[Recipe] LINE Brown Bear Steam Cakes (Japanese mushipan)

Made these last week as small gifts for the filming director, crew and coordinator who worked with me for the shooting that took place on Sunday. As a small omiyage from me, I hope they will enjoy this kawaii steam cakes.

I tried to make Brown from LINE app, heheh, not sure if the resemblance is there, but in any case, I think they are quite cute simple as bear character too.

It will be a crazy month for me and I mgiht not be able to post as regularly so I apologise in advance for that. Hope you will enjoy this recipe post today.

As I was in a rush of time making this, I used my usual Morinaga steam cake recipe to create the character. I included some step by step pictures as well as the ingredients details below for you.

What is different this time is that I also included some troubleshooting tips which you may find useful :)

Recipe for LINE App Brown Bear Steam Cakes (Japanese mushipan)

Ingredients (makes 7-8)
For main cake dough
Morinaga hotcake mix 150g
sugar 50g
plain yogurt (no sugar) 100g
salad oil 1tbsp
eggs (small) 2
baking powder 5g
cocoa powder 1tbsp
For features
dark/black cocoa powder 0.5tsp
cake flour 0.5tsp

Method
1) In mixing bowl, add in Morinaga hotcake mix, sugar, plain yogurt, salad oil, eggs and baking powder. Mix well.
2) Scoop out 2 x 2tsp of the mixture into 2 small bowls.
3) To the remaining mixture from step 1, add in cocoa powder (you may wish to sieve if your cocoa powder is clumpy). Mix well.
4) From step 3, Divide the mixture into 7-8 small muffin cups. Knock the cups gently on the tabletop to remove the trapped air bubbles.
5) Pipe the remaining mixture onto a sheet of baking paper of round circles. This is for the bears' ears. I placed the baking sheet on a small metal tray
6) To step 2, add in 0.5tsp of dark/black cocoa powder and 0.5tsp cake flour respectively. Mix well and transfer each into small piping bags.
7) Pipe the designs onto the dough from step 3 to create the bear character.
8) Steam the cakes on a steamer rack at low heat in a pot for 10-12mins. The pot lid should be wrap with a steamer cloth.
9) To step 5, place the tray with the baking sheet and piped dough circles on the steamer reack and steam at low heat for 2mins.
10) Make small insertion cuts on the top of the steamed cakes and insert the bears' ears.

Troubleshooting
- If your features look like they smudged, this means that the dough (step 6) was too think in consistency. You may need to increase the dark/black cocoa powder or cake flour accordingly.
- If the features 'sunk' in after steaming, this means that the dough (step 6) was too thick in consistency, please adjust accordingly
- If you are using plain yogurt with sugar, please reduce sugar from 50g to 20g
- No steamer cloth? Try tying a good cotton cloth over the pot lid instead.