Piggy, Bunny & Panda Pineapple Tarts

I was busy baking pineapple tarts as gifts during last Thursday and Friday. This year, I tried shaping the tarts into piggies, bunnies and pandas. I've included the tutorial on how to make these, hope you will find it useful. :)


Piggies pineapple tarts, these are my favourite. :)


Bunnies pineapple tarts, these are the fastest to make, as compared to the other two designs.


Lastly, I also made panda pineapple tarts.


A fraction of the pineapple tarts packed in jars.


I'll start off with the pineapple tarts tutorial, recipe is included at the end of this post.


Roll your pineapple paste and dough into balls. The dough should be slightly bigger than the pineapple tart. If you like, you can weigh them, around 10g for dough, and 8g for pineapple paste.


Flatten the dough, place pineapple paste in the middle. Wrap the paste and shape it into balls.


This is the basic shape before proceeding to turn them into piggies, bunnies and pandas.


I'll start off with the piggy. Take some dough and shape into piggy's ears.


Form and oval dough as piggy's nose.


Poke 2 small holes on the nose with a toothpick.


Add black sesame seeds as eyes.


The completed piggies, after baking.


The method for making the pineapple bunnies are the same as making bunnies bread buns or steamed buns. Using a pair of scissors, cut out 2 triangles for the ears.


Use a toothpick to flatten the tip of the ears and also to make indentations on the ears.


Poke 2 holes for eyes.


The completed bunnies.


Lastly, for the pandas, take a small portion of dough and mix in around 1 tsp of cocoa powder. You can add more slowly if you find that the colour is not dark enough. This batch is actually done by my boys, they did the rolling of the dough and helped to add in the panda's features.


Shape panda's eyes.


Add a small oval for the nose.


Shape panda's ears.


The pandas pineapple tarts after baking. Don't worry about the cocoa powder overpowering the taste of the pineapple tarts, it's hardly noticeable at all. I did not add egg wash for all the tarts, you can add if you want to do so.

I have another pineapple tarts recipe that I usually use, click HERE to see. But I used another recipe this time round, as I do not have some of the ingredients for that recipe on hand. You can of course use your own favourite pineapple tarts recipe to make these as well.

PINEAPPLE TARTS RECIPE

Ingredients:
227g Unsalted Butter, at room temperature
400g Plain Flour
2 egg yolks
50g gm icing sugar
1 tsp Vanilla extract
1/2 tsp salt
1 pack pineapple paste

Method:

1. Sift icing sugar. Whisk the butter and icing sugar till mixture becomes pale.
2. Add in salt and whisk to combine.
3. Add in egg yolks and continue to whisk till it is fully incorporated.
4. Sift flour into mixture. Mix mixture with your hands and lightly knead till flour is incorporated in the dough. Do not over mix the dough.
5. Wrap dough in cling wrap and chill in fridge for 30 minutes. 
6. Divide the dough to 10gm each and wrap in the pineapple filling (8gm).
7. Brush egg wash on the tarts and bake at 170 deg for 20mins.

I am submitting this post to Bake Along event, Chinese New Year cookies. :)

Where to get same item used in today's post:

Japanese Milk Bun Panda

These pandas buns I'm sharing today are made using the same recipe as the milk buns bears I shared previously. I've included step by step photos on how to make these in the recipe section. I will be updating the milk buns bears with photos too. I have quite a few baking tutorials on hand to share, need some time to do them up, as I'm not exactly so hardworking at blogging these days and my busy schedule this year makes it worse. -_-


These are the panda buns I made during the school vacation.


I love this milk bun recipe, it's currently one of my favourite bread recipe.


I drew on details with chocolate for some of the panda buns.


But I think I still prefer the ones without the details drawn on. :P

JAPANESE MILK BUN PANDA RECIPE

Ingredients:

Bread Flour 250g
Instant Yeast 3g
Milk 200g
Sugar 10g
Butter 10g
Salt 3g
Black Sesame Paste 1 tbsp

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. 

3. Dust your work table with some flour, place dough on it. Punch out the air from the dough with your fist. Divide the dough into 5 portions.

4. Take one portion and mix in 1 tbsp of black sesame paste, knead till it's evenly mixed. You can add in a little bread flour if mixture is too sticky. 

5. If you are shaping a full size panda, divide each portion of white dough into half. Roll small balls for ears, hands, eyes and legs from the black sesame dough. Cover with cling wrap and let the dough rest for 15 minutes.

6. Roll out bread dough and shape them again, place them on a baking tray lined with parchment paper, 

7. Cover with cling wrap and let dough rise for 40 minutes.

8. Preheat oven to 190 degrees celcius, turn it down to 140 degrees before placing in the bread at middle rack. Bake for around 15 minutes.

9. If you like, you can also add in some details using chocolate.


10. You can just make the head of the panda too.

Notes:

• You can divide your dough in step 3 into more portions if you prefer your pandas to be smaller. 
• As an added precaution to make sure the buns remains white, you can also place in an aluminium sheet to cover them halfway through baking.

Pooh Bear Toast

I made some mushroom soup for breakfast during the school vacation and served it with some toast. I will be sharing the mushroom soup recipe in this post. :)


I used a Pooh Bear cutter to cut and imprint on the bread before toasting it.


This is a actually a cookie cutter, but it works on bread too. :) It's one of the first bento tool I bought when IT was still a toddler, and that was like almost 8 years ago. O.O

CREAM OF MUSHROOM SOUP

Ingredients:
20g Butter
1 onion, chopped finely
1 clove garlic, minced
1.5 cup chicken stock/vegetable/mushroom stock
300g portobello or brown/white mushrooms, chopped to large chunks
50ml thickened cream
50ml white wine
2 piece sage leave, chopped finely
salt and black pepper, to taste
chopped parsley, for garnishing

Method:

1. Melt butter over a deep saucepan, add onions and garlic, cook until onions are soft, around 4 minutes.
2. Add mushrooms and continue to cook for around 7 minutes till they soften.
3. Add chicken stock and simmer for around 15 minutes.
4. Remove from heat, set aside to cool for a while before blending the soup in a processor.
5. Return the soup to the pan, add in wine and cream, warm through without boiling.
6. Season with salt and black pepper, serve with chopped parsley.

Rilakkuma Pancake

LT is going off to his first day of Primary 1 later, time flies so fast! After IT left for school in the morning, I managed to complete all my housework for today while LT was still in bed. :) I just finished packing his bento for school later and also made him a charaben for lunch. He's having his lunch now while I'm typing out this post on the Ipad, lol.


A lazing Rilakkuma breakfast I made for my boys last month.


Not complicated at all and definitely easy to make. I used whipped cream and chocolate to draw in Rilakkuma's face.


This is another version of Rilakkuma, even simpler than the lazing Rilakkuma.


I'm using the Japanese Morinaga pancake mix for these pancakes. :)

Where to get same or similar item used in today's post:

Oscar Soba & Salad

I grew up watching Sesame Street, it's also the first cartoon my boys watched. They used to love it when they were little, but they have since moved on to other cartoons. I made Elmo and Cookie Monster before, click HERE to check out my previous bentos. This time, I decided to make Oscar instead. :)


Oscar made from soba, details done with cheese, crabstick, nori and abura-age. Can you spot Oscar's pet worm Smiley? It's cut out from egg sheet.


I served the soba with grilled salmon.

I made an Oscar salad for myself, my boys came over to take a look as I was photographing it and they say it looks like a green Lorax. -_-


I used chicken cutlet for Oscar's eyebrows, his eyes are made from banana and blueberries. :)

Where to get same or similar item used in today's post:

Totoro Back to School Toast

School reopens today, back to waking up at unearthly hours which I absolutely hate. IT is back to school today, their school has shifted to a temporary holding school for two years. The car queue for drop off and pick up was mad chaotic, sign. :( LT is only starting school next Monday, he will be in the same school as IT but in the afternoon session. That means I will be very busy, will be cutting down on foodart and blogging. Both boys still want to bring bentos to school everyday, I will just be packing them simple non-decorated bentos. I'm still busy with baking this week, will probably start making foodart next week instead. Meanwhile, I will be clearing my backlogs, I still have creations from 2013 not shared. -_-


I made this Totoro back to school toast last week. Totoro is made from egg. I dyed it blue using water soaked with butterfly pea flowers. These flowers are great for colouring food blue naturally. Chibi Totoro is made from quail eggs and Susuwatari are blueberries. The bee on top of Totoro's head is made from corn.


Totoro does not look too happy to go back to school, just like my boys and I, lol. :)

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