Cat Family | Cats and Tigers Pull-apart Buns

Soft, mildly sweet and buttery pull-apart bread buns or dinner rolls. My family loves dinner rolls. So I surprised them and made the dinner rolls into cute cats and tigers!
With a few additional steps we can transform basic dinner rolls into cute little works of art. The key to get the right look is to get the browning in the right spots. I have given all the steps in detail. So let's get started.

Try to spot the shy kitty in the picture :)

Ingredients

For the bread dough

300g/ 2.5 cups bread flour

3 tbsp sugar

1.5 tsp instant dry yeast

1.5 tsp milk powder

160ml lukewarm milk(about 35-40C)

40g/3 tbs unsalted butter

3/4 tsp salt

For the facial features

Edible pen -black

Egg 1, lightly beaten, for brushing

Equipment

7 inch square pan

Measuring cups and spoons

Baking mat

Paint brush

Weighing scale

Stand mixer (optional)

Get your ingredients and your stand mixer fitted with the dough hook and you are ready to go. You can make this dough by hand, just get ready to knead for about 10 minutes.

In the bowl of an electric stand mixer fitted with the dough hook, combine the milk, milk powder, yeast, sugar and half of the flour for dough. On low speed, add salt, butter and the rest of the flour. If you feel that the dough is dry add mik 1 tsp at a time. Increase speed to medium and knead dough for 7 minutes, or until smooth and elastic.

Your dough should be smooth and elastic. It should not stick to your hands. Also, if you make an indentation in the dough, it should bounce back.

Lightly oil a large bowl. Shape the dough into a ball shape and transfer it into the bowl. Cover with cling wrap and let it rest at a warm place for about 40mins (first fermentation) until the dough doubles in size.

Degassing dough means releasing the air trapped inside the dough during the rising period. It is also known as “punching down” or “knockdown,” which essentially means punching down the dough with your fist after it rises to get rid of any excess air pockets that may have formed during the fermentation process.
To know if the dough is ready to be degassed, do the finger test for the bread dough. Poke your index finger into the risen dough about an inch. If the indentation remains then your dough is ready to be degassed. Punch out the excess air and remove the bread dough from the bowl.

Weigh your dough using a weighing scale. My dough was 545 grams. I divided the dough into 9 equal portions of 54 grams each and the leftover dough was 57 grams.
9 equal portions are for the rolls and the last one will be used to shape the ears and paws.
Cover and let it rest for 10mins.

I used a weighing scale so that each bun will look exactly the same. You can just eyeball it also.

Flatten each of the 9 dough portions and shape into a oval round shape. Shape them by tucking the dough under to create a smooth surface. Place them in a lightly buttered square tin. Position them 3 by 3 in the tin (total 9). Cover with a cling wrap while you continue to work on the last bread dough.

Divide the last bread dough portion into 9 pieces. Each weighed 6 grams. Divide/cut 6 of the pieces further into 2 triangular ears and 2 round paws of the cats. Divide each of the 3 remaining doughs into 3 ears for the tigers.

Place the small parts on the bread balls in the tin. You might have a little trouble with keeping the ears in place. Some of them kept falling off. You can brush on a little milk to help them stick. I also used a toothpick to press and help them to stick.

Cover with lightly oiled plastic wrap and leave to prove in a warm place until roughly doubled in size. It usually takes about 25-30 mins. The time this takes varies depending on the temperature of your kitchen

Take a lightly beaten egg and divide into 2 portions. To one portion I added a little cocoa powder. The other portion I left it as such.
To make the brown patches, I brushed on some of the egg wash that has been mixed in with cocoa powder.

Cats: For the cats in the top row I added 3 strips design on their forehead. For the cats in the bottom row I added a brown patch on their forehead.
Which design did you like😊?

Tigers: I wanted to brown the tiger's faces a little more than the cats. So I brushed on some egg wash ( portion without the cocoa powder) in the centre portion of the buns in the middle row.

About 15 minutes before the end of the proving time, preheat the oven to 180°C [350°F/Gas mark 4].

Bake the bread for about 12 mins. When they start to brown, cover gently with a sheet of aluminum foil to keep the faces light and prevent them from browning too much.

Remove from oven after baking.

Add cute facial features and paw marks using edible black gel colour with a paint brush. I added different expressions for some of them. You can get creative here :)

Other options:
You can use black edible pen or royal icing dyed black to add cute facial features and details to the paws.
You can also pipe melted chocolate to add the facial features.

Transfer to a rack and leave to cool completely.
Now be ready to surprise everyone.

After the buns were completely cooled I pulled them apart. I had fun arranging them in different positions.

Hope you try this and enjoy it as much as I did. As much as it looks cute it is delicious too. Please let me know your comments and suggestions. If you do make them please share your experience here.