Pudding Pie Lane: Despicable Me Minions Bento Box

The best part of Despicable Me? Definitely the minions.

And as I was googling around to find out some more about them, I found out that...

...there's going to a Minions film!

Coming in summer 2015.

Exciting!

For those of you who have read my blog for a while, you may know that I used to love making bento boxes (you can see some on the right). For those of you that are new (hello!), they are a popular Japanese lunch box, and often parents prepare children's ones with rice shaped like cartoon characters, with vegetables and fruit to decorate.

Having not made a bento box in a while, I decided to give it a go. You'll find step by step instructions below!

I plucked a few flowers from the garden to decorate the bento box, and here they are up close. Purrtteyyy.

Although this little fellow up doesn't seem to approve...

Nope, he's not happy.

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But moving on... I'm going to show you how I made the minions!

You will need:

Sushi rice/glutinous rice (about 2 cups cooked)
Asafoetida powder (this it to colour the rice yellow, but you can use cooked egg yolks too which tastes nicer in my opinion)
Nori seaweed for the clothing and eyes
Mushrooms for the eyes (you can also use white cheese too)
Cling film and scissors

1. Start off by cooking the rice. You can spread it our on a plate to cool quicker. When complete cooled, mix in the asafoetida powder until the rice turns yellow enough.

2. Next, put a layer of cling film on the table, and pile about a handful of the rice on top. Wrap the cling film around the rice, and shape into a flatish oval shape (like a minion!). Put in the fridge to cool and stick together for about an hour.

3. Take the rice out of the fridge and Cut the nori seaweed like the shape shown in the picture. This will be the trousers. Wrap around the bottom third of the minion rice ball, and patch up any exposed bits at the bottom with more seaweed.

4. Cut a strip and some circles from the seaweed. Cut the mushroom stalk into a circle. For the eyes, you will need a large seaweed circle, a medium sized mushroom circle, and a small seaweed circle (as shown above). This will form the mouth, eyes, and hair. For the teeth, you will need a semicircle seaweed shape and lots of small square mushroom cutouts.

5. Place the seaweed and mushroom across the top 2/3rds of the rice ball, and voila! You have a minion! Feel free to play around the expressions of the minions.