Kuromi Bento (298)

I just found out a few days ago that Kuromi's birthday fall on Halloween, thus how can I not including her in the Halloween theme bento.

This might look simple and easy, but it took me about 95 minutes to complete!  I started very late at Thu nite (at about 12.30am), doing all the ground works like sketched out Kuromi, cut it out, blanched 2 crab sticks, cut the crab stick and nori according to the sketch.  I finished the works at about 1.15am.  Then waked up very early to continue on the bento (used about 30 minutes), made the sandwich (meat floss with mayo), place Kuromi on top, glued (with mayo) everything intact, put on Kuromi's expression and finally made 2 skeleton heads to fill the space.

Closer view of Kuromi 

(not that pretty looking but it was the best I manage in a tiring night & morning)

Skeleton head 1

(I like this one, cute)

Skeleton head 2, funny looking :p

Again, happy birthday Kuromi and happy Halloween to those of u who celebrate it, trick or treat!

Not Spooky Creepy Crawly Bento (297)

This could be the most tedious bento project I ever encountered, but it was not that difficult to get it done, I managed to pack  the bento within 45 minutes.

The spiders has been crawling in my mind for days, I got it done in my mind mentally and I believed it will be able to work fine.  I first got the rice balls ready (rice mixed with furikake and have a small crab stick as filling), wrapped in the nori (seaweed), made the face (crab stick), then poked the legs (cucumber sticks) intact.

The spiders were crawling on some leafs (edamame), guarding their eggs (grapes) in front of the letter S (don know what to imagine with this, placed it in as a gap filler)

Closer view of spider 1

Spider 2

Little girl told me she likes this more as it looks cuter with the winking eye :)

S for Super Spiders :p

Happy Halloween!

Pasta with Bolognese Sauce Bento (296) and Grape Heart Making Pictorial

We didn't buy any bread this week, little girl didn't want me to bake either, thus ended up with the pasta again.

It was a quick bento, just cook the pasta, preheat the sauce, cut the grapes and pack into box, took approximately 15 minutes.

The very last batch of transport pasta with bolognese sauce

Apples wedges and grape hearts

Stretching My Imagination has asked me how to make the grape hearts, with the help of little girl, here are the grape heart making pictorial :)

1. Wash the grapes

2. Cut the grapes half slantingly

3. Turn one of the halve grape upside down, so that they are having the similar shapes at the same position

4. Join the cut part together to form a heart

5. Skewer with a food pick to hold the shape, done.

Braised Yee Mee 焖伊面 Bento (295)

Little girl and me love yee mee, we like to order Kwong Fu yee mee 广府伊面 whenever we go for fried noodle for dinner.  The crunchiness of the noodles go so well with the thick gooey egg gravy.  As this version of yee mee can't be prepared in bento, I switch it to braised yee mee, which is equally delicious.

I used about 10 minutes on preparing the ingredients, 15 minutes on cooking and 10 minutes on packing the bento.

Braised yee mee with chinese cabbage, erygii mushroom cubes and home made fish cakes

Little girl encored for the grape hearts again

Baked Spring Onion Mantou

I had this mantou in yesterday's bento, sorry for the delay of the recipe as I was terribly tire after a busy day yesterday, hit the sack earlier than usual.

I gotta the recipe from 周老师的美食教室, the minute I saw her recipe on this baked mantou, I quickly wrote down and awaiting for the chance to test out.  As we had to attend my nephew Y's mini presentation at his kiddy on Sun, I didn't get to bake anything for our breakfast, thus I decided to prepare this baked mantou at Sun evening, so that we able to have some fresh bakes for breakfast on Mon.  I used only 1/3 of ingredients based on the original recipe.

Ingredients
Yield: 8 mantou

100g water
1 tsp instant yeast
200g all purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
2 tbsp sugar
1/8 tsp salt
3/4 tbsp oil

Filling:
2 stalks spring onion
1/4 tsp salt
1 tbsp fried garlic

1. Mix all ingredients together forming a smooth dough, let it proof for 1 hour (optional) I left it rest in the fridge for the entire night
2. Roll the dough flat and smooth
3. Spread the filling mixture evenly onto the dough, roll the dough up and let it rest for 10 minutes
4. Pour some oil onto baking tray, slightly roll the dough longer, cut into 8 pieces, place them on the baking tray, let proof for 20-30 minutes
5. Preheat oven at 200C, bake for 10 minutes, off heat, do not remove from oven, let it continue baking with remaining heat for further 10 minutes

These are how they look b4 proofing and baking

Look at how pretty it turned after baking, love the golden brown color :)

I tell you, these mantou are very yummy if u adore spring onion and garlic, boy, they smell and taste so good, soft at the center and crisp at the outer layer 内软外酥, yum!  The only downside is they are pretty oily, if u are controlling your diet, then I'm sorry, you have to forgo this recipe :p

Baked Mantou Bento (294)

Waked up early this morning to bake this mantou (will have the recipe post up later), then continued with my house chaos fast before little girl waked up.  By the time she waked up, the mantou was ready and being cool off.  I had the bento ready with other stuffs in about 10 minutes.

Spring onion and fried garlic baked mantou

3 fish cakes

Some cucumber wedges and 3 skewers of hearts made of grapes

And a little container of ketchup & mayo

Strawberry Syrup & Kiwifruit Chiffon

I was so blur today, could b due to the lousy day (full of lousy news and even hurt myself by straining the muscle behind my knee), and the tiring yoga workout I had yesterday.  I'd forgotten to snap photo for today's bento, then when I was trying to de-stress myself by baking a chiffon, I slipped my hand and dropped the chiffon while turning it upside down (after taking out from the oven).... ended up a messy chiffon... sigh....

My collapsing chiffon

I adapted the recipe from Forbidden Garden, using the tangmian method 烫面法 which is quite popular among bloggers lately.  However, I change the flavor of the recipe to what I have in the fridge, strawberry syrup and kiwifruit.

Ingredient
120 ml milk

2 tbsp strawberry syrup

50g butter

100g superfine flour
5 egg yolks

5 egg whites
1/4 tsp cream of tartar
60g sugar

1 kiwifruit, skinned, diced

1. Heat milk, butter and strawberry syrup in a sauce pan til almost boiling or until butter melted, turn off heat
2. Add in sifted flour, give it a quick stir til well blended
3. Pour in egg yolk, stir til well combined
4. In another bowl, beat egg white til soft peak, add in cream of tartar, continue beating the egg white then gradually pour in sugar, beat til stiff peak
5. Scoop 1/3 of egg white mixture into warm egg yolk mixture, fold til well combined
6. Then pour all the egg yolk mixture into remaining egg white mixture, fold the mixture softly, gradually mix in the kiwifruit and fold til fruits and mixture combining well
7. Bake at 170C for 10 minutes, then 150C for 35 minutes

No doubt the chiffon is very very soft, the taste is superb, I like the little sourness given by those kiwifruit bits, will definitely re-do this chiffon again, I wanna a perfect chiffon :p

Blooper Bento (293)

After making Boo bento the last time, little girl has been nagging me to make her a Blooper bento, finally I gotta my chance to sketch out Blooper while little girl and her cousin Y played Wii on Sun.  Here is my sketch:

Then, due to lack of sleep and gotta nasty news at the morning, I was a bit blank and couldn't think well, let alone the creativity part, sigh... this was the best I managed...  Don ask me the time, was too blur to look at the clock, just knew that didn't take too long to complete it.

Sorry Blooper, I trimmed off 2 of ur arms, due to lack of space :p

Blooper is made of rice stuffed with meat floss and mayo, along with some chicken nuggets and grapes

Ugliest Witch Bento (292)

"Magic mirror on the wall, who is the fairest one of all?", it was Snow White, so what if the queen asked "Magic mirror on the wall, who is the ugliest one of all?"  I believe the magic mirror will definitely review her ugliest old witch look.

I'd planned for a witch for this Halloween theme bento, the best or ugliest witch I managed to find was from Snow White:

The witch from Snow White

My sketch and little girl's hand writing

As it is Wednesday, the sandwich day, I decided to dress the sandwich as the photo frame holding the witch's photo.  It didn't take me too long to complete the witch, may be about 10 minutes, just cut & joined the ham pieces together to form the witch's face.  Then I let little girl nibbled on the bits & pieces that I cut out from the ham, and the crab stick, when I realized that I need some white crab stick for the photo frame part, it was too late, little girl had munched most of it, that's why u find the photo without any frame :p

Bento was ready in about 20 minutes.

The witch fingers and grapes (can't really imagine what to do with the grapes)

Apple anyone?  Hehehehehe......

Angel Hair Olio e Aglio Bento (291)

Sometimes, a dish may turn out so delicious with very simple ingredients.  I always enjoy a plate of spaghetti (or angel hair) olio e aglio, I like the easy cooking method, I like the simple ingredients (just olive oil, garlic, pinch of salt and pepper), and the taste is just awesome.

Bento was ready in about 20 minutes.

Angel hair olio e aglio

2 alphabet chicken & cheese nuggets and a honey dew jelly

Baked Cheesy Rice Bento (290)

It has been a long time since the last time I baked this cheesy rice, little girl was so happy to see this in her bento and dining table this morning :)

Bento was ready in 15 minutes, most of the time was taken for the baking process.

Baked rice with ham, bolognese sauce and top with lot of cheese

2 pieces of kiwifruit and goodies took back from school last Fri: 2 sweets and 2 jelly

Yam Filling in Porridge Loaf

This is the ugliest but the softest loaf I ever baked :p

MIL steamed a lot of baby yams when we were home last night, we were too full to stuff in more yam after the heavy dinner.  Therefore, without wasting the baby yams, I brought it back and planned for baking a bread with yam.

I was thinking of what kind of bread to bake during the journey back, loaf or bun, mashed or cubed yam, original or sweet, all this questions were spinning in my head, but I still couldn't decide.  When we arrived at mum's place, I threw the questions to SIL and ta da... her answer was cubed and original flavor yam filling in a loaf.

I quickly searched for a tang zhong 汤种 loaf recipe at Carol's site (cos I wanna a soft loaf recipe), and I found this.  Hm... mum still had some sweet potato and rice porridge left after lunch, it'd be good for me to experiment this recipe :p

Ingredients
300g sweet potato and rice porridge, mashed
280g high protein flour
3/4 tsp instant yeast
1/4 tsp salt
20g sugar
50ml cold water
30g butter

Yam filling ingredients
250g steamed baby yam, skinned and cubed
1 tbsp sugar
1/4 tsp salt

I accidentally added a bit too much water into the dough, thus it turned out very wet and tacky.  It was not rose nicely and properly as it was way too too too soft :(  Instead of rising high, it fell beside the loaf pan, resulting a very awful loaf :(

The holes grew too big for this loaf and the fillings were pushed or sinked to the bottom of the loaf.  Well, despite all the failure, it was no doubt the softest loaf I ever baked, we gobbled down almost half the loaf right after it was slightly cool off, really delicious!

Tofu Chiffon Cake

I'm so crazy with chiffon cakes lately, cos it is so so so easy to bake, however, it is very easy to cause a failure too.  So far, I still haven't encountered any unreasonable failure, I think my baking angel always taking good care of me :p

Saw some bloggers posted this tofu chiffon cake last few weeks, and why not trying it, I always have a box of tofu in the fridge.

I used my usual basic chiffon cake recipe (the one from Carol's), I find it so error proofed :)

Ingredients
100g tofu, mashed
120g superfine flour
5 egg yolks
30g sugar
60g oil

5 egg white
1/4 tsp cream of tartar
60g sugar

I didn't taste any tofu flavor in the cake, more on the egg site, perhaps gotta put in slightly more tofu next time.

Empty Bento and Children's Day

Yes, it was empty, I don have to prepare anything for bento today :p  Little girl has been looking forward for today as her exam was over yesterday and they r going to party in school for the children's day.

She brought her bento set to school as the dining set

She has requested me to prepare her with these cutie puppy cookies to share with friends & teachers

All puppies stayed in a cute & tall disney container I got from Tokyo Disneyland

Off she goes to school with a small Mymelody bag (with the bento set only) and the puppies

Then home with lot of goodies from teacher and friends

It was indeed a super happy fun day for little girl and me (don have to prepare bento & lunch), yippee!