Messy's 10th Birthday！

Today is Messy's Birthday and we're bringing them to East Coast Park beach for picnic, build sand castles, blowing bubbles and playing with some fireworks together with my parents, my closest cousin, her family and 2 of our friends with their family. After that we'll go to MacDonald's for dinner. All the kids are so excited！
Usually we'll just had a simple celebration dinning out and a small cake for her at home on different days but this year Messy wanted something different, wanted more people to share the joy and fun together with her. 


On Friday (15th April) morning, I made her a surprised Birthday Cake bento and she was very happy！

Messy's Birthday Cake Bento.

The night before, I prepared another surprised food for her and it was Molded Chocolates！I bought a packet of dark and white cooking chocolates each few days ago, intending to try melting and molding into shapes I wanted after reading Tips on Bentolious Blog. It seems to be very easy but once I started doing it, it wasn't at all！
The first method I used was using microwave on a little bit of white chocolate I intended to add some red coloring to make it pink. That was successful but once I added the color, it turned slightly hard so fast！So I tried using another method, double boiling. This took SO LONG and when it started to melt, I noticed some dark yellow oil forming so I stirred it, but no matter how much and how long I stirred, it just won't mixed well, not smooth！
ARRGGH！I gave up and hurried pour into the molds as it was getting very late, around 4plus in the morning, I had to wake up early the next day to prepare other things for the celebration. No choice, I'll just had to leave it as it is... 

Although this is not successful but I'm already contented because Messy was very happy with all the surprises I gave her on this special day.

I'm still wondering why is my chocolate melting unsuccessful, where have I done wrong and did I missed out any important steps?

Angry Bird & Green Pigs Bento

OMG！All my posts are saved as drafts until I've got the time to complete and publish！ Due to busy planning and preparing for Messy's Bday celebration recently, I only have the time to type in the titles and save... 
I did this Angry Bird & Green Pigs Bento not because Messy wanted or requested for it, because I felt so incomplete just making the Angry Bird Babybel Cheese W/O those Green Pigs！ 

Actually I wanted to make edamane rice again but after I mashed the boiled edamane with a pounder and was about to mix into the rice, I kept looking it, the texture, it does looks like mashed potato eh... only color difference. I changed my mind and decided to mold the pigs outta the mashed edamane itself.  

Messy's Angry Bird & Green Pigs Bento.

2nd Tier consist of a small piece of Teriyaki Unagi and 2 Tempura Prawn Flowers. 

When Messy woke up in the morning, she was surprised to see me preparing for her because I didn't tell her the night before and she was so happy to see this bento specially for her. 

Assorted Sushi Bentos

For a change, I decided to make some Sushi on 17th Feb 2011, Thursday. It has been a very long time since I last made Sushi about 3-4 years back? OMG! That's really long but I still remembered both Messy and Cheeky were so happy when I made for them. They almost finished ALL the Sushi, just the 2 of them！The 3 of us LOVE IT so much that we can eat EVERYDAY... but because Sushi are not cheap here in Singapore, we don't get to eat everyday, only occasionally or whenever we passed by any Sushi counters while shopping. So I told myself : I must learn to make Sushi！ 
I used the ready made sushi vinegar this time round because it will be a waste to buy such a big bottle of sushi vinegar when I seldom use it. 
I made 3 different kinda Maki : cheese & ham Maki, tamagoyaki, crab-stick & cucumber Maki, cheese, ham & crab-stick Maki. I molded some rice with a cling wrap, topped with crab-sticks (this is both girls' ALL-TIME favourite), tamagoyaki, salmon fish-shaped and wrapped round with nori strips.

Messy's Assorted Sushi Bento with crab-sausages and strawberries.

Cheeky's Assorted Sushi Bento with an octo-dog, crab-sausage, 2 extra crab-sticks and strawberries.

Mom's Assorted Sushi Bento.

Not only Messy and Cheeky love the bentos I prepared for them, even my mom love it too！

Edamame Rice Bentos

I burned the mid-night oil again on Monday night, 28th March as I had mentioned before in my previous post. So whenever I need to stay up, I'll start 'stalking' my favourite bento blogs and search for ideas, designs to make in the morning. Actually I already had in mind that I'm gonna use one of the packets of colored vegetable seasonings (Dekofuri 3 colors) for sushi rice and make onigiri bento but had no idea what I'm going to make. After 'stalking' for awhile, I came across "How to Make Edamame Rice" on Bentolicious blog and changed my mind. Natural food colorings are alot better than artificial ones.  

Messy's Edamame rice Bento. She requested some apple wedges because it is part of their school rules for every students to bring fruits and only plain water on every last week of the month for their Green Day to promote healthy eating habits due to a high raise of obesity in young children nowadays. The green colored rice is the leaves of the Sweetcorn and the scrambled eggs (Tamagoyaki recipe) on top of the plain rice are the corn kernels.

Cheeky's Edamame Rice Bento. I molded these two bear Onigiris with cling wrapper. I stuffed some scrambled eggs inside the bigger bear so that it won't taste so plain and used spaghetti to stick two quail eggs for the ears.

Both of them LOVE the taste of the Edamame Rice！Messy finished up everything except the cherry tomato. She don't like because they are not sweet (I can't seems to find those sweet & juicy ones anymore) and knows that I only use to decorate... Hee...
Cheeky ate the remaining 1/3 small bowl of the Edamame Rice for her breakfast in the morning but came back home with her bento ALMOST untouched (apple and quail eggs gone) because one of her classmate celebrated her Birthday in school today and they have got cake to eat that she said she 'forgotten' about her bento. Anyway she did finished the green bear in the car after we had dinner out with my parents. Too bad the other big bear had turned bad due to prolong hours in the lunchbox.

My Previous Bentos

All these Bentos are made from the past 2 mths in Jan & Feb. Most ideas are found online where else some are just created with Messy & Cheeky's fav food. As time passes by, I noticed that I'm beginning to run outta ideas！ Especially when I'm staying up for the night, mind not working！

Messy made the sandwich & I made the bear + salmon fish. She woke up half hr earlier than usual to make her own sandwich. 

Really must use LARGE EGGS for the egg molds if not this is how your Star & Heart eggs turn out to be. As for the rice, I steamed the normal rice grains and added little soy sauce to stir for taste. 

Made this on one of the Sunday when my niece came over, afraid that she may not like to eat 'mee hoon kueh' so I shaped out the dough made by my mom specially for the kids. 

The girls, especially my niece were so amused by those shapes and all of them finished up everything！

This is for Messy, sandwiches for recess time & rice for her lunch in sch as she had got CCA on. This is one of my fav bento among all. Imagine, I spent almost 2HRS on this！I believed all of you can tell how much Messy loves to eat sandwiches！

This is for Cheeky. As I had mentioned in my earlier post,  I had more time to prepare Cheeky's bento, Messy always says that hers aren't as nicely decorated as Cheeky's and vice verse.