Back to School Bento Basics & Blooming Bento

If you asked me for a tip about packing bento lunches, I'd probably tell you ...
You don't need to spend a lot on bento tools & accessories - spend some time playing around with what you have on hand first! You may discover you already have more bento-worthy tools than you thought - and the most important tools - your creativity & ingenuity - are free ♥ 

But I know you want the fun bento stuff anyways, so be sure to do the Bento Bloggers & Friends Bento Basics Giveaway Blog Hop! 

I skipped the bento picks & went back to basics to make this simple flower-filled EasyLunchboxes bento. I made the cheese sandwich flowers with a cookie cutter from the Wilton 101 Cookie Cutters set I've had since I began making bento.  I've gotten so much use from this set! It has the complete alphabet, numbers, animals, vehicles, sports, seasonal & holiday shapes, flowers, hearts, stars, & more... a little of everything. I also cut some carrot blossoms, arranged grapes in a flower design, & filled a Tupperware Smidget with candy-coated chocolate sunflower seeds for a colourful treat:

The small blossoms are organic rainbow carrots! They came in a bundle with the usual orange carrots, plus yellow & purple ones (which have gold centers!) They're so pretty ♥ They all taste pretty much the same to me though, I don't think I'd be able to tell them apart in a taste test :) To make the carrot blossoms, I sliced a couple of rounds from the end of each carrot & cut it into a flower shape with a vegetable cutter.

 

To make the grape flower I arranged a few on their sides in a silicone baking cup, nestled one in the center of them, & filled the surrounding space with grapes of another colour. Cherry or grape tomatoes work well too :)

Before I put the lid on the EasyLunchbox, I added a colourful cloth napkin to the main compartment. Tip: use a cloth napkin to fill space & keep food from shifting. Lastly, I tucked in colourful Lunchbox Love note, to brighten my sproutlet's lunch & day :) And I did remember to put the lid on the Smidget!

Most of the stuff I used to make this lunch: 

 

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So, going back to my beginner to bento tip...  to help you get started building your bento toolbox from what's already in your kitchen, I've made a list of items that come to mind :)

Bento Tools & Accessories Already In Your Kitchen!

• A sharp paring knife is all you need to make striped cucumbers, checkered apples, & carrot stars.
• Drinking straws can be used to cut out tiny circles, ovals, & crescents for details & features.
• Tweezers are handy for placing tiny details where they go. 
• Cookie cutters can be used to cut sandwiches, cheese, lunch meat, & some fruits & veggies.
• Cookie stamps can be used to make impressions in bread, and even some fruits, like watermelon.
• Cupcake picks make awesome bento decorations! Save some from all the parties you give & go to :)
• A melon baller makes fun fruit shapes, & tiny rice balls (onigiri).
• Vegetable crinkle cutters can be used for more than veggies :)
• An empanada (dumpling) press makes fun filled mini-sandwiches.
• Cocktail picks & drink stirrers make great skewers.
• Bottle caps & medicine cups do double duty as circle cutters.
• Play dough cutters & accessories make brilliant bento tools! 

I'm sure there are more I'm forgetting, too. So while all those cute bento picks & themed cutter sets are fun to collect & use, you can take your time acquiring them while you use what you have. As you develop your skills & discover your style, it'll be easier to decide which items you really want  :)

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And hey, maybe you'll be a winner in the Bento Bloggers & Friends Back To School Bento Basics Giveaway ... the Grand Prize is a $70 gift voucher to BentoUSA ... what a bento shopping spree that would be!

Even if you don't win a prize, you'll get valuable tips from the Bento Bloggers & Friends that will make the blog hop worth your while - it'll be a bento learning experience :) Now, pay attention, here's how to enter: 

Take note of the letter & number on the blackboard puzzle piece below. Next, click the button beside it to hop to Lunches Fit for A Kid to see what tips Astrid has for you & get the next piece in the puzzle. Keep hopping & collecting puzzle pieces until you get to the Bento Bloggers & Friends blog, where you can enter the Giveaway! You'll need to put all your puzzle pieces in numerical order to spell the answer to a mandatory question in the Rafflecopter widget, then follow the instructions there to get more entries. Good luck!

   

More details about prizes & stuff in the Bento Bloggers & Friends blog post. Now go! Hop!

Awesomely Easy Rainbow Cake!

Today one of my friends shared a post featuring some perfectly adorable teeny tiny rainbow cakes. Which reminded me of this post about making Sprout's birthday cake, that I had forgotten all about and left languishing in draft for over 2 years! My rainbow cake was neither perfect nor teeny tiny, but it was bright!

This rainbow cake was made by layering batter ...  6 different colours of batter.

I divided one plain white batter into 6 bowls and added a whole lot of food colouring!  The batter layering method I used doesn't produce evenly striped layers, rather, each colour, poured into the center of the pan, pushes some of the last colour out a little, making sort of arched layers. I alternated the order of the colours for the 2nd layer of the cake, just because :)

Note the tube of cherry cola lip smacker on the counter - totally needed for all the lip licking I was doing in anticipation of tasting my delicious creation!

Once the cakes had baked & cooled, I flipped one upside down on to a foil-covered cake plate, spread a layer of white frosting on it's flat bottom-become-top, and placed the other cake right side up atop it:

Oops, some of the top of the cake stayed stuck to the plate I'd flipped it out of the pan on to - no worries, frosting would cover that ... and it turned out to be a good thing that happened anyways! (Read on to find out why.) 

The plan was to cover the whole cake in fluffy white frosting, so when we cut into it, the colourful rainbow cake would be a surprise - a rainbow in a cloud! But oops again, I hadn't made enough frosting:

That turned out not to matter though, because before I made more, Sailor Boy & I tasted the bit of cake that had stuck to the plate, and YUCK! It did not taste good at all, it tasted BAD! Something had gone off :(

It was a rainbow cake wreck.

So sad. All that cherry cola flavoured lip licking for naught :(

I sniffed both the oil and the food colouring and neither smelled very good to me, so who knows... And since we couldn't serve it to the sproutlets and party guests, there was no sense in continuing with the frosting - but before we tossed it, I did cut into it to see how the rainbow layers came out...

And ooooh, it looked awesome! 

Fortunately, since the party was not until the next day, I had time to get more ingredients and bake another cake. The 2nd attempt, made with a fresh bottle of oil and new gel food colouring, was delicious. I was in a hurry by then since it was late at night, so didn't bother with pics, but a small sample taken before it was frosted did taste good, and the birthday partiers loved it! It looked pretty much just like the inedible attempt anyways, so here's that pic again :)

Awesomely Easy Rainbow Cake:

1. Make up a batch of light coloured cake batter.
2. Evenly divide the batter into 6 (or 7) bowls.
3. Colour the batters red, orange, yellow, green, blue & purple (or indigo & violet if you do all 7). Liquid gels works best for vivid colours.
4. If you want your stripes to be in correct rainbow order, begin with the red batter. Pour all the batter into the center of a round cake pan.
5. Repeat with each colour in order, pouring directly on top of the the last colour, in the center of the pan. 
6. Bake as directed for your batter of choice, cool, invert, & frost! 

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FunBites Triangles Giveaway!

FunBites have added a colourful new shape: orange triangles! FunBites are fun to use tools that make it easy to cut food into fun, bite sized pieces - perfect for toddlers or picky eaters! Invented by a mom and her kids, FunBites are dishwasher-safe, BPA-free, and 100% made in America. FunBites come in squares, red or pink hearts, and now, triangles!

The new Triangles FunBites cutter makes 10 right angle triangles - 2 big and 8 small - exactly enough to create 2 fish shapes :) 

What else they can create is up to your imagination! 

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I made Bella a cheesy vegetable garden after school snack :)

I used the cutter on one slice of lightly toasted white bread and one of wheat to make Birdie these lemon curd pinwheels from the small triangles. (I ate the 4 larger triangles - I love lemon curd!)

Make a grilled cheese sunshine :) Allow the sandwich to cool a little first!

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How to use your FunBites cutter on sandwiches with sticky spreads without making a gooey mess: Spread your sandwich filling on the bottom slice of bread, but don't top it with another slice - instead... Place the top slice on the cutting surface & press the FunBites cutter into it - but don't pop the cut bread pieces out yet! Lift the cutter keeping the top slice bread pieces stuck in the cutter shape, and place it on top of the bottom slice. Press the FunBites into the bottom slice. Rock it back & forth.  Now use the popper to pop out perfect shapes. No mess!

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I have 3 FunBites Triangles to give away!

FunBites has generously offered to send one of their brand new cutters to 3 lucky Bent On Better Lunches readers! 

Giveaway Closed

Disclosure: I received a FunBites to review.  No other compensation or payment was given. All opinions & descriptions are my own.  Giveaway open to US residents only. Prize will be provided by FunBites.

Crunch A Color Healthy Lunch Challenge : Monster Muffins & Nutty Greek Yogurt Dip

When I offer a new food to my preschooler, I find that when I "hide" it among familiar foods she's less likely to flat out refuse it, so I try to make the new food just one of many small portions. Muffin tin meals are perfect for that!

Believe it or not,  Birdie's never eaten a pear! I don't like pears, so they're not a fruit I buy unless a recipe calls for it (I do like how they taste, just not their texture) and I recently realized I've never offered them to my 4 year old. Perfect - I wanted a new food to score bonus points in my Crunch A Color Healthy Lunch Challenge meal - pears it is :)

I decided to offer the pears with similar fruits I know she likes, apples, and something yummy to dip them in.  The Crunch a Color formula for a healthy lunch is 3 colors + a protein + a healthy grain. No processed foods. Birdie's not much of a meat eater so a greek yogurt & nut butter dip was just the thing for her protein. Celery sticks would go well with that too.

Nut Butter Greek Yogurt Dip 1 cup greek yogurt  1 cup nut butter (I used almond butter)  1 Tbsp honey  1 tsp cinnamon Stir all ingredients together & serve with fruit, veggies, graham crackers... whatever sounds good to you!

Birdie loves muffins so for her healthy grain portion I baked a batch of carrot bran ones and gave some of them monster faces :) I haven't made monster muffins in ages! I featured some in one of my first blog posts! That batch had cheese teeth & craisin eyes. Today I made the teeth with almond slivers and the eyes with cheese & candy coated sunflower seeds.

The monster muffins inspired a monster theme for the muffin tin meal!  I put a funny creature cupcake topper ring on a celery stick, and some octopi bento picks in the almond butter dip became baby monsters taking a mud bath :)

So how did Birdie's muffin tin meal score? Using the cards from our Crunch A Color Healthy Eating Game, I calculated the points:

Red - apples - 5 points

Liquid - water (not shown) - 5 points

Green - apples - 5 points

Yellow/Orange - pears - 5 points

Try a New Food - pears - 5 points x 2 = 10 points

Healthy Grains - carrot bran muffin - 5 points

Yellow/Orange - if carrots in the muffins count - 10 points

Green - celery - 10 points

Protein - almond butter & yogurt- 10 points

Bonus - calcium rich protein - yogurt in dip - 1 point

66 points, not too shabby for a simple lunch! It could have scored more points with a little more colour... but there's always dinner  :) 

Most importantly, lunch was a winner with my little sproutlet :

Are you wondering if she liked the pears? No, she didn't - but she tried them!

Thanks Crunch a Color for including me in this Challenge!

Mother's Day FunBites Giveaway

Since this was supposed to be a Mother's Day giveaway,  I was going to have my littlest sproutlet make ME a lunch using her favourite FunBites cutter... but she just didn't want to cooperate :)

No, she didn't want to make mummy a heart sandwich, she wanted to make pizza hearts. She reminded me that I did say "last day" (meaning any day prior to today) that we could make pizza hearts. So that is what we did. Using our brand new extra special RED Luv it!

We've made pizza hearts several times since seeing Bento for Kidlet's Pull-Apart Heart Rolls. We usually cut the hearts out first, then spread sauce on top and sprinkle them with cheese - but when I let Birdie help, a lot of sauce and cheese ends up burned to a crisp on the baking sheet - so this time we tried a different method. I let Birdie spread the sauce & sprinkle the cheese before we cut out the shapes, as she demonstrates in the photos:

 

 

I folded the dough in half, then helped Birdie cut the hearts out & put them on the tray, so there are no photos of those steps, but you get the idea :) We also took the leftover bits and twisted them into pizza breadsticks! Yummy!

They may not be the neatest but other than that they came out great! Birdie loves to help in the kitchen, and brushing on pizza sauce with a pastry or barbecue brush is like food painting fun for her. For more tools you can let your tot help out with, check out this MOMables post by Michelle of Creative Food:

10 Kid Friendly Kitchen Tools Little Helpers Should Have

The FunBites hearts pull apart easily & are full of doughy pizza deliciousness!

So easy I'm sure Sailor Boy could manage to help the sproutlets make them for me for Mother's Day! Oooh, or how about a cinnamon bun version! The frosting would dribble & pool in the nooks & crannies, mmmm...

Want to win a FunBites Luv it heart cutter? 

FunBites is sponsoring an exclusive giveaway of 4 RED cutters for Bent On Better Lunches readers only! You can't even buy these red ones yet :)  But if you prefer, you can choose the original pink ♥

Enter via the Rafflecopter widget below:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Congratulations winners! No, I didn't forget how to count... One of you commented that you'd like the pink Luv it... and since I have 4 red to give away... bonus winner! Please email me within 48 hours to claim your prize :)