Last week I posted up first attempt at making a Bento Box, which I was quite pleased with. Bento provides the perfect opportunity to make lunch fun, but what if you don’t want to spend ages moulding rice or carefully cutting vegetables? How about making some Hedgehog rolls instead!

They are a fond reminder of childhood for me but my own children have never tried them. We remedied this serious oversight this past weekend and the kids were all delighted with the results!

In a nutshell you need to make up a basic bread dough (recipe below) and leave it to rise, then break the dough into pieces and mould rough ball shapes on a tray. Leave to rise once more.

Next take some scissors and snip about 2/3 of the dough ball all over to make your hedgehog’s spines. Finally use some dried fruit if you want to add a couple of eyes.

Then all you need to do is bake them for about 25 minutes or until they sound hollow when tapped on the bottom.

Warning the results are often so cute that you either eat far too many or none at all!

Variations

Once you’ve mastered your basic bread hog it’s really easy to make all kinds of variations by adding herbs or changing white flour to wholemeal. You could even make a sweet bread or a huge hedgehog loaf, the possibilities are endless!

Basic Bread Dough Recipe

1lb/500g White Flour

2 fl oz/60ml Olive Oil

15g/ 0.52 Dried Yeast Packet

1/2 Tsp Salt

9fl oz/270ml Tepid Water

Method

Mix all the ingredients together and knead for about 4 minutes. Leave the dough in a warm place to rise for 1 hour.

Tip the dough onto a floured surface and cut into equal parts, shape into dough balls and leave to rise for 1 hour.

Snip and add eyes if making into a hedgehog.

Bake in the oven at 230C/450F/Gas Mark 8 for about 25-30mins or until the bottom of the rolls sound hollow when tapped.