3 O'clock Fairy

Happy Holidays, from 3 O'Clock Fairy!

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 20:51:01 GMT

If you don't celebrate Christmas, then I'm sure you can appreciate a little gingerbread Sailor Moon and Tuxedo Mask (and a sneaky little gingerbread Luna).
Whatever your beliefs and whatever you celebrate, I hope you have a great holidays and new year.

Happy Birthday, Usagi!

Thu, 30 Jun 2011 07:44:17 GMT

It's that time of year again! That's right, it's June 30th, otherwise known as the birthday of not only Usagi, but Chibi-Usa! I wanted to do something to celebrate (perpetual loser that I am), so I came up with three ideas that you can copy at home to spread the Sailor Moon party love; Luna Lollipops, Crisis Heart Biscuits and a Luna-P Pinata.

The ideas here are pretty simple, really - they're just slightly different spins on already-existing ideas. So, I'll be linking you out to a lot of recipes this time instead of just copying and pasting them myself.

First, though, let's talk about that pinata! Home-made pinatas are really easy to make, and they're actually surprisingly fun (providing you don't mind getting your hands dirty).

You'll need:

Some balloons (check out how big your balloons will get while staying a sphere - get bigger balloons if you want a bigger pinata rather than over-inflating your balloon and having it be a weird shape)
Lots of newspaper
Some craft glue (you can also make a paste out of flour and water if you are comfortable)
Some paper and sticky tape
Some paint that's about the colour of Luna-P (a lavender-grey colour)
Something to hold it up at the end
Pink confetti or pink paper you can cut up to be confetti
A yellow bead or pom-pom to be the ball on its antennae
And some candy to put inside.

Of course you can always just pick whatever candy you like best, but if you want to go along with the theme, here are some ideas; Milky Ways (Sailor Moon, the universe, you get it), some White Rabbit candy (how perfect!), some "pink sugar hearts", and then just some filler lollies that look nice and cute. MAKE SURE that they're individually wrapped, though! You don't want your delicious yet vulnerable lolly falling in a pile of mud.

First step is to inflate the balloon as large as you want it while it's still (fairly) spherical. Then, make some cones out of paper, but fold the corners so that it's a semi-cone with one flat face - these will be the cat ears. (I'd try to explain how to make these semi-cones, but the easiest way is to just fiddle around with the paper until you get it right). Tape them to the balloon (if I were making this pinata again, I'd make the ears larger and put them closer together than in these photos).

Then, dilute the glue in some water until you have something like wallpaper paste. Rip the newspaper you have into strips/chunks, dip them into the paste until they're well coated, and apply them to your shape. Allow each layer to dry before you start putting the next one on (without any assistance, it can take a full day for the layers to dry, but we managed to make this one in a night using a heater to speed up the process). I used about four layers of newspaper on this one.
Make sure you leave a hole at the top to put the candy and cord in!

Ta-dah! Now, make sure that you've strengthened the area where you're going to thread the cord - you can do this with duct tape, or with a few extra coats of newspaper.
Making sure your paper machie has completely dried, gently pop the balloon - I preferred to cut near the knot and let the air out rather than burst it with a pin (you don't want to damage your precious Luna-P). With a pair of scissors or a knife, carefully make a hole through your reinforced area to thread your cord/string/rope/etc.

Then tie a knot so that it won't come out again.
Now you've got to start thinking about how much candy you'll put in it. Carefully consider how many layers of paper you have, how strong your rope is, and think of how much candy you think it could hold. The pinata isn't going to be the only source of sweets at a party, so don't feel you have to over-fill it! A few pieces of nicer candy would be better than lots.

I was a wuss, so that's all I thought I could put in mine.
Now, when Luna-P transforms, she explodes in a giant puff of pink smoke - so it would be cool to have the same effect when your pinata explodes, right? If you have some pink paper already, you can cut that up into little pieces to use as confetti, but you might find it easier/more affordable to buy confetti from the store - going out to buy pink paper just to cut it up might not be the most cost-effective choice. Put that in there too.
Cover up the hole on top of your pinata with tape, paper, etc. - whatever works for you. Then is the time to paint over it.

You might need a couple of coats to make sure none of the newsprint shows through. (Without a face, it just looks like a kitty Death Star...)
Now is time to put on the face! If you like, you could hand-draw it, but I've got some handy designs already made for you that you can print off and use instead. They're A4 size for convenient printing.
Here's the colour version, and the black and white for you to colour yourself.

Stick on the facial featuers with more paste, or a glue-stick.

Next, you want to make the cord look like a part of Luna-P - namely, the aerial! With a bead, this is easy as pie - just tie a knot in the cord where you want the bead to go, then thread it on. I foolishly bought yellow pom-poms instead (I don't know what I was thinking),but if you have a hot glue gun like we do, that's another option.

And then you're done! Your Luna-Pinata is all ready to go. Tie it up in a tree (for best results, tie it so that the yellow bead/pom-pom is as close to the tree as possible so it looks like she's floating), and then whack it to bits with something (I recommend a yellow umbrella).

Next are the Luna Lollipops. Now, good gracious, I don't actually recommend that you try these unless you've already made lollipops before. I made three batches, the first burning, the second crystallizing, and the third only making a few useable lollipops... that I managed to still mess up. But still! Like I said, if you're confident in your sucker-making abilities, this could be an interesting idea for you.

I'm not going to link you to the recipe I originally used, half because it wasn't very good and half because I can't find it again - so I'd suggest you use this one instead, which looks pretty much the same, only better.
You don't really need lollipop moulds (in fact this recipe wouldn't work if you had moulds) or a candy thermometer, though - just chill some flat baking pans in the fridge and drop the mixture on there (hoping like hell they make circles). To test that the temperature of your lollipops are accurate, drop some of the mixture into a small bowl of cold water. If the mixture remains gooey, it's not ready. If it immediately turns hard (try putting the spoon in the water and seeing if the candy will make a tapping sound), it's done! Work fast!

On top of the ingredients/procedure you've chosen for making lollipops, you'll need:

Some black food dye (if you can find it), and blue
Writing icing pens in white, yellow and pink
Jube candy that comes in dark colours like purple, black, etc.
Cellophane and yellow ribbon

BEFOREHAND: Grease your baking pans liberally and chill. Take your jubes and cut them so that they make triangle shapes - these will be the ears.

Now, somehow, miraculously, prepare the lollipop recipe accurately. Add in your food colouring until you get a colour that reminds you of Luna (if you do find black food colouring, the blue is necessary for when you hold it up to the light). After you have poured then on your work surface, quickly add the lollipop sticks, and place your ears face-down into the lollipops so that when you turn them over, they'll look like cat ears.
Don't make my mistake and think you'll have to put them very far into the lolly for them to stick - all this does is push the lollipop mixture up and out and completely ruins your shape. If you just press them into a little bit of the mixture, the same thing should happen, which should result in the effect you were originally going for (does that make any sense?).

Note how many I couldn't use because of that... (and also that one I messed up by putting on back-to-front, sigh).
Then, when they have completely cooled, take them off the tray and, using your icing writing pens, draw eyes and whiskers in white, a little mouth and some ear pinks with pink, and then the all-important crescent moons in yellow.

Why yes, these slightly creepy-looking things were the only nice ones I managed to make. Now let us never speak of them again.

Now, you'll probably want to protect these lollipops somehow, since they're pretty sticky, and you wouldn't be able to get them anywhere without them attracting ALL OF THE DUST in your street. So cut some cellophane into rectangles, gently wrap them around the lollipop heads so as not to disturb the icing, and then tie them off with a ribbon. What sort of ribbon, you ask...?

A yellow ribbon, of course! (Really, the idea of how perfect it would be for little Luna lollipops to have yellow ribbons tied around their "necks" is the only thing that made me persevere. Bask in their adorable appropriateness.)

There you have it! Your Luna Lollipops are finished, and I sincerely hope you ended up with more to show for it than I did.

And finally, you have the Crisis Heart Biscuits (which sounds... dangerous). These are basically the old Stained Glass Cookie trick with a Sailor Moon twist. I'm not really going to elaborate on the cooking process, since it should be pretty clear what you need to do. Just make sure that you have red (or magenta)-coloured hard candy, and that you put yellow food colouring into your dough mix.

You're probably going to need a set of heart-shaped cookie cutters in scaled sizes (these are easier to find than you might imagine). For the wings and the crowns, I cut the shapes out with a butter knife. For the moons, find something circular that fits snugly inside your smaller heart-shaped cutter, and then a smaller circular something that you can use to cut a smaller circle out and make a moon-shape. These don't have to be cookie cutters; hunt around until you find a jar/lid/bottle/etc. that fits your other cutters. For my moons, I used a lid from my vanilla essence bottle for the smaller circle, and I believe the top of a toothpick container for the larger one.

There is a specific order you should cut the shapes in, though; cut the large heart shape out first, and then, while it's still complete, cut out the wings and crown (then remove the excess dough). Push the wings and crown back onto the heart shape (smoothing the edges over with milk makes them stick better), and THEN cut out the smaller heart shapes (and then the moons).

When you've made the biscuit shapes, put your candy in a paper or plastic bag and whack it to bits. Really enjoy that. Then put the crushed-up pieces inside your cookie. This will also help to hold your biscuit together, so don't worry if your heart-shaped outline and your moon don't touch perfectly all the way around.

Then bake for six minutes, or until the biscuits look cooked and the candy is all melted.
I found that the first time taking them out of the oven, the candy had melted away to almost nothing, and was very thin in some places and had completely evaporated in others. So I just put more candy in and then popped them back in the oven. They worked perfectly!
DO NOT attempt to move these biscuits until you're sure they're completely cooled and hardened!! If you move them too quickly, the candy will still be gooey and your biscuit will break... and then you'll have to eat that miserable failure. Which is terrible, obviously.

I wouldn't recommend serving these biscuits to young children, only because the hard candy can be difficult for them to chew and bite, but anyone older would love them! (The recipe is delicious.)

And that's it! I hope you enjoyed the photos, and the recipes, and I hope you have a very merry June 30th! Merry Usagimas, everyone!

And while we're here, would you like to win some cool Sailor Moon prizes? Like a free fanart commission, some keychains, and an amulet from the real-life Hikawa Shrine in Akasaka? Then enter then June 30th Sailor Moon Giveaway! Anyone can win! Click here for more details!

Broochies? Broochuits? Cooch? No, definitely not cooch

Sat, 26 Mar 2011 02:15:47 GMT

Hello, all! Did you forget about us? It's been a while, but I have something new for you! I had intended to make these at the same time as the Crystal Star Cupcakes, but I forgot how easily-distracted I get when baking. So, they've been postponed until now. What are "they", you ask? Why, they're Broochies, of course!

"Brooch Cookies" - easy-to-make sugar cookies based on Usagi's first brooch!

Kids really like "smiley face" cookies, biscuits with candy stuck to the icing arranged in the shape of a face. They get to pick the sweets off and eat them first, and then have a cookie afterwards as well. These "Broochies" have the same idea, just with a Sailor Moon twist!

Here's a reference photo, just in case you forgot what it looks like.

They're obviously nowhere near as complicated as the Crystal Star Cupcakes, but they still produce a really cute effect. They're also great for getting kids involved with decorating! Maybe after you show them how to make a "proper" cookie, you can let them design their own "Sailor brooch" with a wide variety of different candy colours and shapes!

As you can see, there are two different kinds of "Broochie"; like the cupcakes, one is better looking, and the other is tastier/easier. The "Pretty" kind of Broochie is made with a strawberry Mentos "mint" and cachous (little shiny balls made of sugar) around the edge. The "Tasty" kind is made with half a pink marshmallow instead of the Mentos, and large plain sprinkles around the edge. Cachous are more of a torture than a treat - like cake fondant, they are edible, but rarely eaten. Likewise, Mentos can take a bit of chewing to eat, whereas marshmallows... well, you know, they're hella soft. So if you're making Broochies for kids, it's probably better to pick the "Tasty" kind - but if you're preparing them for people old enough to handle cachous and hard candy, the "Pretty" kind just looks a lot nicer.

What you'll need (in addition to the ingredients for your preferred sugar cookie + royal icing recipes);
* A bag of soft banana lollies
* Yellow food colouring
* Large coloured "sprinkles" OR multicoloured cachous. Make sure, whatever you pick, that it has the colours red, blue, green and yellow(/orange-ish). (Miniature M&Ms would also work very well, and might cut back on ingredients if you're also making Crystal Star Cupcakes.)
* Small, round, chewy, light pink candy (I recommend Mentos) OR pink marshmallows
* An appropriately-sized glass (read below)

If you have a sugar cookie (or any other suitable kind of cookie, really) recipe that you trust and know makes nice, flat, round cookies that hold their shape, then go ahead and use that one. If you don't have a recipe, here's the one that I used (although they may arrest us for using it outside of December). It also has a recipe for royal icing (which also holds its shape, and doesn't drip). Regular icing would leave a nice shiny finish, however, so if you want to use that instead, feel free.
Whatever cookie recipe you use, remember to add plenty of yellow food colouring; Usagi's brooch is yellow, and we want the biscuit to be, too!

After you've prepared the dough and it's setting in the fridge, now is a good time to find the right size glass to cut out your biscuit shapes.
Take one of the banana candies, and (making sure you've thoroughly washed your hands) bend it slightly so that it looks more like a crescent moon. Then take either your pink candy (I really wish I could've found a gummy candy that was the right size/shape/colour - that would be perfect!) or a marshmallow, and arrange the two pieces together on a plate like the design of the brooch. Then, find a glass that goes around both of these pieces of candy leaving about an inch of space at the edge.
When your dough has finished setting, roll it out and use the glass you picked to cut out the shapes of the cookies, then bake as per recipe. (Obviously, if your recipe makes your cookies spread a little bit, choose a glass slightly smaller than you want.) Make the royal icing, adding more yellow food colouring.

When your biscuits have cooled, take the yellow icing and gently ice a cookie so that it doesn't go right to the edge - the gap between biscuit and icing will imitate the "ridge" of the brooch. Now, take either your cachous or your sprinkles and arrange them so that they look like the circles on the edge of the brooch. Clockwise from the top, it's red, yellow(/orange), blue, green. If you're able, place them on the very edge of the icing circle, then roll/drag them more towards the edge so that they sit on the "ridge", whilst still being held in place with the icing. If not, just leave them wherever.
Then put your curved banana lolly in the middle of the cookie, where the moon is on the brooch; finally, add your pink candy, or your marshmallow, where the pink circle is. If you're using marshmallows, I suggest you cut them in half first so that they don't stand up so tall. You can cut them gently with a knife, but you don't have to be too careful, as they spring back up quite easily.
It's best to ice, and then decorate, each cookie individually rather than ice them all at once and then go to decorate, since the icing may set before you can put the candy in.

And there you go! Really simple, isn't it? Which one you should pick depends on who you're making them for, and really, which one you just like better.
They also keep for a long time, and since this recipe makes (approx.) 1 metric assload of cookies, they're a really good idea for school lunches.

Two Broochies made with cachous/chewy candy, and one in the middle made with sprinkles and a marshmallow.

Hope you enjoyed it! It's really very simple to make and the results are just so cute to look at. Having a whole bowl full of Usagi's brooches is kind of a surreal, delicious expeience! I hope you all find the time to try it out!

Crystal Star Cupcakes!

Mon, 20 Dec 2010 00:16:14 GMT

Long time, no see! I bet you'd forgotten about this blog! But we're not dead; we've just been very, very busy. However, today we have an adorable + delicious recipe idea, perfect for a kid's birthday party!

Presenting;

Crystal Star Cupcakes!

I'm sure you're all familiar with the Crystal Star, Usagi/Sailor Moon's second transformation tool, but just to refresh your memory, here's a picture;

The Crystal Star was an upgrade of Usagi's first transformation tool, a simple brooch. It transformed into this cute pink compact/locket once the Silver Crystal was placed inside.
And you know what?
THERE'S A SILVER CRYSTAL IN THIS CUPCAKE, TOO!!

Ta-dah!!

For the curious, that is a Ferrero Raffaello, which is a "crispy coconut-covered wafer and a delicate pastry cream surrounding a delicious almond". It's also totally the candy equivalent of the Maboroshi no Ginzuishou/Illusionary Silver Crystal:

Yes, the Raffaello doesn't come out of the cupcake looking exactly like it did going in, but it's still delicious and a very close resemblance.

What you'll need:

For cupcakes:

3/4 cup self-raising flour
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup butter/margarine
1/4 cup milk
1 egg
Vanilla essence
Yellow food colouring

The rest:

1 red M&M, 1 yellow M&M, 1 green M&M + 1 blue M&M per cupcake (I think "mini" M&Ms would look even nicer!)
A box of Raffaello candy (enough for 1 piece per cupcake)
Hot pink cupcake pans
Red food colouring
A loaf of sliced, white bread from the supermarket
Yellow food colouring
Icing sugar (and butter/margarine if you are using frosting)
2 sharp-pointed, 5-point star-shaped cookie cutters, 1 larger than the other
Something round you can use to cut out a circle, which just fits inside the smaller star cutter
Another round thing that you can use to cut out a very small circle (I recommend a McDonald's straw, which are quite thick)
A rolling pin

Instructions:

Ok, first, if you have your own preferred recipe for making vanilla cupcakes, please feel free to use that one, especially if you've already had success baking things into them before. However, make sure you add some yellow food colouring to the mix. You want these cupcakes to be really golden yellow!
If you don't have a cupcake recipe, here's the one I used (they're very tasty and moist without being too sweet);

Using the ingredients under the 'for cupcakes' heading:
Beat the egg. Cream the butter + sugar together, and add the egg and vanilla essence (to taste). Add the flour and milk gradually, and then the yellow food-colouring until the mixture is a nice, bright golden yellow.
This recipe makes 4 large cupcakes. If (and you probably will) you need more, simply double/triple/etc. the ingredients.

Now, put the hot-pink cupcake pans into a muffin tray. They have to be hot pink, or close to - you're trying to make it look like the bottom of the Crystal Star compact, which is a solid pink plastic.
I don't normally double-up on cupcake pans (putting two for each cupcake), but we are trying to preserve the colour, so in this case I advise it (otherwise the grease will make the cupcake pans transparent and less attractive).
Add 1 spoonful of mixture to each pan (or until halfway full). Unwrap the Raffaellos, and place one in each cupcake.

Then place another spoonful of mixture over the top (or until the patty-pan is full).
It's best to do this procedure only a couple of cupcakes at a time, to make sure you don't run out of mixture and end up with a bunch of half-filled cupcakes!

If you're using my recipe, you bake the cupcakes at 190°C (approx. 374°F) for about 10-15 minutes, or until they're done. If you're using your own recipe, you'll know what temperature + how long yours need to bake.
Tip: To check if a cupcake is cooked all the way through, turn it upside-down and tap the base. If it sounds hollow, it's cooked! If you can't turn it upside-down, I'm going to guess it's not done yet.

While they're cooking, you can make your stars. These are the most fiddly part, and there are two ways to do it; You can do it the easy way, with frosting, or the harder (but in my opinion, prettier) way, with icing.
For both varieties, this is where you'll need your loaf of store-bought white bread (you WANT the kind that squishes down to a doughy ball). Get your larger of the star cutters, and cut a star out of a slice of bread.
Now, my star cutters were very close in size, but I couldn't find any others. In an ideal world, you'd have two star-shaped cutters where the difference in size is about .5-1cm. Mine were maybe .2. Erk! However, you can still work with this.
If your star cutters are very close in size: Once you've cut out the larger star, roll it flat with the rolling pin. Go slowly, be gentle, and make sure the star is as proportionate as you can make it (in other words, try to make sure none of the points are way too long/short compared to the others).
If your star cutters have a larger difference in size: Cut the crusts off the slice of bread and roll it flat. Take your larger cookie cutter and cut out a star shape (you might be able to get two stars out of one piece).

Once your big star is all stretched/cut out is when you ice it. Frosting is definitely easier; just whip some butter/margarine and icing sugar with yellow food colouring until you have a thick, sweet spread. Using a butter knife, spread a thin layer onto the large, flat bread star. Make one for each cupcake.
If you're using icing, mix water, yellow food colouring + icing sugar until you have a thick paste. Using a spoon, drop some onto your large, flat bread stars, and spread it around until it's relatively evenly covered. Clean off the edges and put your iced stars on a flat surface. Make one for each cupcake. Leave them to dry a little until the icing has formed a sugary crust.

The differences between using frosting + icing in this step:

The cupcake on the left is using yellow frosting for the stars/moon, and the cupcake on the right is using yellow icing. In my opinion, the version with icing looks nicer and more like the actual Crystal Star, since the two types of icing join more seamlessly than when using frosting. However, the icing (which is liquid and has a tendency to drip/run like crazy if you don't let it dry properly) is quite fiddly. If you don't have a lot of time, you might want to use the frosting.
In the end, though, it's probably most important to consider which flavour the people eating the cupcakes would prefer.

Whether you're using icing/frosting:
Take the star-shaped cookie cutter and, leaving an even amount of bread around the edge, cut a smaller star out of the larger star. This leaves a hollow star outline. Keep these somewhere safe. Don't throw away the smaller stars! Find something you could use to cut a circle out of this smaller star; try and make the size as close as possible.
I lucked out in that the lid of my vanilla essence bottle fit perfectly into my smaller star cookie cutters; drink lids, bottle caps, or the necks of bottles themselves might be very useful. Keep looking until you find a close fit. When you do, cut the circle out of the smaller iced star.
Now take your McDonald's straw (or something with a similar diameter you can use to cut out a shape) and cut out a small circle near the top of the larger circle. This is meant to look like the stylized crescent moon in the middle of the Crystal Star.
The five points of the smaller star, and the small circle you cut out with the straw, can be discarded/eaten.

Now, make a hot pink icing using the red food colouring (you can't use frosting for this - you want it to be smooth and shiny). Make sure it's relatively thick. You want the colour to resemble your cupcake pans as closely as you can, but don't stress if you can't get it perfect (it's pretty clear that I didn't, hahaha).

Take your cupcakes (make sure they've cooled completely, or the icing will melt and drip). Don't worry if your cupcakes have 'dipped' a little in the middle - this is a relatively small dent, and can be smoothed over with a tiny pool of icing.
Using a spoon, put a small amount of the pink icing into the middle of the cupcake. Using the back of the spoon, spread it out smoothly until you have a circle that finishes just shy of the end of the cupcake. Don't ice all the way to the edge - you want to emulate the gold 'rim' of the Crystal Star.
If it drips, you can easily wipe off the excess to keep it a nice, round circle shape using your fingers (MAKE SURE YOU WASH THEM!! And for the love of Serenity, don't lick 'em!).

Now, while the pink icing is still relatively wet, take your yellow star outlines, and your round circles/crescent moons. Put the star outline over the top of the pink icing circle, trying to keep the 5 points of the star touching the outside edge.
Put the circle/crescent moon in the middle of the star outline. Make sure the small circle cut-out faces the top of the star.

Now, take your M&Ms, and arrange them so that the colours + positions match up with Usagi's Crystal star. Counter-clockwise from the top, it goes red, green, blue, yellow. The green, blue and yellow M&Ms go on the outside of the star, nestled between the inner points, but the red M&M goes on the inside of the circle, up the top and just above the crescent moon.
Feel free to substitute the M&Ms with smarties, skittles, etc. so long as they're the same shape/colours. Mini M&Ms would probably look a lot nicer than the ones I had to work with (I forgot to buy extra, d'oh).

And voila~! Crystal Star Cupcakes! Great for birthday parties, house parties, Christmas parties, Sailor Moon-watching parties, or political parties (I assume). If you're serving them to kids, you should probably tell them about the 'crystals' in the middle, so that they don't choke; for adults, though, it's probably ok to keep them as your little 'silver secret'!

And now, enjoy a couple more photos:

Next, we're going to be looking at a couple of different Sailor Moon-themed cookies, which are a lot easier to make than these, and perfect for the Holiday season! Please look forward to them! ♥
Merry cooking, everyone!

Edit: I would suggest that you make these cakes as close as possible to the time you intend to eat them, especially if you are using icing stars instead of frosting ones. If you let them sit for too long, the decorations can become chewy, and (especially with the icing) can start to look less "crisp". The Raffaello in the middle can also get a little stale if you leave it for too long. They're not inedible, by any means, but it's best to keep them fresh!

Here's another idea: Instead of using pink icing + cupcake pans for all of them, you can make them in individual (matching colours), like blue, green, red - to make them look like the Sailor Soldiers' communicator watches, rather than just the Crystal Star. For these, you'd only use yellow M&Ms (or whatever candy pieces you prefer). You could also omit the Raffaellos for these, which is good for those who are allergic to coconut or nuts.

Like this, you can give each party-goer their own coloured cupcake! You could even get the guests to pick which Soldier they're going to be for the day, and give them a cupcake accordingly.

Full Moon Pancake

Thu, 17 Jun 2010 05:05:19 GMT

Today's recipe is easy-peasy and offers great results! It's on par with the simplicity and cuteness of the Sailor Moon rice ball recipe, so there's no excuse to not try it out yourself. Kids would love seeing this wheeled out as dessert one evening, but to be honest, I think anyone would enjoy it.

It's inspired by a similar pancake I ate when I was on vacation in Japan, which was meant to look like a panda. As soon as I saw it I knew it would make a great Usa (well... maybe not as soon as I saw it. My first response was more like “OMG WAT AWWWW”).

What you'll need:

~ Ingredients for pancakes, or your preferred pancake mix (I will be posting a recipe in a second if you don't already have one)
~ Strawberries
~ Bananas (one for each person – try to pick ones that have nice flowing curves)
~ Chocolate sauce (the very thin, liquid kind that you get for putting on ice cream or in milkshakes – steer away from thicker ones that are very creamy or rich, and definitely avoid ones that are meant to harden!)
~ A squirty sauce bottle, preferably one with a very fine tip. This doesn't have to be very big, but it should feel comfortable in your hand.
~ Cream, for whipping
~ Vanilla essence
~ Vanilla ice cream (this can be any flavour, so long as it is about the same colour as a peeled banana. For this one, a more expensive one is probably better. Pick the brand you think will keep its shape best as a scoop)
~ A proper ice cream scooper, one that can get a near-perfect scoop of ice cream out without much mess. This is a must! If you can't get proper ice cream scoops, you might as well give the recipe a miss, because it definitely won't look the same.
~ Spray-on oil

Pancake Mix Recipe (skip if you have one you'd rather use instead)

Ingredients:
~ 1 cup of milk
~ 1 cup of self-raising flour
~ 1 egg, beaten lightly
~ A little caster sugar

Method:
Make a well in the flour and pour the egg into it. Mix while adding the milk. Keep stirring until you have roughly the texture of thick cream. Moonlight Message: Don't over-mix it! A good pancake mix will have lots of lumpy bits in it. This makes a nice, fluffy pancake. If you try to beat all the lumps out of it and get a smooth mixture, the pancake will be flat and rubbery. Gently mix in some sugar to make it sweet (not too much, though - it's not going to taste like a cake, just enough to give it a little flavour).

How to do it:

1: Mix the pancake batter. Get the most even pan you own, preferably non-stick, and coat it with spray-on oil. Don't use butter or something similar! Too much liquid when you're frying will make the mixture run and give you irregular-shaped pancakes. Carefully, pour enough batter into it to make a thick and perfectly (well, close enough) round pancake. Try and make it as neat as possible! Using a perfectly flat pan and pouring into the middle should help. Wait a little while, and then while the pancake is still liquid, gently use a spatula to smooth the edges a little. If it starts to stick too much to the spatula, stop.
When it's bubbling around the edges, that means you can flip it over.

2: When you've cooked up all your pancake mix, put the pancakes aside to cool. Take your strawberries and try to find the most triangular one there is (find one for each of the people you're serving). After taking off the leaves, cut the top of it off so that it has a flat top. Then, cutting off the sides, take a thick slice from the middle of the strawberry. Basically, what you want to try and have is a triangle-shaped slice of strawberry. Keep the bits of the strawberry that you cut off!

3: After you've got a triangle for everyone, pick out two more strawberries per person. Try and find the berries that are the least bruised and are the nicest colours, still with a triangular point, and making sure that the two berries are roughly the same size as each other. Put these aside, then cut up the rest of the strawberries. These don't have to be any particular size or shape.Throw in the pieces you cut off the other strawberries, too.

4: Take the banana and, without peeling it, cut it in half so that you have two semi-banana shapes (not two big banana chunks). Basically, if you looked at them laid face-up from above, it would look kind of like you had two bananas. You don't want to peel it because that would make it infinitely harder to cut accurately. Go slow! When you've cut it in half, go ahead and peel it, being careful to make sure the banana didn't crack or split or bruise too much. Put these aside, too.

5: Take the chocolate sauce transfer some of it to your sauce bottle. Practice drawing shapes with it (on a plate, your hand, etc.) to get used to it and how much pressure you need to apply to get the sauce coming out.

6: Whip the cream with vanilla essence. When it's in soft peaks, arrange it in a circle on the plate. The circle should be about the same size as the pancake you're going to be using. Don't pile it too high, though, or it will squeeze out from underneath (and trust me, slogging through THAT much whipped cream is more of a torture than a treat).

7: Arrange some of the strawberry pieces on the cream (all of them if you're making one serving). Drizzle some chocolate sauce over it (you can just pour it from the bottle for this, don't waste the sauce in the squirt bottle).

8: Put the pancake over the top of the whipped cream so that it covers it up. If you're making one or two serves, then use the most perfect pancakes you made, and choose the palest/least 'blemished' side so it faces up. If you need to use all of them, cut the uglier ones into more regular shapes.

9: Get the squirt sauce bottle of chocolate sauce. In the middle-ish of the pancake, draw a pair of upside-down 'U's for Usa's eyes. Hold the end of the bottle very close to the pancake to make it look as clean as possible. Make sure that there is a lot of sauce in the bottle! The last thing you want is to be halfway through Usa's eyes and splatter chocolate all over her face when it 'farts'. Add a couple of eyelashes on the end of each one.
Then take a strawberry triangle from earlier and put that underneath them, to make her smiling mouth. While we're here, take the extra two strawberries per serve you kept from earlier, and cut them both in half (like a book) - kind of the same way you cut the bananas.

10: Now is the slightly nervous part. Get your ice cream and scooper, and try to get the most circular-looking scoop that you can. Dip your scooper in a cup of warm water before you use it so that it glides easily through. Go slowly so that it doesn't tear. The whole charm of this dish depends on those scoops of ice cream looking as perfect as possible! This is SRS BZNS! You should probably also have a bowl ready to dump the ones that aren't perfect so you don't frantically look for somewhere to put it while the other scoop is melting. You may be forced to eat these imperfect scoops later, which I'm sure will be tough, but this is the price we pay for our art.

11: Ok! Got your scoop just perfect? Good. Now put it on the plate so that it's just touching the pancake. Put it about the same place on the head that you think Usa's bun would go – it depends a bit on where you put the face, but you wanna aim for about “2 o'clock” if the pancake were a watch.

12: Repeat for the other side. If you're making a lot of servings it's best to do them all in a row as quickly as possible so that they don't melt much more than each other.

13: Now, quickly so that the ice cream doesn't melt, take the two peeled banana halves from earlier and place them on the plate so that they are touching the ice cream scoops, and curve around to look like Usagi's pigtails.

Take the extra two strawberries that you cut in half before, and arrange them just under the icecream scoops so that their points are touching. They should look like little red bows in her hair.

Serve immediately, and there you go! The most simple, delicious, and adorable Sailor Moon dessert ever! Since the hardest thing in this recipe is scooping ice cream, there's no reason you shouldn't try it today! Unless you're allergic to one or more of the ingredients, in which case WHAT
WHY ARE YOU READING THIS, ARE YOU A MASOCHIST
AAAAAHHHH

Aaahahahahaha!

You might want to try experimenting with other expressions Usa could be wearing~ a wiggly chocolate line for a mouth and two Xs for eyes and you've got a bunny not looking forward to being eaten. <3

Moon Gumpaste Power!

Mon, 14 Jun 2010 07:15:49 GMT

Tada~ Time to cut the ribbon of 3 O'clock Fairy's first entry! In it there is something pretty much everyone has probably seen by now, but can never be posted too often, and for dessert, something beautiful and sweet I have yet to see reposted anywhere else.

The main course is this adorable Sailor Moon 'charaben', short for 'character lunch'. It has been posted everywhere by now, but something this cute deserves to be seen as many times a day as possible~

Some religions give you wafers and wine; but our Messiah gives us rice balls and fish paper!

What's more, it comes with a step-by-step instruction guide to make one yourself! The original Japanese page can be found here, and the dedicated team at Miss Dream have already translated the whole thing here.

If you want to look at some even more seriously impressive Sailor Moon lunches, then this Japanese blog has some stunning (and edible!) recreations of your favourite Anime artworks.

"Usako... Usako, are you thinking of eating me right now?"
"Of course not, Mamo-chomp!"

And for desserts, here we have this beautiful Sailor Moon birthday cake!

I've seen a few Sailor Moon birthday cakes before, and the best ones tend to be ones that stick to simple designs (such as one cake that was shaped like Luna-P), because usually when someone tries to draw an anime character in frosting, it doesn't really work out very well.
This, though, is a work of art! And in case you're thinking that the baker just wussed out by sticking a figurine on a cake base, that entire sculpture is made out of edible gumpaste.

Check out that detailing!

I can only imagine that the lucky child who woke up to that on their birthday must have been over the moon about it (no pun intended).
The cake is the delicious genius of Dragonfly Cakes, which has a wide variety of equally intricate delicacies, ranging from Winnie the Pooh to Hello Kitty to even Dragon Ball Z.