Steamed Doraemon Cupcakes

Doraemon is a Japanese manga series created by Fujiko F. Fujio which later became an anime series and an Asian franchise. The series is about an intelligent robotic cat named Doraemon (Or Xiao Ding Dang in Chinese), who travels back in time from the 22nd century 
to aid a pre-teen boy.

I remember how popular this series was while I was growing up in the eighties. I actually thought that Doraemon was no longer that popular and was completely surprised that my kids knew who this character is when I made these cupcakes!

These cupcakes were much harder to do than the ladybug ones in my earlier post because it required more control and precision in piping out the details of the eyes, nose, whiskers and mouth. I didn’t think my Doraemon cupcakes captured the character’s cheeky expression. Although its not much to rave about, I thought I’d share it anyway and hope that anyone else who tries it will do a much better job of capturing Doraemon’s adorable expression 

Steamed Doraemon Cupcakes (7 cupcakes)
Recipe adapted from here.

Ingredients

• 2 cold eggs
• 185 g plain flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 100 ml fresh milk
• 1/2 tsp ovalette (or sponge gel)*
• 120 g castor sugar
• 1/2 tsp vanilla essence

* Sponge Gel is a cake stabiliser available at baking supply stores. A reader had suggested that condensed milk can be substituted for ovalette/sponge gel.

Instructions

• Mix all ingredients and beat with medium speed for 6 minutes.
• Prepare 4 piping bags and colour the batter accordingly: 4 tbsp of batter coloured blue, 1 tbsp in red, 2 tbsp in brown, and 1 tbsp left plain.
• Fill the muffin cup with plain batter till it is 3/4 full.
• Pipe the blue batter in the shape of arch covering about 1/3 of the face.
• Pipe two eyes using the white batter.
• Pipe a red dot between the two eyes using red batter.
• Use the brown batter to pipe the mouth, whiskers and outline the eyes.
• Steam for about 12-15 minutes till the cupcake is cooked through.