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.

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. 

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.


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.


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.


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.


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


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.


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.

Here'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!

Totoro & Minion Halloween

Another Halloween post to update for today, using characters my boys and I like. I'm planning to make one last Halloween creation this week, and will try to get it up on the blog by friday. Hopefully there'll be no hiccups.


Totoro cooking up some curry for our dinner, lol. I got the inspiration for this Totoro Halloween food art from a photo of a Totoro Halloween display set I saw online. I simplified the actual display though, cut down to two Totoros and left out some details.


Totoro was made using rice, mixed with grinded black sesame, cheese and nori. I used fried pasta sticks for the whiskers. Can you spot the pot of butter chicken curry at the back? I cooked that using the premix from Dancing Chef, totally fuss-free and it tasted yummy. :)


The mini cauldron is totally edible too, the cauldron itself was made using rice and nori, and I added in some butter chicken curry into it as well.


The other character I made for Halloween was this vampire minion. When I saw this character a few months ago when the movie was just released, the first thought that went to my mind was that it's perfect for Halloween. I immediately noted it down in my list of to-do creations, so I will remember to craft it out nearer to Halloween.


Minion was made from rice mixed with mashed egg yolks, cheese, nori and red cabbage. His hands are supposed to be purple, but I was lazy to colour another batch of rice purple, hence I just left it as yellow.


You can't really tell, but he's actually lying on a bed of chicken stir-fried with bell peppers. The other side dishes were broccoli and tamagoyaki. :)