July 3rd Snack Bento + Cupcakes

Someone actually ordered cupcakes from me. I had a few leftover from a potluck last weekend so I ended up bringing them to a party afterwards. One of the guys there said he really liked my cupcakes and asked me to make him a dozen for his Friday morning meeting at work.

He didn't give me any instruction as to what he wanted "Oh, just whatever you're making would be great" so I made them the same as the ones last weekend, just with different decorations.

The cupcakes themselves are the "White Cupcakes" from book Crazy About Cupcakes. I substituted 1 3/4 cups of cake flour for the 1 1/2 cups white flour called for by the recipe and addded 1 1/2 cups of chopped mango. This is the second time I've used this recipe, and it's excellent.

They're filled with a pomegranate cream filling. I used the "Irish Cream Filling" recipe from the same book, and substituted pomegranate molasses (who knew this even existed?) for the Irish cream. I love this filling, it's amazingly creamy and tart.

The frosting is a plain buttercream and the stars are made from fondant. I was really pleased that I was able to match the frosting colours to the fondant so closely. This is the first time I was able to do that. It's actually quite a bit more purple than it looks in the picture.

I was so busy making cupcakes, I didn't really have time to make bento lunches, so it was a quick snack bento this morning.

There are three pork shu mai (I need to make another batch this weekend - almost out!), two little onigiris (buried), fried plantain hearts, asparagus, broccoli and sugar snaps, and the last of the black bean salad. The fruit is just strawberries, blueberries, raspberries and lychees.

July 2nd Bento

BF seems to have misplaced his single tier bento box. We've looked for it everywhere but it hasn't shown up yet. It's been two days and at this point I'm not sure whether I want to find it or not. I'm a bit scared of what might be growing in it by now.

So we might be back to two tier bentos for the next little bit.

I decided I wanted to make sushi last night and BF requested inarizushi, so that's what I made. We both really enjoyed the fruit sushi I made last week, so I decided to see how it would carry over to the inari version. I made them smaller than last time by folding in the edge. I think it looks much better this way. I filled the tofu pouches with a little sushi rice and topped them with strawberry and kiwi pieces. The rice was premade and frozen, and the assembly was done this morning. Took about 5 minutes including the time it took to cut up the fruit.

They were really yummy. Because the inari skin itself is a bit sweet, I actually preferred the sweet fruit toppings rather than a savory meat topping for example.

I stabilized the sushi in the bento box with some steamed broccoli. Also in the bottom tier are slices of breaded pork cutlet, asparagus pieces and three gyoza.

On the top, there is more of the black bean salad (so delicious!), broccoli and sugar snaps, persimmon pieces, fresh lychees, blueberries, blackberries, cherries and a chocolate truffle.

July 1st Bento

I felt like everything about today's bento was overshadowed by the fact that I overcooked the veggies. I missed the beep of the microwave timer and ended up steaming them about five minutes too long. They turned out soggy and a sickly green instead of a bright, delicious green.

Oh well, I won't make that mistake twice.

In the bottom tier there is some delicious yaki udon. I boiled one pack of noodles for three minutes and then fried with 1 Tbsp each of canola oil, soy sauce and sake. On top of that are some carrot flowers with snow pea leaves. On the other side there are some delicious seasoned lamb bites and some chinese broccoli (gai lon).

On top we have asparagus pieces, sugar snaps, a mini banana and a delicious mix of black beans, sweet onion, cilantro, red pepper, lime juice and olive oil that I picked up at the deli on the weekend. It was called a salsa, but it seems more like a salad to me, so that's how we ate it.

For fruit there are fresh lychees (yum!), cherries, the last few satsuma wedges, strawberries, blueberries and raspberries.

Happy Canada Day Everyone!

We're going to fireworks tonight - yay!