Hootabelle from Giggle and Hoot

Hootabelle food art

The idea for this creation originally started out as a plan to make Jimmy Giggle’s main sidekick, Hoot. But being mostly blue, Hoot was going to be a bit hard to make with natural ingredients. So we decided to try to create Hoot’s leading lady, Hootabelle, using pureed blueberry pancakes. Alas, our blueberry pancakes turned out much less than ideal – blueberry skins are apparently very resistant little critters when it comes to being blended and they ended up looking all ‘bitsy’ with a very vague hint of bluish-purple. So in the end we begrudgingly resorted to a couple of drops of food colouring to get a good solid purple colour (which made for a pretty frightful aftermath around my 19-month old’s high chair!).

If anyone knows any good tricks to get evenly coloured blueberry pancakes, I’m all ears…

What you will need:

  • pancake mix (we cheated here and used Green’s Pancake Shake but if you’d prefer to make your pancakes from scratch, here’s a link to our favourite buttermilk pancake recipe)
  • one drop of red food colouring
  • one drop of blue food colouring
  • a big piece of thinly sliced watermelon
  • a couple of slices of kiwi fruit
  • a small slice of rockmelon
  • one blueberry, cut in half (for the eyes)
  • one small round slice of banana
  • two white chocolate melts (for the eyes – you could substitute this with banana for a healthier option)
  • one piece of fruit leather or Uncle Toby’s roll-up
  • a chocolate icing writer for the eyelashes (we used a CK Products’ Candy Writer from a cake decorating store)

Method

Hootabelle features 2
1. Make eyes using halved blueberry and white chocolate melts (or banana slices).
2. To make the beak, cut a square out of the rockmelon and slice a ‘V’ into it.
3. To make Hootabelle’s heart ‘patch’ cut a small heart shape out of the watermelon (we used a shape cutter to do this) and place it on a slice of banana.
4. Cut out two larger hearts from the watermelon for Hootabelle’s ‘wings’.
5. Cut out the pink eye area from the watermelon.
6. Cut out some medium-sized heart shapes from the kiwi fruit and a small strip for the butterfly.
7. Using the roll-up (or fruit leather), cut out a butterfly shape and feet.
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8. Make up your pancake mix and add red and blue food colouring until you have the desired colour (we found about one drop of each worked pretty well but you may need to experiment a little with your mix). Cook two round pancakes (one large and one smaller) for the head and the body. You’ll need to cook them on a lower heat than usual to avoid them ‘browning’. Also, try to turn them as soon as they start to bubble so you don’t get too many bubbles in the final product. We found this process a little hit and miss but eventually you’ll get the hang of it! (We had quite a few ‘testers’ for our curious spectators!) Then, decorate your pancakes with all the features above, finishing off with a few eyelashes using the chocolate icing writer.

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