baking for white day

Yesterday after lunch, I spent some time baking some mini muffins for Satoshi to give his co-workers for White Day.

White Day is on the 14th of March and is the day when the males "give back" to the females after receiving something for Valentine's Day.

Since Satoshi has 30 co-workers in his department (mostly females), I decided to bake instead of buy something.

When I went to MUJI, they had these box mixes. I figured by buying 4 boxes (1 box making 10 muffins) to make 40 muffins was cheaper than buying something pre-made.

The picture on the box was a bit deceiving, they looked like big muffins. Upon opening the box, I realized they were "cute" mini muffins.

The neat thing about these mixes was that it came with the muffin cups, muffin mix, chocolate pens to decorate the muffin, freeze dried strawberry "dust" and cellophane bags with twisties to wrap up the muffins. All I needed to do was add an egg, some oil and some milk and bake!

Since the muffin cups were tiny, I figured out that I could bake 2 boxes (20 muffins) at once on my turntable.

The batter was easy to put together and was rather easy to divide amongst the cups. The baking time was a bit longer than the suggested, but it was noted on the box that it would depend on your oven.

After baking all 4 boxes in 2 batches, which took about a half hour, I took a nap while I let them cool.

To decorate them, I heated up the chocolate pens in hot water as the box instructed. I had never worked with these pens and realized there wasn't much control when using them.

There were splats of chocolate here and there, but I think the decorations were quite "contemporary" looking, don't you? (I was going for 2 hearts, one white and one dark)

Since it was a cool day, the chocolate hardened quite quickly and I didn't have to put them into the freezer as the box instructed.

I put each muffin into a cellophane bag and tied them with a twistie.

Of course, I couldn't send these off without tasting one (or two)...they were very moist and delicious.

I hope they enjoy them...Happy White Day!