Double Zecora - Two for One Nori Cutting!

 Miss M was working through the alphabet at Prep and came to Z . . .obviously for Zecora of My Little Pony fame!

I made this Easy Lunchbox for her with nori cutting and FooDoodler cheese. I tried to emulate Zecora's cutie mark with the mandarin and cheese 'swirl'. What do you think? Did it pass? There's some yoghurt in the red container as well.

I realised after I'd done the nori cutting that I'd accidentally made another perfect opportunity for lunch! The next day Miss M had the offcuts of the original design with some quickie rockmelon slices and a yoghurt pouch below the sandwich.

Brain break was packed separately both days.

Details of my tools & toys can be found on this page.

~J

Disclosure: This is not a sponsored post. This post was written for Loving Lunches. No product was received for this post. All opinions expressed are my own, based on my personal experience with the product. This post may contain affiliate links.

Kung Fu Panda Lunches of Awesomeness Monkey

Miss M chose this image of Monkey sitting on top of his staff as her favourite from the 'Secrets of the Furious Five'. I used some wafer sticks for the staff and just had to include a banana. It's difficult to see but Monkey has his pants now. You will just have to watch to find out what that's all about ;-)

Monkey is made from nori laid on cheese. Perhaps my favourite part of this lunch is being able to say that the moon *is* made of cheese!!

Details of my tools & toys can be found on this page.

~J

Disclosure: This is not a sponsored post. This post was written for Loving Lunches. No product was received for this post. All opinions expressed are my own, based on my personal experience with the product. This post may contain affiliate links.

Kung Fu Panda Lunches of Awesomeness Viper

Sweet young Viper! Born with no teeth (and therefore no venom) learned to ribbon dance to bring joy to her father.

Side of yoghurt and apple with strawberry today.

Here I made Viper from a bread crust and cheese with nori cutting, layered like I did with Tigress (see this earlier post). Her ribbon is made from fruit leather as is the colour in her face. Panda Po is watching on :-)

This is a better angle to see that toothless grin :D


Details of my tools & toys can be found on this page.

~J

Disclosure: This is not a sponsored post. This post was written for Loving Lunches. No product was received for this post. All opinions expressed are my own, based on my personal experience with the product. This post may contain affiliate links.

Kung Fu Panda Lunches of Awesomeness Crane

Half way through our Kung Fu Panda: Lunches of Awesomeness and today we have Crane.

Made using nori cutting and FooDoodlers on top of cheese again and placed on Miss M's Vegemite sandwich.

I did add a Panda pick, but it must have been after I took the photos - D'oh!

My first attempt at making an apple crane swan after watching this video and I'm kind of happy with how it turned out. Next time I must use slimmer guides, but for a quick go this worked fine. My only problem was that it was too tall for my lunchbox!

Details of my tools & toys can be found on this page.

~J

Disclosure: This is not a sponsored post. This post was written for Loving Lunches. No product was received for this post. All opinions expressed are my own, based on my personal experience with the product. This post may contain affiliate links.

Kung Fu Panda Lunches of Awesomeness Tigress

This was the first lunch in this series that I made. Tigress is Miss M's favourite from the Furious Five and in the Kung Fu Panda 'Secrets of the Furious Five' we get to see her as a cub. Tigress' story reminds me of how much influence a child's friends (or lack of) can impact them.

Tigress was made using nori and FooDoodlers on cheese. I layered the eyes and added a layer of fruit leather which I also used for her shirt.

I loved how this Wendolonia inspired mandarin flower came out when I added the strawberry rose (Inspiration here.)

Fun Panda pick a must in all these lunches!

Details of my tools & toys can be found on this page.

~J

Disclosure: This is not a sponsored post. This post was written for Loving Lunches. No product was received for this post. All opinions expressed are my own, based on my personal experience with the product. This post may contain affiliate links.

Tinkerbell Tea Party

Our local cinema is great with fundraising! The most popular movies are premiered at a party to raise funds for assorted local groups and schools. Our Gymnastics club scored a double premier of TinkerBell & the NeverBeast and Cinderella. At intermission there was a TInkerBell Tea Party. I thought that was the perfect excuse to do a spot of baking!

These cute little toadstool cakes were a cinch to make.

Basic vanilla sponge

Removed from silicon baking mould.

I used a mini cutter to give a straighter edge to the base

Like so

And trimmed with a knife.

Giving a more toadstool look. In the end I think I gave up as these were so small you couldn't really tell, but in a muffin size I would recommend trimming. Or you could fill your moulds a little more so the mixture naturally overflows in the cooking process.

Add some bright red buttercream icing and some mini marshmallows, et voila!

I also made some sushi bites with nori cuttings.

I was quite proud of my Tinkerbells, what do you think? I think the hardest part was searching for the perfect image to cut.

I think this was my favourite. Adapted from this gorgeous photo.

The rice bites were made using this set of rice moulds.

This was regular rice cooked so it was a little stickier than usual. Some of these bites were plain, others were filled with pre-marinated teriyaki chicken. I love having a skewer or two on hand, they are the perfect size for a few sushi rolls.

Some peas helped to complete Gruff.

Being that it was a double movie premier (and I've always wanted to try) I also made some high-heel cakes.

Mini patty cake/cup cakes with buttercream icing then decorated with a wafer biscuit and a Rondoletti stick held in place with a little more icing.

So simple!

For the Gruff inspired ones I used some black chocolate melts with chocolate icing and topped each with a green M&M. I also used two toned wafer fingers for the heel.

I think my melts were heat affected and they didn't really melt properly making piping them quite interesting. I still think they looked cute though!

I failed miserably at these sunflower balls but still love them. I used a cake pop mould for the yellow chocolate (again heat affected I think - the joys of living in central Queensland. Good thing I had some coconut oil on hand). The truffles are TimTam cheesecake balls rolled in chocolate sprinkles. You can see the Pinspiration for them here.

I was so happy with how my little TinkerBell slippers turned out! And just 3 ingredients! Well, I made the coconut balls with condensed milk & desiccated coconut, but you could quite easily use store bought. 

And Miss M had a great time helping colour the biscuits.

And using a little condensed milk to attach the coconut bites.

I can't remember now why we couldn't make it to the movies that day, but you can see some of the spread in this post from the Club.

Details of my tools & toys can be found on this page.

~J

Disclosure: This is not a sponsored post. This post was written for Loving Lunches. No product was received for this post. All opinions expressed are my own, based on my personal experience with the product. This post may contain affiliate links.

Saturday Night Fever Bento

 I'm not sure who was more excited about Miss M's first school Disco - her or me! And it was a Retro theme to boot! I immediately had images of John Travolta doing his Saturday Night Fever thang and I knew what I wanted to make for lunch!

 It started off with a quick scour of the internet to find a suitable silhouette and a coloured disco floor. Some quick photo editing and I had my template for a nori cutting.

Then I hit that baby with a good dose of FooDoodler whilst not really trying to get 'You Should be Dancing' out of my head.

Pop the cheese/nori art on top of a sandwich and that's the main part of lunch done.

 For brain break I thought I'd try to make a disco floor out of popcorn. My FunBites Cube It made a great mould.

 I filled each section with some coloured popcorn.

 And removed the guide. It didn't really work *quite* the way I'd hope but I'm still rather happy with it.

 I did decide to top it up and really fill the container with what I could to satisfy my big eater.

 It doesn't look too Disco-y from this angle. . .

 . . . but turn it a little and you can see more of the colours.

 I love that you can see the colours through this lunchbox!

 My next challenge was to create a microphone. I found some mini ice cream cones in the back of the pantry (sadly they aren't available any more) and filled with some tiny carrot sticks.

 I made a dip-ball (cream cheese mixed with Miss M's favourite dip) and rolled it in black sesame and poppy seeds.

I think it worked fabulously! I did assemble this the morning of so the cone wouldn't get soggy by lunchtime.

 I also rolled the honeydew and dragon fruit balls in edible glitter the morning of as my test batch of Mirror Ball Fruit macerated overnight. o.O

Miss M thoroughly enjoyed her lunch and her Disco. . . and so did I! I hope you enjoy it to!


Details of my tools & toys can be found on this page.

~J

Disclosure: This is not a sponsored post. This post was written for Loving Lunches. No product was received for this post. All opinions expressed are my own, based on my personal experience with the product. This post may contain affiliate links.