I had a wonderful fun weekend as the company sent all nationwide staff for the Penang Bridge Run, which had attracted 27,500 runners from all over the world. We  practically did not have any sleep from Saturday morning (19th Nov) till this morning (21st Nov)) when we landed back home at 1.15am, but it was a well worth it experience.

As advised by my more experienced colleagues, due to the long hours, it would be wise to buy some milk chocolate or dark chocolate to standby as energy booster in case we get hungry. And that I did but the chocolate of course melted and became very gooey over time. Come to think of it now, I should have bought those tiny little chocolates like Hershey’s kisses which would be easier to eat if they had melted. Ah well, always learn from experience.

Anyway, the bad news was I didn’t even had the chance to participate in the 10km Fun Run because I had gastric before the run started. So, I had to take a cab back to the hotel. It was pretty disappointing as I was looking forward to completing the race. My colleagues who had completed the Fun Run within 1.5 hours were all awarded certificates and medals.  What a bummer for me! Positive thoughts…..There’s always next year, right?

P/S For those who wish to know more about chocolates, you can click on this link to the Wikipedia page.

It’s been sometime since I last made Bento lunch for the kids. The little girl had asked for a Halloween theme Bento and I first made the severed fingers and spider for her brother. Then, both of them said the severed fingers were too gross and disgusting to eat. LOL. So, I had modified them to the usual mice. For the little girl, I decided not to do the Halloween theme and made some simple girly characters for her.

With the severed fingers

Modified the severed fingers to mice

Decided to do a less ghastly Bento for the little girl

FOR THOSE CELEBRATING, WISHING YOU A FUN HALLOWEEN!

I have been so bogged with my workload that it is hard to find time to prepare the Bento for my kids. With a range of events being held from Fridays to Sundays, weekends were practically like weekdays except that I had bored kids at home with their dad. I feel so guilty because my kids have been asking for Bento for their Saturday lunches and I just had to reject them. Bad mommy!

Anyway, I just had to add a food pic out of guilt for not posting a foodie post here and also because we celebrated FIL’s birthday a month ago. The cake was bought from Aloha Bakery at Jalan Song. The sponge is one of the freshest I’ve tasted so far, sooooo very soft. Price is slightly higher than other bakeries but well worth it in my opinion.

Prep time: 30 minutes
Bake time: 25 minutes
Yield 12 servings
Serving Size: 1 slice

Strawberry Ghosts and Tombstones
1 container (1 pound) Driscoll’s strawberries, divided
3 Milano cookies
1 cup white candy melts
2 tablespoons vegetable shortening
2 ounces bittersweet chocolate, melted
Assorted Halloween sprinkles,like Jumbo Ghost Sprinkles
6 cream filled chocolate cookies, Oreo’s

Graveyard Cake
1 container (6 ounces) Driscoll’s blueberries
¾ cup water
1 package (18.25 ounce) devil food cake mix
1/3 cup oil
3 large eggs

Raspberry Strawberry Filling
1 container (6 ounce) Driscoll’s raspberries
1 ½ cup coarsely chopped Driscoll’s strawberries, divided
1/3 cup sugar
2 tablespoons cornstarch

Chocolate Ganache Whipped Frosting
2 cups heavy cream
12 ounces bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
Garnish
1 container (6 ounces) Driscoll Blueberries
1 container (6 ounces)Driscoll Raspberries

Strawberry Ghosts and Tombstones
Line cookie sheet with parchment paper.

Combine candy melts and shortening in large microwave safe bowl. Microwave on 50% power for 30 seconds. Stir thoroughly. Continue to microwave and stir at 30 seconds intervals until smooth and completely melted.

Dip strawberries into candy melt to coat completely, let excess drip off. Carefully place stem side down onto prepared cookie sheet. Let stand at room temperature or store in refrigerator 30 minutes or until coating is firm

Using melted chocolate place dots of chocolate as glue and arrange ghost sprinkles for eyes. Pipe on eyebrows and mouth, let stand until firm.

Arrange cookies on tray. Spoon melted chocolate into a pastry bag fitted with Wilton tip # 3. Pipe saying onto each cookie.

Let stand at room temperature until coating is firm. In food processor blend cookies until fine crumbs, set aside.

Graveyard Cake

Heat oven to 350°F. Lightly grease and flour 2 (9-inch) square baking pans. Combine in food processor 1 cup blueberries and water. Puree 1 minute or until smooth

Blend cake mix, blueberry mixture, oil and eggs in large bowl on low speed just until moistened. Scrape sides of bowl.

Beat at medium speed 2 minutes. Stir in remaining blueberries. Divide batter evenly into prepared pans.

Bake 25 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool completely.

Raspberry Strawberry Filling

Combine raspberries and 1 cup coarsely chopped strawberries in food processor. Puree 1 minute or until smooth.

Press through a sieve to remove seeds. Whisk sugar, cornstarch and berry puree in small saucepan until blended.

Bring to a boil over medium-high heat, stirring constantly and boil 1 minute.

Remove from heat stir in ½ cup chopped strawberries; set aside. Cool completely.

Chocolate Ganache Whipped Frosting

Bring heavy cream to a boil over medium- high heat in medium saucepan. Whisk in chocolate. Whisking constantly until the chocolate is completely melted.

Pour chocolate into a bowl, cover surface with plastic wrap, chill 2 hours.

Beat on low to medium speed 30 seconds or just until ganache is thickened and begins to hold a shape. Do not overbeat.

To Assemble:

Place one cake layer on serving plate. Spread raspberry strawberry filling to ½ inch from edge. Top with second cake layer.

Frost sides and top with ganache whipped frosting. Arrange blueberries around top edge of cake and raspberries around bottom edge of cake.

Sprinkle center top with cookie crumbs. Arrange strawberry ghosts and press cookies into cake, for tombstones.

Yields

Raspberry Strawberry filling= 1 ¼ cup

Whipped Ganache yield 2 ½ cups

Healthy Tips:

Prepare cake with eggbeaters

Recipe courtesy of Driscoll’s, Photograph courtesy of Driscoll’s. Copyright 2010. All rights reserved.

This is a backdated post. It was a last minute idea to prepare this week’s Bento as I told the kids that I had too many house chores too do. Nevertheless, I changed my mind, seeing how disappointed they were. I stir fried some potato cubes with soya sauce, which was one of their favourite dish. The rest were the usual cocktail mushroom sausages, fried egg, boil egg and carrots.

For the boy. Was worried it was too girly for him but when he came back home, he said that he did not even notice what he ate!

The above two boxes are for the girl. The containers are smaller so I had to use two.

Located at Brighton Square, this outlet serves Taiwan dishes and one of their specialty is the noodle with different scales of spiciness. I did not try that dish but played safe and ordered their Chicken Mushroom noodle which cost RM10.90. It came with soup and Chinese tea. This noodle set tasted quite good so, I am going back to try other dishes soon. Certainly worth exploring.

I didn’t take many photo as I was too hungry but the ambience was satisfactory and I like the deco. Picture below shows part of the wall decorated with a full shelf of small teapots. Very cute and unique.

The exam is finally over this week. What a relief for the kids as well as me The girl did not do so well in her Chinese Paper 2 but I must say, I’m surprised that she could even pass. Being clueless at Chinese myself, it makes me feel helpless not being able to tutor her….so I did not give her any scolding for the 60 marks she obtained.

Exam aside, I decided to do another Bento lunch for the kids after skipping it last week. The tuition teacher actually bought the boy fried chicken rice despite the fact that I told the boy to let his teacher know that he was coughing badly. So, there was no avoiding doing the Bento today. My kids have also begun to expect that I fix them Bento at least once a week and this is good encouragement for me.

We have small containers at home so, normally I will need to make an additional box to cater to my boy’s appetite. And more often than not, I forgot to think about the sort of food items I want in there. So, the 3rd box is often made up of whatever leftover I have. Here’s today’s creation:

Baby carrots on top (with shredded cheese under the carrots) with stir fried Japanese tofu (leftover). Seaweed for the hair, eyes, mouth and crab stick for the cheeks. Bento for the boy.

Baby carrots with boiled egg (heart shape crab stick cut out). Ham for the cat’s ears, cheese, seaweed, crab stick for the facial features. The darker shade of the cat’s face is rice mixed with soya sauce. Bento for the girl.

This is the “spare” box which I packed for the kids to share. I usually dump all the leftover in this box. The boy wanted fried egg and I just covered it on top of the rice (underneath consisted of shredded ham, crab sticks & cheese). The rest are sausages and baby carrots on top. Sorry for the awful work on this box and promise I’ll be more prepared the next round.

I can’t find time to do a real Bento for the kids in the morning as my speed is still horribly slow. So, this morning, I just incorporated some Bento elements in their food items…..a cheater’s way. LOL. Seriously though, I need to find more inspiration for breakfast bento for my kids.

For the boy – Actually, an egg sandwich

For the girl – One the right are meat dumplings (siow bee) and on the left are kaya filled bread cutouts. Container contains tomato sauce for the dumplings.

I fixed the kids another Bento lunch each as they always complain about having fried chicken rice at their tuition on Saturdays. They are pretty picky as they will only take KFC or McD fried chicken and not the ones available from local food stalls.

Unfortunately for me,  a couple of things went wrong. First, the vege were overcooked because I had totally forgotten that I was boiling them until it was too late.  Also, the tamago rolls were made with the white on the outside instead of inside. This is coz the egg yolk were very little so, I could not put another layer of egg yolk to the pan. 

 Here’s what I managed to do despite all the mistakes made:

For the boy. I made sure I fully filled up the container with rice as he complained that he was still hungry after he ate yesterday’s Bento lunch

For the girl

I’ve just recently developed a craze for Bento and the reason is because I am trying to get my daughter to eat more greens. Being a totally uncreative person, I have to find inspiration from You Tube and Japanese Bento blogs. However, one person who inspires me a lot is a good friend of mine who runs Bentofun dot info (though it’s list on my sidebar). Psst…not linking her blog coz I’m not proud of my “artwork”, else she would hop over here to see my post. LOL.

I have not invested in many Nori punchers because there are no smiley punchers available at our 100 yen outlet here.  So, some of the cutting had to be done with knife and they looked awful. Wish I had gotten them from Daiso when I was in KL.

I decided to prepare these lunch boxes today because both the kids were coughing and the lunch today at their tuition school consist of fries and nuggets.

For the girl

For the boy

Just realized that the cheese which I shredded to use as “earth” for the trees/plants do not really show up in the pics as the colour is too light. Must remind myself to replace them with ham the next time to add more colours. Also did not have time to take close up pics of the Octo and Mouse sausages which I made.

All in all, it took me two hours to complete everything. That was truly taking up too much time. Must improve on timing and skills.