Orange-banana-walnut Mousse

Got up this morning and realized I didn't have a (belated) birthday present for my favorite cousin whose always looked out for me. So, what better idea than to hand make it? Handmade sweets (and handmade anything) are always the most thoughtful kind of present you can give anybody... or so the traditional thinking goes. I ended up going freestyle even though I had everything I needed for this scrumptious sounding Jewish flourless orange cake. My creativity got the best of me again I suppose.. hehe.  Hoping I wouldn't accidentally poison her, here's what I put in:
- 1 orange zested than juiced (by hand)
- 1 banana mashed
- 3 heaped tablespoons of  yoghurt
- 1 egg
- 2 tablespoons of almond meal
- 1 tablespoon of psyllium husks
- 1/2 cup crushed walnuts

According to the packaging, psyllium husks is a laxative that helps constipation.. whoops? 1 tablespoon really shouldn't have too much effect though, since the proportion  of husks is quite little compared to the amount of mixture I had.

Since my oven was dead, I had to use my grill to cook the cake instead, ended up burning the top of the cake a bit so I quickly took it out but the cake was still quite moist,  probably because I had barely any almond meal or husks in it. So I flipped the cake over upside down and continued cooking the cake at a lower heat, the result was a lovely nice glaze on the slightly burnt side of the cake. The orange juice had sunk down to the bottom of the pan where the burnt side was and gave it this nice shiny appearance.  To make it shinier I put some honey over the burnt side and kept cooking it til the the top of the cake was slightly crispy. I flipped the cake onto a plate and ta-da~ honey glazed mousse-cake of sorts with a crispy base.

Got to experiment with this unorthodox way of "glazing" a cake some more, it actually looks quite pretty.

Here's my results with some roasted honey and cinnamon walnuts to garnish :)

Character Bento: Keroppi!

Opening the fridge today, I decided to just make some late lunch with the leftovers I had in there. I happened to have just watched a video on this adorable Rilakkuma omurice (omelette rice) and felt a little creative. And TADA~!  The result of last night's carrots, mushrooms, avocado, tuna and rice dabbled with creativity.
From this....

To the happy smiling frog!! :>

It really was quite simple to make, took me about maybe 30 minutes in total. Well, if anybody's curious and need some inspiration on making adorable lunches, here's my recipe!

Eyes:
- Roughly 2 tablespoons of rice per eye
- 2 teaspoon Apple cider vinegar or Rice vinegar
- 2 teaspoon sugar
- 1 teaspoon of sesame seeds to taste
- 1 teaspoon Tuna for the filling
- 2 sliced pieces of mushroom

Firstly dissolve the sugar into the vinegar then mix everything except tuna together. Separate rice in half for each eye. Scoop one half onto a piece of gladwrap and wrap it around the rice and mould it into a ball with your hands. Flatten the ball and add place the tiny bit of tuna in the middle and roll it into a ball again. Garnish with a mushroom per eye =D

Face:
- 1/2 Avocado
- Rice (as much as you want to eat)
- 2 carrots
- 2 tiny slice of seaweed for the mouth (or linseeds if you don't have any like me)
- Filling: whatever you want, e.g. leftover carrot, mushroom and tuna

Mash avocado into the rice. Next, put the filling onto a plate and pile them in a small circle (The less filling you have the easier!) Scoop out all the avocado-rice onto a piece of cling wrap and similar to what was done with the eyes, form a pancake out of it. Instead of rolling the rice back into a ball, place your pancake of rice over the circle of filling. The more rice you have, or the less filling you have, the easier it will be to cover all the filling. Then arrange carrots and seaweed/linseeds until you get a face  :)

If you have about 3/4 of a bowl of rice (which I unfortunately didn't have), you can place some cling wrap in an empty bowl, place all the avocado-rice on top of that, then with a spoon push the rice against the edges of the bowl until it covers the top of the bowl. Make sure you have enough rice at the bottom of the bowl but there should be a small hole in the middle of the bowl where you can put your filling in. Quickly tip bowl onto the centre of a plate so not to let anything fall out and gently knock on the sides of the bowl to make sure everything comes off the bowl.

This is what it would look like if you didn't have enough rice the top of the bowl- it makes it harder for you to tip the bowl onto the centre of the plate while keeping a round shape.

Not sure if my explanation made any sense... so good luck! Hehehe... and time for me to start studying I suppose.