Totoro Bento and Rainbow Cupcakes

My first attempt at making Totoro yesterday, I had to grind up black sesame myself to mix with the rice for the grey parts so it didn’t turn out very evenly. I guess another way to colour the rice grey is to grind up tiny dried silverfish and mix with rice, but I didn’t have any at home. The little black pom-poms (soot sprites) are made of rice wrapped up in nori.

Here is Z1’s bento:

Totoro lunch bento

And Z2’s bento:

Totoro lunch bento

 

I made rainbow cupcakes earlier in the afternoon  and sliced up one to put in the kids bentos. It is really fast and simple to make.

Rainbow cupcakes

 

How to make rainbow cupcakes

This is basically my basic cupcake recipe with the extra step of adding in food colouring to the batter before putting the batter in muffin trays.

Makes 6 cupcakes

• 110 grams unsalted butter, cubed and melted
• 110 grams caster sugar, sifted
• 110 grams flour, sifted
• 1/2 tsp baking powder, sifted
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• gel food colouring

1. Combine the ingredients except the food colouring, and beat on 2-3 minutes on medium speed until smooth.

2. Divide batter into 6 cups

3. Add a few drops of food colouring to each cup of batter (red, blue, green, yellow, and mix red and blue to get purple).  I missed out orange in today’s batch but that is easily done by mixing red and yellow food colouring, if you do not have orange gel food colouring.

4. Bake at 180 degree Celsius in a pre-heated oven for 20 minutes, or until a skewer inserted in the center comes out clean.

5. Cool on a wire rack before serving.