Non-bento #32: Totoro chocolate 2

The day after I made Non-bento #31: Totoro chocolate I made this for my second bit of practice.

Non-bento #32: Totoro chocolate 2
Created on: 2/15/2011

So, after I made Totoro chocolate using two colors (milk chocolate and white chocolate), I decided to put some colors on it and make it more like kyarachoco (short for “character chocolate”, like “kyaraben”) I looked at some images of Totoro online and even went through the Studio Ghibli merchandise I had at my place but I couldn’t find a good image I could trace for this project. So I improvised it and decided to use one of the Totoro drawings I did for my Bento #16: Sleeping Totoro bento. I traced the sketch I did for this bento on parchment paper. (You can see the sketch here.)

Just like the first Totoro chocolate, I first drew the outline with melted milk chocolate on parchment paper and put it in the fridge until the lines were hard. After that, I filled the white part of Totoro with melted white chocolate -> back in the fridge -> mixed melted white chocolate with a tiny bit of red food coloring and filled the inside of his mouth -> back in the fridge -> filled the gray part of the body with white chocolate mixed with a bit of black food coloring -> back in the fridge -> put white chocolate over the whiskers and around the edge of Totoro’s body -> back in the fridge…

I wanted to make it look like he’s sleeping on the bed of grass, so I mixed matcha powder (green tea powder) in melted white chocolate, mixed it with corn flakes and put it in the fridge.

When the chocolate was hard enough, I took it out and gently flipped it.

Then I realized that the catalog I put the parchment paper and chocolate on wasn’t sitting flat in the fridge. So in certain spots there were spaces between the chocolate and the parchment paper. I should’ve use a cutting board like I did when I made the first one! Also, you can see the gray chocolate through the white chocolate. Next time I’ll have to make sure to put more chocolate for a lighter color part before putting darker color on it.=/

Anyway I put Totoro on the corn flakes mixed with matcha chocolate.

Maybe I could’ve made more matcha chocolate flakes and scattered other Totoro and Makkurokurosuke I made for the first Totoro chocolate around him.

I think I’m getting the hang of it. The great thing about making kyarachoco is that the chocolate comes off clean so you can re-use the parchment paper over and over! Also you can keep the chocolate in the fridge for a pretty long time. As matter of a fact, because we had to eat Domo-kun brownies and Totoro chocolate I made for Valentine’s day, this Totoro sleeping in the fridge… Anyone got a sweet tooth??

For more pictures of my bento, visit Bento! set and Bento details! set on my flickr page.

Tagged as: chocolate, studio ghibli, sweets, totoro, valentine's day