Hedgehog Pork Floss Bread Bun

Hola!! It's been a while again. When I was blogging regularly, I used to think it would be so hard for me to stop this routine of mine, it was the norm for me to turn on my computer then after my boys have gone to bed. I don't know why exactly I stopped doing so, I guess I just got lazy along the way. The me now find it hard to imagine why I can find the energy to stay up to blog then, I would now much rather go to bed early or do other stuff instead. And once I stopped this routine, it's so difficult to blog again. I doubt I will ever go back to blogging regularly again, but I do hope I can drop by at times to share some recipes. Meanwhile, I'm still sharing my creations over at Instagram, not as active as I used to be too, but I still update there weekly. And please don't ask me questions using comments on the blog, I don't check that anymore. -_- You can email me instead, I'll reply (sometimes a little slow) unless it ends up in the junk mail.

Just some updates that I've been meaning to jot down on the blog at the beginning of the year, they are more for myself, I guess. The last week of 2016 actually ended very badly for me. :( Something I dreaded/hate had to come true, it's something I won't be able to forget for the rest of my life, the many doubts I have won't ever be cleared up. I'm not going into any more details, but I am trying to move on, much as I want to, I know I won't be able to forget the hurt and pain, but I will move on, and I have to move on.

2016 also marks the end of a chapter in making bentos for IT, he has moved on to secondary school this year, and I finally stopped packing bentos for him. He was the reason I started on making charabens, it has been a good 6 years of packing bentos for him. I never expected to last that long, since bringing bentos is not common here, I'm really grateful he has never asked to stop and rejected bringing them all these years. He has been doing well in secondary school so far, it's not the school he thought he would be going initially, but I guess it turns out to be a blessing in disguise. He is happy at the school, and since hours are so much longer now, he is thankful for the close proximity. He even gets to come home for lunch on some days before going for CCA.

Enough updates for now, it's getting too lengthy. Let's go on to the recipe for these pork floss hedgehog bread buns I did a while back. I made two designs, pull-apart ones and bread rolls. The recipe is for the pull-apart ones, but you can also use them for the bread rolls, the design for bread rolls are easier, as I skipped the limbs.

These were my second batch, as I did not bothered to take step-by-step photos for my first batch. I liked how the first batch turned out, so I decided to make them again, so I can take those photos.


I've been using this modified version of a pull-apart bun recipe I found on Cookpad. I quite like it so it has been my to-go recipe for pull-apart bread buns, it works quite well when you need to have different coloured bread rolls for your pull-apart bread bun's designs too. You just need to portion your dough and colour them prior to proofing.


This one was from my first batch. The bread buns are a little brown here. I experimented with having the bread buns white in my second attempt. I can't decide which version I prefer. The recipe below is for the white version, if you prefer them a little brown, just up the temperature by 10 degrees celcius and don't bother covering with aluminium foil.


Pork floss can be replaced by chicken or fish floss is you don't take pork. :) And if you are from Singapore, chocolate pens can now be found at Daiso. Yay, I don't have to stock them up whenever I go Japan anymore. :)

HEDGEHOG PORK FLOSS PULL-APART BREAD BUN RECIPE

Ingredients:
200g bread flour
1 tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt
5g corn syrup
10g unsalted butter, at room temperature
5g instant yeast
140g milk
Pork Floss
Baked/fried pasta sticks
Chocolate chips
Chocolate pen(optional)
Pink food marker(optional)

Mayonnaise coating:
- 3 tbsp condensed milk
- 9 tbsp japanese mayonnaise
- 1 tbsp corn syrup

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. Using the plain dough, roll out 13 portions of dough around 25g each, one at a time and form them into balls. Cover with a damp cloth or cling wrap and set aside for 5 minutes.

5. Roll out the 12 portions (the remaining 1 portion is for the limbs) of dough again, one at a time and form them into balls. Grease two 4in round pan, place an overturned ramekin in the centre of each. (I only used 1 pan in the picture, I used the rest for other designs) Arrange 6 dough in each pan. At this point, there will still be space, as the dough will expand in size. Cover with cling wrap or damp cloth and let the dough proof for 40 minutes.


6. Using the last dough, shape into hedgehog's limbs. Cover with cling wrap or damp cloth and let the dough proof for 40 minutes. Preheat oven to 180 degrees celcius, for the bread rolls, bake for 5 minutes. Turn down to 140 degrees celcius and bake for 20 minutes, cover with aluminium foil in the last 10 minutes.  For the hedgehog limbs, just bake at 140 degrees celcius for 10 minutes.

7. While the bread is cooling down, prepare mayonnaise mixture by whisking all ingredients together. Spread on mixture generously on the parts you want the pork floss to be on. Top on the pork floss.


8. Use baked pasta sticks to poke in hedgehog's limbs. Use chocolate pen to draw on the features, I used a chocolate chip for the nose. If you do not have a chocolate pen, melt the chocolate chips and use a toothpick to dip in to draw. Use a pink food maker to draw on the blush.

Hello Kitty & Friends Donuts

PHello!! I'm finally back to dust off the cobwebs from this space, lol. Sorry for the long hiatus, I don't really know why, was just feeling lazy after exams were over, just not motivated to switch on my laptop to update my blog. -_-


If you have been following my Instagram, you might have seen these Hello Kitty donuts I made last year. I am finally going to update the recipe for these in today's post, sorry for the long wait.


These donuts are baked, so the texture would be similar to cakes instead.


I happened to have matchy Hello Kitty nails that day. Sadly, my pretty nails can never last past a few days, due to all the housework I do. :(


I also went on to make Hello Kitty friends, Keroppi, Pompompurin and my melody on another day.


These batch was rather messy though, as I had some problem with the chocolate consistency.


I thought I'll share this Hello Kitty milkshake in this post as well, since there is a donut on it. I made this to share with my boys after their exams. I've seen lots of version of this ultimate milkshake and thought I'll try to recreate it.


There's strawberries blended with vanilla ice-cream and milk in the glass. I frosted part of the glass with white chocolate and sprinklers. For the layers on top, I added donut, Kit Kat, Pocky, Hello Kitty and bow chocolates. This was quite fun to make and fun to share, definitely would be too much for one person to finish this.


I used the Morinaga pancake mix for this recipe. If you can't get hold of them, you can use this old recipe of mine over here instead.

HELLO KITTY DONUT RECIPE

Ingredients:
150g Monrinaga pancake mix
100ml soya milk/milk
1 egg
3 tbsp honey
10g cold pressed coconut oil/vegetable oil/melted butter
Almonds
White chocolate
Pink chocolate/Wilton pink icing colouring
Chocolate
Yellow Chocolate/Wilton yellow icing colouring

Method:

1. Put pancake mix, soya milk, egg, honey and coconut oil in a bowl and mix until all the ingredients are evenly distributed. 

2. Lightly grease donut pan with vegetable oil. Spoon mixture into donut mould till around 80% full. Bake in preheated oven at 180C for 15 minutes.

3. Remove from mould and leave it to cool down fully.


4. Using a knife, make slits on top of the donut, just enough for you to insert the almonds for the ears.

5. Melt white chocolate either over a hot water bath or in a microwave.

6. Dip the almonds in white chocolate before placing them back in the slits. Dip the donut in white chocolate. If you find your almonds dropping when you turn over the donut to dip it in the chocolate, you can scoop the chocolate over the donut to coat it instead. 

7. Draw on Hello Kitty's nose using yellow chocolate. If you can't get hold of this, add on a yellow icing colouring to white chocolate to colour it yellow. Draw on the rest of the features using chocolate. 

8. You will need a ribbon mould to make Hello Kitty mould. Alternatively, you can also use two heart shaped sprinklers to form the bow. Melt pink chocolate, pour into the mould and leave it to set in the fridge before removing. If you can't get hold of pink chocolate, add on a pink icing colouring to white chocolate to colour it pink. 

Totoro Chiffon Cake Pop

Sorry for the lack of updates, quite slack these days, because I don't feel like turning on my laptop to blog at night. -_- I'm finally going to update another overdue recipe today, Totoro chiffon cake pops. Sorry, keep putting it off as I'm lazy to edit the photos and type out the recipe.


There you go, here's how they look like, quite happy with how they turned out. The way to make this is quite similar to the Gudetama Easter chiffon cake I've shared earlier.

I used charcoal powder to colour the batter grey. If you can't get hold of it, you can also use black food colouring or grinded black sesame to substitute.


Here's a closer look at how they look. Quite fun to eat them this way, and I also like that chiffon cakes are lighter and healthier than the usual cakes.


I used fried pasta sticks to attach on Totoro's ears, if you do not want to do this, you can also make a slit on the cake to insert in the ears.

TOTORO CHIFFON CAKE POP RECIPE

Ingredients:
(A)
2 egg yolks
30ml milk
30ml canola oil
15g sugar
60g cake flour
Pinch of salt
1 tsp vanilla essence
Charcoal powder

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

melted chocolate
fried pasta sticks
8 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 vanilla essence, oil, milk and salt and mix well.

4. Sift in cake flour and mix well.

5. Scoop out 5 tsp of batter into another bowl and leave it plain (A1), set aside. Add black charcoal powder to the remaining batter, half a tsp at a time, till you get a dark grey batter (A2). 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. Scoop out 10 tbsp of mixture (B), gently fold into mixture (A1). 

8. Pour batter into muffin cups or mould. Bake at 150C for 15minutes or when a skewer inserted comes out clean.


9. Fold the remaining mixture (B) into mixture (A2) gently. 

10. Fill into egg shells till around 2/3 full. Bake at 150C for 15minutes or when a skewer inserted comes out clean.

11. Let cakes cool down completely before cracking and peeling off the egg shell slowly and removing them from the mould. Slice off the bottom of the cake to flatten them, keep the sliced off portion for step 13.

12. Slice out the white cake and cut out circles using cutter.

13. Using the sliced out portion from step 11, cut out ears using a cutter or a pair of scissors. 

14. Attach on the eyes and tummy using some melted white chocolate. Attach on the ears using fried pasta stick. Use melted dark chocolate to draw on Totoro's features. You can serve them standing on a plate or insert a cake pop stick to them.