May 19th Bento

I didn't intend for today's bento to turn out so cutesy...it just kind of happened!

I found some mini sweet potato pies in the freezer from a batch I made a few weeks ago, so I thought they would be nice in today's bento. I decorated this one with mozzarella and cheddar flowers.

The onigiris are from last week's frozen batch. The bunny is plain, the tiger was coloured with tumeric and rice vinegar, and the elephant was coloured with purple yam powder and rice vinegar. Accents are nori and ham. There's also a heart shaped onigiri made with coconut rice and a nori accent. It was nice to have so many different onigiris because it adds some different flavours to the bento.

Underneath the onigiris are slices of a stuffed pork loin. The onigiris are really short, so they need to sit on something to elevate them, and that allows me to fit even more types of food into the bento!

In the bottom left corner there is some steamed spinach with miso and ground sesame seeds. Other veggies include yellow and green zucchini, fiddleheads and broccoli space fillers (all steamed).

There wasn't much room left for fruit so we have some blueberries, strawberries and blackberries.

Yesterday I made cupcakes, and I ended up having some leftover batter, so I made a batch of mini cupcakes as well that turned out small enough for a bento box! It's a chocolate cupcake with red bean filling. The frosting is buttercream with some matcha green tea powder, and the cupcake is topped with a small ball of mochi. It was sooo decadent! I put the cupcake in a foil muffin cup in addition to the muffin cup it was baked in, so that none of the moisture from the fruit soaked into it.