Totoro Soba & Puff Pastry Soup

This is the second time I'm making Totoro Soba. My first one was made in 2013, inspired by the Totoro soba that went viral online. After that, I went on to use noodles to make many different food art. This time, I'm remaking Totoro again using my homemade black sesame noodles.


My black sesame noodles recipe probably need a little tweaking, added a little too much black sesame and the noodles broke quite easily. Susuwatari, the black soot on Totoro's head was made from charcoal noodles, a little goes a long way when using charcoal, very little is needed to colour the noodles black.


Other ingredients used to make this were grated daikon and nori. Noodles were served cold with a soy sauce based dipping sauce, very refreshing for the hot weather.


The cookies at the side are made from black sesame and charcoal as well, I'll leave the update and recipe for them for another post next time.


This is a puff pastry Totoro soup bowl filled with mushroom soup. I used ready made puff pastry sheets for this so it was quite easy.


Other ingredients used were cheese, olives and fried pasta.


This is another version of the puff pastry soup, did not quite liked how it turned out though. The soup was in the ramekin for this and I covered up the ramekin with a puff pastry on top.

Quail Egg Pig & Cow Pasta

School was closed due to the haze on friday, had a good long weekend, caught up a little on my sleep, yay. My boys are hoping the haze will be back again today so that they don't have to go to school tomorrow. After checking the pollutant index a couple of times since this afternoon, they are finally convinced it's not going to happen, lol.


Now that they are off to bed, thought I'll finish off this post in my draft folder before I sleep. Quail eggs are a quick way to decorate your food, you can make them into various animals and even some cartoon characters. One of my favourite thing to make out of quail eggs are piggies.


One quail egg makes one piggy, I cut the quail egg in half, that way I won't end up with too many quail eggs in the bowl. The pink portion is Japanese fish sausage, you can substitute with ham if you can't find it. The blanky one of the piggy is holding is a blanch red cabbage.


The piggies are lying on Mentaiko pasta, one of our favourite Japanese fusion pasta. I've shared the recipe here on my blog before. I've also added some Ikura, which my boys like as well.


Another version of quail egg piggy, this time I soaked the egg in beetroot water to get the nice pink colour. I also made a quail egg cow. The extra cutouts for their nose and ears were actually sliced out from the back of the quail egg, which means that the back part is actually not presentable, lol.


This time, the animals were lying on pasta bolognese, added in asparagus, carrots and lettuce to make it a more complete meal.


Served the meal with some infused water which IT likes, but LT hates. LT says he prefers plain water, no lemons in his please.

Ron Weasley & Rubeus Hagrid

It's a school holiday today, which I was not aware of till my boys mentioned about it last saturday. I had to double check the calendar to confirm they were right. -_-  Just as well, definitely don't mind a shorter school week, so I get one more day to get up later, lol.


I'm sharing the rest of my Harry Potter series for today. After making Harry Potter and Hermione Granger earlier, I continued with Ron Weasley next. I made Ron Weasley with Scabbers and his broken wand.


If you have been following me on Instagram, you might have noticed that this Ron Weasley food art is slightly different from the one I shared there. The stripes on the scarf was not placed properly on that one, and I did not noticed until I uploaded the photos, so I remake it again.


Ingredients used to make Ron Weasley were rice(coloured with ketchup), pasta(colored with ketchup), nori, cheese, red bell pepper and ham.


Lastly, I decided to make Rubeus Hagrid as well. My initial idea was to make Hagrid and Fang, but halfway through, Fang did not turn out well, so I ditched the idea and replaced it with Hagrid's umbrella instead.


Ingredients used for Hagrid were rice(coloured using ketchup), charcoal noodles, nori, cheese, red bell peppers and abura-age.


Hagrid's umbrella was made from fried pasta stick and ham.


And here are the four Harry Potter themed food art I made, for more details on Harry Potter and Hermione food art I made earlier, you can click here. I will most likely remake them again in the future, already have some ideas but I'm hoping to wait till I visit Hogwarts before I start working on them. Fingers crossed there'll be no hiccups, and we can pay Hogwarts a visit end of this year. :)

Keroppi Food Art & Cookie

I'm sorry my site was not accessible earlier, thank you to all of you who tried to inform me about it. I was changing the template yesterday, ended up making a mess, I had no time to fix it, so I restricted access to the blog for the time being. This new look that you are seeing is just a temporary one, I'm still working with the designers on another one, as the final site is going to be two column, I thought I should slowly change the blog layout, so that the final transition will be easier.


I'm finally updating a recipe post, I've quite a few to share, but as they take longer to put up, as compared to the regular post, I keep procrastinating. These Keroppi cookies are matcha german cookies. These Keroppi cookies were inspired by Wanwan Tea, I was attracted by the ones she made during my very first visit to her blog.


These cookies simply melts in your mouth, they are similar to the Tsum Tsum ones I shared earlier here. These cookies are green due to the matcha powder added, and they also come with a hint of matcha flavour.



Before I proceed to the cookie recipe, let me share two Keroppi food art I made. This Keroppi was made out of chopped spring onions and fish balls.


The noodles below are udon made using my Philips Noodle Maker, they have a disc for making udon that you can order from their service centre.


And this Keroppi was made from Zucchini-based noodles or Zoodles. I made this one for myself. I used a spiralizer to slice the Zoodles, quite fun, but this gadget is a little bulky for my tiny kitchen. -_-


Keroppi eyes here was made using hard boiled egg.


Details to make these Keroppi cookies are below.

KEROPPI GERMAN COOKIE RECIPE

Ingredients:
125g butter
50g icing sugar, sifted
125g potato starch
80g cake flour
small chocolate chips
1 tbsp matcha powder
Pink gel colouring

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 matcha powder. Colour 20g of it using pink gel colouring. Leave the 50g plain. Wrap the coloured dough separately with cling wrap and refrigerate for half an hour.

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

5. Take the plain dough and roll into two small balls, place on the top of the cookie.


6. Take pink dough and roll into a small ball, flatten it and place on Keroppi's cheeks.

7. Place two chocolate chips for Keroppi's eyes.

8. Bake cookies at 140 degrees celcius for 20 minutes. To prevent cracking, please place at the middle to low rack and insert an empty tray above it. When the cookie has cooled down, use melted chocolate to draw Keroppi's mouth.

Harry Potter & Hermione Granger

The characters for today bentos are from the immensely popular book, Harry Potter. I'm sure this book needs no introduction. Harry Potter has been on my to-do list for extremely long, the reason why I did not make him earlier was because my boys have neither read the books, nor watched the movies before this year. My hubby refused to let me get them the books for religious reasons. But this year, I just went ahead and get them the book as I'm hoping to bring them somewhere related to the book this year end holiday.

Elmo & Cookie Monster Noodle

My boys are having a one week school break next week. The 10 week school term just went by so fast. Looking forward to waking up later next week, already have a few appointments and IT is inviting his friends over for a playdate, he has been arranging his own playdates since last year and LT always just tag along if he goes to his friend's house.

Summikko Gurashi & Fortune Cat Bento

Today is the 7th day of the Chinese New Year and the day is called Renri, which literally means Human Day. So, Happy Birthday to you and me. :)

IT is at his school camp today, it's a 3 days 2 nights camp, so he'll be back again on friday. Missing him at home, 2 nights seems a little long since we can't contact him, the only good thing is I get to wake up late for the next two days, lol.

Sheep Cookie & Bento

Chinese New Year is almost here. I still have quite a few Chinese New Year creations not blogged. -_-  I might not be able to post them before Chinese New Year, but I will try to get them up before Chinese New Year is over, since Chinese New Year lasts for 15 days, lol.

Sheep Hot Pot and Noodles

I'm suffering from a lack of sleep since school started, been surviving on 4-5 hours of sleep every weekday, slightly longer on weekends. :( Not that I don't want to sleep, I still have work not done, so I would wake up again after my boys sleep, sign. However, I think age is catching up with me, I felt dizzy last night before bedtime, and it was so difficult keeping my eyes open today while driving. I ended up taking cat naps twice in the car while waiting for my boys to be dismissed. It's going to be busier next week as IT tournament is going to start, but I enjoy watching him and his teammates at their matches. I hope I can still find some time to make food art and update the blog.

Baymax Oden Hotpot & Noodles

2014 is coming to an end very soon, it is unlikely that I will blog another post before 2015, so this will be my last post for 2014. Here's wishing you a Happy New Year!

It has been a busy year for me, with LT entering primary school this year. With both of them in different sessions and their school temporarily located in another location for these 2 years, I had to make a few trips throughout the day, more trips when IT stayed back in school and I would deliver his lunch over. It will be the same for next year, totally not looking forward to it, but I know all will be fine once I get use to the routine again.

I still managed to find pockets of time for making food art and charabens this year, though not as often as I did in previous years. However, I've cut down a lot on blogging this year, after a long day and my boys have gone to bed, I just wanted to relax at night, the last thing I wanted to do would be to switch on my laptop and blog. I even thought of shutting down my blog, but changed my mind thereafter, lol.

This year, I'm also very thankful for the article on Daily Mail about my bentos, that resulted in my bentos being mentioned by sites all over the world. I've also received requests asking me to conduct workshops, talks, demos, as well as to order my bentos, I'm really sorry for rejecting, I'm just not interested in doing such stuff. Making food cute is just a hobby for me, which I enjoy doing when I'm free, for my 2 boys. I do, however, take on food art design work online and do review for products that I'm interested in, as long as my schedule permits.

Keroppi Noodles & Philips Noodle Maker

I've a nifty kitchen gadget to share for today. Before I move on to it, let me share what I created using it first.

Hello Kitty Mee Hoon Kueh

Hubby took my car off for servicing last Friday, so I decided to just stay at home with my boys. I cooked them Mee Hoon Kueh ( hand pulled noodles ) for lunch. To add some cuteness, I rolled out some of  the dough and cut them out using My Melody and Hello Kitty cookie cutters. This idea is from Bento makes me Happy, she has made this before for her little gal. :) I will share the recipe at the end of the post, so if you are interested, you can try making some too. :)


These two bowls of Mee Hoon Kueh are for my boys. I made a bowl for myself too, but did not take a picture of mine.


There's meatballs, veggies and fried silver fish, in addition to the noodles.


I only cut out some dough using the cookie cutters, and add on top to decorate. I pulled  and teared out most of the dough instead, as it's much faster to do so. :)

MEE HOON KUEH RECIPE

Ingredients:
Dough:
500g plain flour
200ml water
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 tsp salt

Soup:
100g ikan bilis, washed thoroughly
1L water
salt, to taste
200g minced pork
2 tsp light soya sauce
1 tsp sesame oil
1 tsp wine
dash of pepper
2 tsp cornflour
green leafy vegetables

Method:

1. To make the dough, mix flour, egg and salt in a mixing bowl. 
2. Slowly add in water and knead till dough is soft, around 5 minutes.
3. Divide dough into 6 portions, cling wrap and rest for at least an hour.
4. Marinade minced meat with soya sauce, sesame oil, wine, pepper and corn flour. Leave aside.
5. To make soup stock, place ikan bilis in a soup stock pack before boiling with 1L of water.
6. Simmer on low heat for an hour. Remove stock pack. Add salt to taste.
7. To cook Mee Hoon Kueh, boil soup stock, add in minced pork.
8. Tear the dough into small pieces and drop into the soup. Alternatively, you can roll the dough into thin sheet and cut out with a cookie cutter.
9. Add in vegetables.
10. You can add in an egg and/or fried silver fish before serving.

Noodle Hair Girl Bento

I've wanted to try out using noodles as hair in charabens long ago, but somehow I did not get to it till now.


Made these girls for my boys' lunch. Girls are made from brown rice, purple wheat noodles, nori, and decor gel.


They had meatballs, broccoli and strawberries by the side.


The bows on the girls' hair are bow pasta.


Made this easier version for my boys' snacks yesterday.


These are ham sandwiches, topped with instant noodles. There's also some grapes in the box.


And a bento for me too, filled with meatballs, tomatoes, sweet peas and radish.

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