Monday 28 December 2015

Baymax Christmas Bread

Belated Merry Christmas! Ah, I wanted to get this post up before Christmas but I've been busy since coming back from my holiday last week, it's delayed till now. -_- Better late than never I guess, so I'm still posting it up.

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I made a few Baymax Christmas creations this year. First, Baymax chirgiri-pan, made this festive by adding on a scarf and a Santa hat using crabstick and tomatoes. I have the basic recipe to make these, not sure when I'm updating it, I've so many recipes to update. -_-

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I missed baking chrigiri-pan, my oven broke down before I left for my trip. I think I overworked it before I left, lol. Hoping it can be fixed so I won't have to waste money getting a new oven.

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I also made snowman Baymax with my remaining dough. I used chocolates for the hats and M&M's for the buttons.

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This Baymax Christmas tree was made for We are Fresh Kids digital Advent calendar. Baymax is the Christmas tree here, so the ornaments are hung around him, lol.

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Not sure if I can do another post before the year ends, in case I don't, here's wishing you a Happy New Year in advance. :)

Wednesday 16 December 2015

Christmas Sushi and Bread

Hello from Japan! I had wanted to do up one or two posts to auto-post while I'm on holiday, as I've quite a few Christmas creations to share. However, I was busy right up to the day of departure, so it did not work out the way I had intended. I did managed to get the photos uploaded for this post, planning to type it out if I had any free time on my trip. I finally found some time to update as these few days we are just relaxing and enjoying the snow and onsen, after a hectic and tiring one week of theme park and sightseeing.

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I did not managed to make any Christmas bentos so far, I do have some from past years and you can check them out over here. The first food art I'm sharing today is a set of Christmas sushi.

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I'm quite happy with how they turned out, I've made similar snowman sushi before, and this time, I added in Santa and reindeer as well.

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The sushi are mainly made from rice stuffed into aburaage, details were done using ingredients like cheese, nori, crabstick, Kombu and fish sausages. I've served them on a sushi board but they can be packed for bentos too.

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I also baked Christmas themed chigiri-pan. Chigiri-pan or pull apart bread buns are quite fun to make. For this, I made snowman, Santa, reindeer, reindeer, gingerbread man, present and berries.

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I used cocoa powder and matcha powder for the brown and green respectively. I used food colourings for the rest of the colours. Just stocked up on vegetable powders, will have to try them out when I'm back.

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I know some of you want to recipe for these, but I'm not able to share as I was still experimenting so I did not take down the exact measurements.

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This was actually the first version of the Chrismas bread buns I made, but I was not happy with it. I wanted to attempt it again with some changes, but could not find the time to do so, looks like I will have to try to attempt this next year.

Monday 7 December 2015

Christmas Cheese Wedge

More Christmas food art ideas to share for today's post. This time I'm sharing Christmas themed snacks you can make using The Laughing Cow cheese wedges, these are great for serving on a platter for Christmas parties too.

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I made snowman, Santa, reindeer and Christmas tree using cheese wedges. I took some photos to explain how I craft them and will share them later in this post.

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Which design do you like best? I think mine is the snowman. :)

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I'm sure most of you are familiar with the cheese products from The Laughing Cow. They have a wide range of cheese products, and my boys' favourites are Belcube and Cheez Dippers. They have been snacking on them since they were toddlers and they still love to eat them now.

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From now till 31 December 2015, you can receive a free Happy Bowl with any purchase of two The Laughing Cow® products. The Happy Bowl is made of high-quality, non-toxic plastic and is microwave-friendly. There are 3 colours for collection: red, yellow and green. I've the one in green. You can redeem at supermarket customer service counter. While stocks last.

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Alright, now I'll go through how to create the snowman first. Use knife to cut out triangles for the hat and nose, from bell peppers and carrots respectively. Use a straw or round cutter to cut out circles from ham.

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Place the cut-outs on the cheese wedge. Using a nori punch, cut out circles for eyes from nori. Use black sesame seeds for the mouth.

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For the Chrismas tree, cut out a strip of cucumber first, then cut them into smaller squares or rectangles.

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Cut out a star from carrot using a star cutter, arrange the cut-outs on a slice of cheese wedge.

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For Santa, cut out a triangle from bell pepper using a knife. Use a round cutter or scissors to cut out circles from bell pepper and ham.

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Use a flower cutter to cut out the Santa's beard from cheese.

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Arrange the cut-outs on the cheese wedge. Use a nori punch to cut out nori for the the eyes and mouth.

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Lastly, for reindeer, you will need two pretzels and a round bell pepper, which you can cut out using a round cutter or a pair of scissors.

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Use a nori punch to cut out circles for the eyes from nori.

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You can serve the cheese wedges on crackers, they go really well with them. :)

Sunday 6 December 2015

Totoro Christmas Food Art

Christmas is coming soon, sharing a set of Totoro Christmas creations today. I actually have so many ideas I want to do, but I always have less time for food art during the school holidays as we are out in the afternoon. I've only been making really simple and fast ones or cute bakes, because I can do the bakes at night and photograph them in the morning. I also have not been blogging much, this post has been sitting in my draft folder for more than a week and I'm actually typing this out in the salon using my handphone while I'm doing my hair, lol.

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My second Christmas themed creation using Totoro, the first one is over here. This is actually a simplified version of what I had in mind, I did not have much time to work on this, so I decided to forgo a few details. Maybe I'll remake this again next year with all the elements I had wanted.

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Totoro is made of rice mixed with grinded black sesame, nori, crabstick, cheese, tomato and fried pasta sticks. The side dish was Japanese pork curry.

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The Christmas tree at the back was made of broccoli, carrots, cheese and crabstick. No time to make some presents under the tree, so I placed cherry tomatoes there instead.

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I also made a Totoro chigiri-pan and decorated it into Christmas themed. I baked it in the cast iron skillet in this picture.

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Found this familiar? The basic recipe for this has been shared before on my blog over here. To make this Christmas version, I simply added on a Christmas hat using heart shaped sprinkler and marshmallow and the scarf was cut out from marshmallow.

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I used melted chocolate to stick on the sprinkler. There is no need to use anything to stick on the marshmallow, the cut side of marshmallow is sticky and can stick on by itself.

IMG_8542Here's LT helping me to pose with the Daniel Wellington watch I got for hubby. If you are thinking of getting on for yourself or your loved ones, you can use the discount code "MingXmas" to get 15% off till 15 January 2016. I'm also having a giveaway of a Daniel Wellington watch of your choice on my Instagram account, you can join over here. Good luck!