April | 2015 | Underground Culinary Lab

Happy Easter Sunday from the West Coast! I found a super cute recipe online and decided to make these lil bunnies for Easter this year. I’m in a rather great mood because the sun is shining bright today! Also, because I get to bake, bake, bake!

image (2)

The ingredients were very simple and I had everything at home already in my pantry and fridge. Note: Not shown in the photo above was the extra egg (for the egg wash) and the black sesame seeds (for the bunnies’ eyes).

I followed the recipe here. I found it was quite straightforward, except when it came time to shape the bunnies’ faces and ears. I first rolled up the balls of dough (roughly 20) and shaped it into an ‘egg-like’ shape with my hands, trying to smooth the edges out. I then cut the top part of the dough with my scissors and made 2 incisions for the ears. The ears at first looked like sharp horns (more cat-like), so I flattened each ear to make it look rounder. For the eyes, I used a toothpick to make 2 small holes and inserted two black sesame seeds in them. Unfortunately, mine ended up looking like little mice haha… but they’re still pretty kawaii!

The bunny buns were very soft and tasted similarly to some plain Asian-style buns, with a very nice contrast of salty and sweet. The recipe is completely milk-free (perfect for those who are lactose-intolerant) 🙂 I will definitely make these again one day!

Have a hoppy Easter!

-Matchachoco

Spring is here! Here’s a food post I’ve delayed posting for a very long time because I was waiting for Spring.

This cake was inspired by a photo of an Easter egg I saw online (does anyone know the original source?). I just knew I had to recreate it the moment I saw the photo! You’re probably wondering how I made the chocolate egg shells. And no, I didn’t use a giant Easter egg mold! The truth is, I made some culinary “shortcuts”. The egg shells are actually a giant Kinder Surprise egg that I split into half.

I stuffed the chocolate egg shells with vanilla and matcha sponge cake, along with some sweetened whipped cream and strawberries. Since the chocolate egg shells were already sweet enough, I thought the lightness of the sponge cake and whipped cream complemented the chocolate well. I got the sponge cake recipe from Woodland Bakery. I added vanilla extract to half of the cake batter, and added matcha powder to the other half. Given the history of our previous posts on matcha, we all know that I just HAD to. But of course, you can stuff whatever type of cake and cream you prefer. The beauty of baking is that you get to be creative with the flavours that you make 🙂

To get the spongecake fit the chocolate egg shells, I made cutouts with paper towels with the shapes I wanted. I didn’t measure anything. I just estimated and checked if the cutouts fit the chocolate egg shells. Once I got the right shape and size, I used the cutouts as a guideline to cut the cake.