By Little Miss Bento, Shirley Wong baking, bread, japanese bread, kawaii, milo So happy that my kawaii milo bread buns were a success!! They were so soft, and filled with yummy homemade milo custard filling!! The one thing that I might do the next time is to perhaps blend the milo custard filling in a processor so that it is even more smooth. Milo is a chocolate malt drink popular in Singapore and in Malaysia. Since when we were children, many of us loved drinking milo, that chocolatety drink at home, in school and at coffeeshops. It was regarded as a pretty nutritiousness drink. There are so many ways to enjoy a milo drink – hot, cold, with condensed milk, or without. And not to forgot the famous milo dinosaur – an ice cold milo drink topped with more milo powder (which doesnt melt in the cold drink) and retains that gritty texture. It is also enjoyed together with square biscuits by some people. What is your favourite way to enjoy milo? As a kid, I remembered how I would mix some hot water with milo powder, just enough to make it into a paste, and used it as bread spread!!

Anyway, I thought – what not better but to create my own milo bread recipe? So I hope you like this recipe for homemade milo bread buns filled with homemade milo custard cream! As usual, my bread recipe stems from Japanese soft bread style~ enjoy!! Inspired by my mother’s upcoming birthday, she is of Tiger Chinese zodiac so I made them into cute tiger bread buns! Ingredients (Milo custard filling)oster blender blstcc 3 tsp milo powderbreville blend active debenhams 1.5 tsp instant yeasthamilton beach softscrape 6 speed hand mixer with case reviews 150ml warm water (about 35C~40C)blender kitchenaid 5ksb555 eob noir

Ingredients (Chocolate custard used for drawing the tiger character) 1 tsp cocoa powder Method (Milo custard filling) PART 1 1) In a small mixing bowl, add egg yolks, sugar, milo powder and corn flour. Mix well until it forms a paste. 2) In a small pot, heat the milk until small bubbles at the side appear, stir a couple of times. 3) Add the paste from step 1 to the heated milk.waring waterfall blender review 4) Place the pot over heat again and keep mixing and stiring until the paste is incorporated into the milk. vitamix creations gc blender reviewsContinue to cook and stir with a plastic spatula until it forms a curdish texture. braun blender mx2050 parts 5) Set in a bowl to cool.

Place in the fridge. Continue to start on making the bread dough. Method (Bread dough) PART 1 1) In a big mixing bowl, sieve and add in bread flour, sugar, milo powder, salt. Then add in instant yeast and warm water. Mix until it forms a flaky texture. Add in the soften unsalted butter and mix again. 2) Transfer all the contents on your worktop and use your hand to knead until butter is incorporated and the dough is smooth, softer and stretchy. It should take about 15mins. 3) Shape into a ball and place it back in your mixing bowl. Cover with cling wrap and let it rise at about 40C for about 45-50mins. 4) Do the dough test. The risen dough should have doubled in size. 5) Punch out the air and roll the dough again. Shape it into a ball and divide into 8 equal parts. Set on the baking tray, cover with a damp towel. Set aside for 2nd rise (about 10mins). Method (Milo custard filling) PART 2 6) Take the milo custard filling out from the fridge. Scoop and divide into 8 parts (about 30g each), shape it into a small ball using cling wrap.

7) Place them back into the fridge again with the cling wrap. Method (Chocolate custard cream for character’s features) 1) In a small mixing bowl, add egg yolk, sugar, corn flour, cocoa powder and mix well until it forms a paste. 5) When cooled, transfer into a piping bag with small round tip. Method (Bread dough) PART 2 6) Roll out the bread, use a scissors to cut out 2 triangulars. Shape the rest of the bread dough into a nice roundish shape, place one of serving of the milo custard filling in the centre and seal it at the back. 7) Place the 2 small triangulars on the bread buns. This is for the ears of the tiger character. 8) Cover the bread buns with a damp cloth, set the buns aside for 3rd rise (about 10mins) 9) Brush on some egg wash. 10) Pipe the features for the tiger character (the eyes, nose and strips) 11) Bake in the oven at about 170C for 15-18mins until nicely brown. Follow my food art and bento creations on Facebook, LIKE my page here.

Green tea powder, aka matcha and maccha, is the soul of green tea cake. If you want to make good green tea cake, you have to use good quality green tea powder. GTP has three enemies: heat, light and oxygen. The colour and flavour deteriorate very quickly unless the tea is kept in the cold, in the dark, away from oxygen. Good matcha is sold in an airtight and  lightproof metal container, and it comes with an oxygen absorber. It should be used as soon and as quickly as possible. And it should be refrigerated, even when it's still sealed. Lousy matcha, OTOH, sits in a see-through plastic container that's sealed but not really airtight. It's essentially hay with artificial colouring and flavouring. It's good if you're baking a cake for your pet rabbit. To make green tea cake, just take whatever cake recipe you like and substitute a bit of the flour with matcha. Yes, of course you can do that. In fact, a lot of people do. But matcha and wheat flour are two entirely different things.

The former consists of leaves/fibre; the latter consists of protein and starch. Compared to flour, ground up leaves absorb more water but less fat. Unless you adjust the recipe, a cake made with green tea powder would be less fluffy and more oily than one made without. Besides the absorbancy, there're two more differences between matcha and flour. Does matcha taste like flour? Of course it doesn't. Green tea powder is slightly bitter but flour isn't. It makes the cake less sweet. Does matcha brown like flour? Wet leaves don't brown, so green tea powder makes the cake brown slower unless you add more sugar or increase the oven temperature. Most cake recipes need a wee bit of salt. You shouldn't be able to taste the salt at all. It's there to round off the sweetness. Green tea cake, however, doesn't need any salt because matcha does the "rounding off". If there's salt, you'd be able to taste it. The flavour of green tea powder is very delicate. If there's baking soda/powder in the recipe, the delicate flavour would be compromised.

Hence, green tea cake should be made without any baking soda/powder. I don't like green tea cake that's dense, salty, oily, not sweet, not brown and not "matcha-ish". My green tea cake is made with a recipe that's dedicated to making green tea cake that's soft, fluffy, and subtly fragrant with the scent of green tea powder. It's not some vanilla cake with the vanilla yanked out and matcha bunged in. If you want to try my recipe, be warned that the cake cracks even with cardboard insulation to help it rise evenly. The cracks close up nicely as the cake cools down but you'd still see a few lines. Here's what the cake looks like hot from the oven and after cooling down: After baking my way through four bottles of GTP, I'm now happy with my recipe. I hope you like it too. GREEN TEA (MATCHA) CAKE (抹茶蛋糕) 10 g castor sugar 60 g egg yolks 30 g corn oil 5 g green tea powder 40 g cake flour 105 g egg whites 1/16 tsp cream of tartar

45 g castor sugar 200 g dairy cream, ≈35% fat, thoroughly chilled 1 tsp green tea powder 1. To make cake, trim 5 mm thick corrugated cardboard to fit sides of 23 x 15 cm cake pan. Wrap each piece of cardboard in aluminium foil, shining side facing out. Line bottom of 20 x 12 x 7.5 cm cake pan with 2 layers of parchment paper. 2. Preheat oven to 160°C. Measure ingredients for cake and prepare green tea as detailed above. 3. Whisk 10 g castor sugar with egg yolks till dissolved. Whisk till just combined. Whisk will just thoroughly mixed. Sift cake flour into mixture. Whisk till just thoroughly mixed but small lumps are still visible. 4. Separately whisk egg whites till frothy. Add cream of tartar. Whisk till thick foam forms. Gradually add 45 g castor sugar whilst still whisking. Continue to whisk till firm peak stage. 5. Thoroughly whisk yolk mixture, which should be smooth now. Add half of egg whites. Mix with whisk till almost even. Add remaining egg whites.

Scrape down and fold with spatula till just evenly mixed, banging mixing bowl against worktop 2-3 times. 6. Pour batter into 20 x 12 x 7.5 cm cake pan, slowly and from about 30 cm high. Jiggle pan till batter is level. 7. Place cake pan holding batter in 23 x 15 cm cake pan. Tuck cardboard between 2 pans. Bake till middle of cake doesn't make squishing sound when pressed gently, about 55 minutes. 8. Remove pans from oven. Remove cardboard and outer pan. Drop pan holding cake from about 30 cm high, 2-3 times. Invert pan onto wire rack. Leave till just cool. 9. As soon as cake is cool, slide knife along sides of pan. Discard both layers of parchment paper. 10. To make whipped cream, whisk cream till just thick enough to hold its shape. Add green tea powder. Whisk till evenly mixed and cream is dead stiff. 11. To assemble, cut cake horizontally with serrated knife or cake slicer into 2 equal halves. Set aside bottom half of cake. Invert top half so that cut side faces up.