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Totoro Week: How to Make a Totoro Cream Cheese Bagel

Posted October 24, 2018 by Stephanie

How to Make a Totoro Cream Cheese Bagel | www.iamafoodblog.com

How to Make a Totoro Cream Cheese Bagel | www.iamafoodblog.com

How to Make a Totoro Cream Cheese Bagel | www.iamafoodblog.com

Hai! I’m coming at you with a Totoro cream cheese bagel because it’s Totoro Week! Why is Totoro Week starting on a Wednesday you ask? Well, because way back in 2013(!!) I dressed up spam musubi as Totoro and almost died of cuteness. It was the first time I dressed up food as Totoro and I was hooked. It was right around halloween and so the year after that, instead of thinking of a costume for me, I decided to dress up some other food as Totoro and declared the week before halloween Totoro Week. Yup, that is the not-so-interesting birth story of Totoro Week.

For a couple years I asked people if they wanted to join in and make Totoro food but this year I got really caught up in life and didn’t even think about Totoro Week until a couple of days ago. So, it’s a solo Totoro Week for me this year. Well, aside from all those people on Instagram who have appropriated the #totoroweek hashtag to put up photos of themselves or their babies in Totoro costumes ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I’m on a total Instagram break by the way – I was getting way to obsessed with watching rando people’s stories and my mental health (not to mention my productivity) was suffering hard. So, if you see someone posting on Insta, it’s Mike :) I mean, I guess I still kind of creeping sometimes, on my secret account where I only follow cute drawings and cute dogs, but other than that I’m off, I swear!

Anyway, back to this Totoro bagel! I’m all about bagels for breakfast because they’re easy and I don’t need to think about anything when I’m half asleep and wanting to stuff my mouth. Usually my bagels look all toasted wrong and the cream cheese is all crumby, but since I made these guys in the middle of the afternoon after I was properly awake they look great!

It’s pretty simple to make a totoro cream cheese bagel.

  1. Start by prepping Totoro’s face and chest furries. It seems kind of counter-intuitive to do this before you’ve even toasted your bagel, but this is actually the most time consuming part of making any Totoro food so I always do it at the beginning before I get too frustrated and just eat whatever I’m making instead of making it into a Totoro.
    1. Use a bubble tea straw or tiny circle cookie cutter and cut out Totoro’s eye whites out of a slice of mozzarella cheese. I used lite mozzarella cheese, which wasn’t my first choice but it was all the had at the grocery store near us and I didn’t want to walk the extra two blocks to the other store for non lite cheese. Anyway, cut out two white cheese eye whites.
    2. Use a nori punch or scissors to cut out two eyes, a nose, and chest furries. Use some scissors to cut some whiskers too. I use a combo of nori punches to make life easy but you can use tiny scissors too. Peep those cute tiny scissors in the photos by the way – they’re supposed to look like a daikon! I got them from Tokyo and they’re the cutest.
  2. Toast a bagel, any bagel. I like sesame bagels because sesame seeds are good even though they always get stuck in my teeth. They taste good so they are 10/10 worth it. I like stuff toasted on the toaster side of things but sometimes that backfires because it ends up burnt, but here it was all good. Toast your choice of bagel to your level of toastiness.
  3. Spread a cream cheese belly onto your toasted bagel. That’s pretty straight forward. Try to make it kinda curvy, smooth, and free of crumbs.
  4. Place your eyes, nose, whiskers and chest furries in the right places.
  5. DONE!

It was pretty quick to make this Totoro compared to other Totoros I’ve made, probably because I didn’t actually make anything, I just decorated. But, sometimes that’s even better because people will actually make things that are more simple.

Anyway, I’m off to not watch The Haunting of Hill House because I really want to but I’m also scared to death of it but also really want to watch it. We watched 1 and bit episodes while friends were over (we had to stop watching the second episode because our friend was too freaked out – HI BETTY!) and I haven’t finished it because Mike’s not that into it but he also promised that he would hang out with me while I watch it. I’m on the fence on what I should do about it…

I’m off! More Totoro goodness coming this week!

Happy Totoro-ing!
xoxo steph

PS – I haven’t blogged for a while and I can tell because I’m going on and on and on. Geez, it’s like I can’t shut up! Thanks for indulging me ;)

How to Make a Totoro Cream Cheese Bagel | www.iamafoodblog.com

6 Comments

  1. I LOVE when you do Totoro food!! They always look sooooo adorable!! I hear you on the Instagram front and I’m glad you’re looking after your mental health!

    P.S. I’m with Betty – cannot bring myself to watch it cause I’m such a ‘fraidy cat!

    Rebecca | http://www.peppermintdolly.com

    1. Stephanie says:

      thank you rebecca!! totoro is weirdly easy to make into food…sometimes i wonder if i should do other characters but i love him so much heehee

      ps – i couldn’t watch the rest of the season. i read up on it and even the articles about it made me scared so, call me a ‘fraidy cat too!

  2. Cathy says:

    Love this! Such an easy way to give my kids some Totoro (can’t get them to watch the movie). But will try to use more cream cheese and chocolate chips for the eyes and chocolate sprinkles for the chest furries. Just can’t get into the cheese and nori combo … Thank you!

    1. Stephanie says:

      ooh i love your chocolate chip idea for the eyes and chocolate sprinkles for the chest furries. i was going to do cream cheese eyes too but mine looked a little weird hahahah

      thanks for dropping by!

  3. Betty says:

    HIIIIII!!!!!!!!
    I just couldn’t do it..
    :((((((((

    1. Stephanie says:

      hahahhahahh i feel so bad i made you watch!!!

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