This project isn’t very easy as it requires a lot of planning. However, when you get all your components organized, it all comes together quite well. In this post I outline how I went about making my rolls, and the assorted nigiri, with sweet candy ingredients.

Fake Sushi Rice Base

The rice for this project comes from a rice krispy treat base. This is a sticky sweet homemade snack that is beloved of most Americans, and will induce drooling upon mention. A final coating of white chocolate finishes these sushi bases.

Prepare a 9″ x 13″ baking dish by coating it in butter. Set this aside and lets get to the melting…
In a large pot over medium heat, melt 3 Tbs of butter with 1 10-oz sized bag of marshmallows. Stir the concoction over heat till the marshmallows have just melted. Now stir in 6 cups of puffed rice cereal and stir till all the cereal is coated thoroughly. Scoop out this mixture into your prepared baking sheet and with buttered hands, pat down to compress into the pan. To match the real life dimensions of sushi, we ideally want this rice krispy base to be 1 inch tall.

Forming the Rice

Shaping rice for your sweet sushi treats is best done when the krispy mixture is still slightly warm. If it cools and firms up too much, warm it slightly in the microwave for easier forming.

Rolls: The rice base for the rolls is easily shaped when one finds the appropriate sized circular object to cut out cylinders of rice krispy pieces. The average sushi roll slice is just over 1 inch across. Many circular cookie cutter packs will come with a circle small enough to cut pieces for the rolls. When in doubt- make your piece small so that it is bite sized and can be popped into your mouth in one fell swoop.
Nigiri: To shape the rice base for sushi draped nigiri, I was fortunate to have a nigiri press (featured in the picture) on hand. It produces a piece that is a 1″ x 2″ rectangle with rounded corners, much like a pillow. Alternatively, this shape can be formed by hand.

White Rice Sushi Pillows

To make these pillows of sushi rice nice and white, coat them in a thin layer of white chocolate. I found the best looking method involved dipping the cut out sushi rice forms in melted white chocolate, and then rubbing the chocolate into the crevasses, and smoothing most of it off with my fingers. This got to be a bit messy, but allowed the lumpy rice texture to come through and not get too smoothed over by the chocolate. A cleaner method may be to use a pastry brush to dab on the white chocolate.

Nigiri: the entire rice piece is coated with white chocolate.
Rolls: rolls are more easily coated when they have first had their nori dip to cover their sides, as described below. Also, rolls require that they have their toppings prepped by the time you coat the top with white chocolate.

Making Sushi Rolls

The sushi rolls are composed of four parts:
- first the rice krispy base is made and formed, as outlined above.
- secondly, each piece is dipped to create a dark nori wrapper like look. To achieve this, melt finely chopped dark chocolate in a double boiler. Toasted nori is a dark green color that almost becomes black. Adding green and black food coloring to the dark chocolate helps achieve this look. Dip each cylinder-like roll piece in your darkened chocolate so that the bottom and sides are coated. Place on a piece of wax paper to solidify.
- next, prep your toppings to give the illusion of a glimpse of something rolled up in the center of the roll. I found dried papaya to be a nice translucent color that is similar to tuna. Small squares are cut out of dried papaya that has been rolled thin, to help it sit flush on top of the roll.
- lastly, dip the top of the already nori-dipped sushi rolls in melted white chocolate. Top each freshly dipped piece with a thin square of the dried papaya.

Sushi Accessories

Keeping in mind your project to make sweet sushi, save your pieces of fake plastic grass and plastic sushi container next time you get sushi to go, or order it in a restaurant. These are great props to use with your sweet sushi pieces.

Wasabi: when all of your rice pieces have been dipped and coated in the melted white chocolate, add a couple of drops of green food coloring to make a nice wad of green tinted white chocolate for your wasabi.

Nori belts: an important component to many pieces of nigiri is that slender belt of nori wrapped that binds them to the rice pillow. To achieve this look, spread a layer of darkened nori-looking chocolate on a sheet of wax paper. Before the chocolate hardens, cut long strips of the paper with a pair of kitchen scissors. Set these aside till needed, or immediately wrap around your desired concoction. Be careful though, the hardened chocolate will be prone to cracking if these strips of paper are moved a lot.

To rewarm a chocolate nori belt: bring a pot with 2 inches of water to a boil. Gently pick up a strip of hardened chocolate and move it about in the warm steam of the boiling water. When the chocolate looks softened, which will happen quickly, drape onto your sushi concoction and wrap the piece of chocolate around, trimming the too long strip when the chocolate is soft.

Making Tamago

Tamago is a thin sweet egg omlette that is rolled while it cooks. To achieve this fluffy egg like look, make up a small batch of homemade vanilla marshmallow. Add a drop of lemon flavoring at the end and in the very last moments of mixing add yellow food coloring. Pour out your whipped yellow marshmallow mixture onto a Silpat or on a piece of oiled waxed paper. Allow to set up over night.

Roll the set up yellow marshmallow so that it is largely rectangular and so that the cross section is just larger than the rice pillow. Looking at this picture is a better way to understand what a rolled tamago omlette should look like. A note is that the tamago should be placed onto the rice pillow so that the omlette swirl is facing up, not out to he sides like in my picture here. One centimeter thick slices are cut off of the roll with scissors, and placed onto the rice pillow swirl up. A nori belt is the finishing touch.

Making Salmon

Dried fruit does a wonderful job at mimicking sliced fish. For the salmon in this project I used dried cantaloupe, that I rolled out into a thin sheet with a rolling pin, and then cut to size. The salmon nigiri I have encountered, don’t include a nori belt. Just drape the cut piece of dried fruit across the rice pillow to finish your salmon sushi.

Making Ebi

The task of making fake shrimp that matched up with this sweet sushi, fell into the wonderful world of marshmallow. Taking a cue from the industrial process of candy making, freshly whipped up marshmallow can be poured into mold shapes that are pressed into a bed of cornstarch. The cornstarch is easily remoldable, packs into shapes nicely, and leaves a nice surface on the resulting marshmallow.




Molding the shrimp: To make a pressed cornstarch mold for the shrimp, a piece of Sculpey clay (clay that is baked in your oven to harden) was formed into a shrimp of the appropriate shape and size. This fake shrimp is the positive for the mold. A box of cornstarch was poured into a 8″ x 8″ baking sheet. The mold positive was then wrapped in a plastic bag and pressed down on to the surface of the cornstarch leaving an impression of the shrimp. Freshly whipped marshmallow is gently poured into the shrimp depressions of the cornstarch mold and allowed to set up overnight.




Painting the shrimp: googling the words shrimp and sushi give a good sampling of shrimp pigment images. The main emphasis of the shrimp patter seems to be alternating bands of shrimpy-pink/orange with a strip of pure white. I used my food coloring markers for this project and found the pink marker to carry a lot of orange in its color. Paint on thick stripes of color, and with water, soften the tail end of the color stripe.

The finished marshmallow shrimp is draped over a rice pillow with out a nori belt.

Making Unagi

Homemade marshmallow also contributes to the making of the eel, the final piece of our sushi spread. After pouring vanilla marshmallow into the above shrimp molds, I poured a small thin slab of the remaining marshmallow onto an oiled piece of wax paper. After the marshmallow sets up, a trapezoid shape is cut out and draped over a rice pillow. Using a blowtorch, one side of the marshmallow is carefully toasted to a nice golden brown, recreating the broiled surface of eel. The piece is finished with a nori belt.

A dish of sushi roll pieces, and an assortment of sweet nigiri… now you are a sweet sushi making connaisseur!

What this cookbook does is continually remind me to try anything in a sushi roll. If its good, it’s going to be good encased in rice and neatly packaged for your mouth.

My sushi making this time around resulted in three rolls served with bright mango dipping sauce.

• ~ Mango Dipping Sauce: warm several chunks of mango and whirl up in a food processor with salt, and a touch of rice vinegar.
• ~ Roll One: a stripe of mayonaise mixed with chili paste sits on top of the sushi rice which is then topped with thin strips of broiled crispy breaded chicken patty ( I use Morningstar’s fake chicken patties) and thin spikes of green onion. This is especially tasty swabbed in the mango dipping sauce.
• ~ Roll Two: made inside out (sushi rice on the outside), crushed smoked almonds are pressed into the rice, and then flipped over to encase a stripe of mayonaise mixed with wasabi, and strips of crunchy apple with thin bits of pink grapefruit.
• ~ Roll Three: sushi rice lined with mayonaise mixed with deli style horseradish sauce, under thin strips of crunchy chicken patty and topped with onion jam before rolling.

These rolls offer a nice mingling of sweet, salt and heat. And, they’re darn pretty too.

enjoy!

I have a difficult time staying with a recipe for awhile. They tend to be short term relationships. I recognized this while making food for the Glo Party. Instead of relying on tried and true recipes, I found myself whipping up something completely new, and relying on tried and true flavor combos instead of a “recipe”. Some of the goodies whipped up:

• dates stuffed with sweet orange mascarpone: In a small bowl combine a small container of marscapone cheese (4 oz), 1 Tbs of sugar, 1 tsp of vanilla, grated orange zest of one orange (reserve some for decoration) and 1 Tbs of orange juice. Blend till combined, smooth and fluffy. Taste, to adjust sweetness levels. Slice 15 medjool dates in half, removing their large pits, and pipe them full of the sweet marscapone filling. Top with a spinkle of orange zest.
• roasted whole almonds with lemon salt: on a baking sheet, spread out 2 cups of whole almonds. Place in a 350F oven till fragrant and browned. While almonds are toasting, bash together several tablespoons of salt with several teaspoons of lemon zest. Right after the almonds have been removed from the oven, sprinkle with the lemon salt mixture.
• baked miniature apples stuffed with caramel spice mascarpone: slice the stem top (the top third) off of a dozen miniature apples that are approximately 1 – 1 ½ in diameter. Using a melon baller, remove the core of the apple leaving the apple to be an intact container. Set aside in a baking dish splashed with lemon juice, cut side down. Heat oven to 350F and place baking dish of apples in, cooking till the apples are slightly tender to the touch, 15- 20 minutes. When done, remove the apples and allow to cool completely. Prepare your marscapone filling by whipping together 4 oz of marscapone cheese, 3-4 Tbs of Tom and Jerry’s Hot Buttered Rum mix, 1 tsp of vanilla and a pinch of salt. Pipe into the completely cooled apples, and top with a light dusting of cinnamon.

My mind was also wonderfully inspired for this round of party food by a new cookbook I just picked up: sushi american style, by Tracy Griffith. I choose three sushi preparations to entertain our festive feasters:

• ~ roll containing: a stripe of wasabi mayo, grapefruit, avocado, crushed almonds, cucumber, and black pepper
• ~ roll containing: a stripe of wasabi mayo, jicama, cilantro, lime and coarse salt
• ~ ahi watermelons: rice filled cucumbers topped with spicy tuna and black sesame seeds

A nice presentation aid for the raw fish items is to place your serving dish in the freezer to get really cold. Let it stand at room temperature for 5 minutes before placing food items on it (so they don’t freeze to your dish). Plate up, and your sushi will stay chilled.

Mmmm, off to eat, errr… I mean clean up, the leftovers!