter Tsum Tsum I made were these chiffon cakes. They are meant to look like Easter eggs.  I actually wanted to make a rice version of this too, but did not have time to work on it. Maybe next year, if I'm still into Tsum Tsum then.


I've no recipe to share for this as they did not turned out very well, I think I was a little too ambitious to make so many different designs and colours at one go, lol. Never mind, I'll try again next time, already have the next design in mind, I need to start collecting egg shells. -_-


The basic recipe I used is the same as the Gudetama chiffon cake recipe I shared earlier here, I just split the batter and colour them in different colours before folding in the egg white.


Tsum Tsum Pooh, Piglet, Tigger and Eeyore Easter eggs on bread cups. Here's the link to make the bread cups. This time I filled them with some minced pork curry.


The quail eggs were all coloured naturally, beetroot for Piglet, curry powder for Pooh, mixture of beetroot and curry powder for Tigger and mixture of beetroot and red cabbage for Eeyore. A little troublesome though, a faster way would be just to colour them using food colouring.


Ingredients used to make Pooh and friends were just nori and quail eggs.

Totoro Black Sesame German Cookie

One week of school holiday just flew by, have not accomplished anything much the past week, other than lazing around. I'm addicted to a new Korean drama after a long hiatus from watching any dramas, can't wait for it to be over, so my life can go back to normal, lol. (sounds ridiculous but it's true.) It's going to be busy the coming school term onwards, all the way till early October for IT, where he will be taking his first major examination. I hope he can take the stress and perform up to expectation, both from us and the school.


For today, I'm sharing these Totoro melt in your mouth cookies. This long overdue recipe is from last year. I made a few variation of german cookies and this one was one of them.


Totoro was coloured grey using black sesame and Susuwatarti (black soot) was coloured black using charcoal powder.


If you like black sesame, you will like this cookie. However, if you don't, I suggest you colour the dough grey using charcoal powder or black colouring instead, so you won't get the taste of black sesame. IT likes the cookies but LT prefers the plain version, without black sesame.


If you can't get hold of charcoal powder, you can replace with dark cocoa powder or black colouring.

TOTORO GERMAN COOKIE RECIPE

Ingredients:
125g butter
50g icing sugar, sifted
125g potato starch
80g cake flour
1 tbsp toasted grounded black sesame
1 tsp charcoal powder

Method:

1. Beat butter and icing sugar till light and fluffy.

2. Sift in potato starch and flour, mix till a soft dough is formed.

3. Divide dough into 3 portions, around 300g, 50g and 20g. Colour 300g of it using black sesame. Colour 20g of it using charcoal powder. Leave the 50g plain. Wrap the dough separately with cling wrap and refrigerate for half an hour.

4. Take the grey dough, mould into balls and flatten them a little.

5. Take the grey dough dough and roll into two small balls, flatten them a little into ovals and place on the top of the cookie.

6. Use white dough to mould out Totoro's eyes and tummy.

7. Add water to the black dough a little at a time till you get a paste that you can use to draw. Fill in a pipping bag and pipe out Totoro's eyes.

8. Pipe out the inverted "V" on Totoro's tummies.

9. Bake cookies at 140 degrees celcius for around 20 minutes. To prevent cracking, please place at the middle to low rack and insert an empty tray above it. 

Gudetama Easter Chiffon Cake

We are having a one week school break next week, I'm always happy to turn my alarm off, lol. I probably won't be making much cute food next week, I hope I still have time to make more Easter creations when school starts again, but meanwhile, you can check out my past Easter creations over here.


The first Easter creation I made this year are these Gudetama chiffon cakes. This silly egg is still one of my favourite character, lol.


They were baked in egg shells. The troublesome part of this recipe for me is to collect the egg shells, I can only bake these after I've collected enough egg shells.


I like the light airy texture of chiffon cakes, they are also healthier than the usual cakes as well.


These are lemon chiffon cake, if you want to make plain ones, just substitute the lemon juice in my recipe with milk or water, and lemon zest with vanilla extract.


You will need a little yellow food gel colouring, so that the cakes turn out yellow in the end, else they will turn out white instead. Alternatively, you can replace food gel with lemon or orange emulco, if you prefer.

GUDETAMA LEMON MINI CHIFFON CAKE RECIPE

Ingredients:
(A)
2 egg yolks
30ml lemon juice
30ml canola oil
15g sugar
40g cake flour
pinch of salt
1 tsp lemon zest
yellow food gel colouring

(B)
3 egg whites
1/8 tsp cream of tartar
35g sugar

melted chocolate
12 egg shells

Method:

1. Prepare egg shells by using a spoon to gently crack the narrow end of the egg, make a hole and drain the contents. Remove the white membrane inside the egg. 

2. Prepare (A), whisk egg yolk and sugar together till sugar melts.

3. Add in lemon juice, oil, salt and lemon zest and mix well.

4. Sift in cake flour and mix well.

5. Add in yellow food gel colouring using a toothpick, mix well,  make sure the colour is a shade or two darker than the eventual colour you want, as the batter will be lighter after mixing in (B). Set aside.

6. Prepare (B), whisk egg white with cream of tartar for 1 minute, then gradually pour in sugar and continue to whisk till firm peaks.

7. Gently fold mixture (B) into (A) one third at a time. 

8. Place egg shells in cupcake cases, so that they can stand upright. Fill 12 egg shells with batter till around 2/3 full. Pour the remaining batter into muffin cups or mould (these will be used to cut out Gudetama limbs). Bake at 150C for 15minutes or when a skewer inserted comes out clean.


9. Let cakes cool down completely before cracking and peeling off the egg shell slowly.

10. Remove cake from mould and use knife to slice out the cake, then use a pair of scissors to cut out Gudetama limbs and attach on using some melted white chocolate. Use melted dark chocolate to draw on Gudetama's features. 

Totoro toast & pizza

I'm sorry for the lack of updates these two weeks, been rather busy, so I'm tired to update the blog at night. I will try to update at least another post next week, there's a tutorial for Easter I'm hoping to share soon.


I was looking through my old photos today and found so many creations I've yet to share on the blog, finally decided to choose some of my Totoro creations for this post.


This totoro toast is very simple to make, I toasted multi grained bread, and then spread on some cream cheese for Totoro's tummy. The other ingredients used were cheese, cucumbers, olives and almond.


I also made some fruit sandwiches for my boys to eat. I've been seeing these on various Japanese Instagram accounts. They look so pretty and yummy, I've always wanted to try them out.


These are actually Totoro pizzas, but made out of bread, instead of pizza dough.


I spread on some ketchup on bread before layering them with salami slices and cheese. The details were done using green bell peppers and olives.


These can be made in advance and then lightly toasted just before serving.


Totoro nutella banana toast to end today's post. I sandwiched nutella and banana with two slices of toasted bread, this combi taste surprisingly good together. :)