Recently Puffin Books sent us an absolutely gorgeous new picture book by Nadia Shireen - Billy and the Beast. This book is a brand new release and is available now. To celebrate the launch of the book, I spent some time with my boys this weekend creating a selection of fun food themed on some of the characters from the book, including Billy's best friend Fatcat, who I recreated in quesadilla form!
Billy and the Beast is a story about Billy and her sidekick Fatcat, doing their best to outwit a hungry beast who wants to cook all their friends up in his recipe for Terrible Soup!
This book has been a big hit with my 4 year old, who has asked me to read it to him multiple times since we got it last week. His favourite characters are the 'adorable bunny rabbits' and I can see why, the illustrations are so lovely, they truly are adorable! It's a really great story too, fun, easy to read, and just the right length for pre-schoolers, whom the book is aimed at.
My favourite character is the hero of the tale, Billy, who is truly a girl after my own heart, if only because she keeps a supply of snacks in her hair in case her sidekick Fatcat gets hungry! Little details like this really make the book special and fun to read, both for parents and for children. It's great to see a female hero using her wits to save the day too.
I've no doubt at all that this story will remain a favourite for some time, and as my son enjoyed it so much I've already ordered a couple more books by the same author to add to our (rather full) bookshelf - you can't have such thing as too many books can you?!
As well as our Fatcat quesadilla, the recipe for which you'll find further down this post, my boys also requested that we make some edible bunny rabbits and mice to go with him. We adapted a couple of existing recipes from here on the blog for these, which I've linked to below if you'd like to try them yourself:
Boiled Egg Bunny Rabbits
We adapted the original recipe by using a mini circle cutter to shape the ears slightly differently and added a tiny ham nose, before attempting to draw on similar features to the bunnies in the book (using an edible marker pen).
Strawberry Mice
We used giant chocolate buttons to give these mice oversized ears, matching the mice in the book, and used edible candy eyes too, which we stuck onto the strawberries using a small tube of writing icing.
Fatcat Pizza Quesadilla Recipe
Ingredients:
- 2 tortilla wraps
- 2 tsp tomato puree
- 40g cheddar cheese
- fillings of your choice (we used ¼ yellow pepper, 1 spring onion and 1 slice of ham)
To decorate:
- edible marker pen
- 1 slice cheese
- small piece of ham
- small slice of cucumber skin
Method:
Prepare your fillings – grate the cheese, de-seed and chop the pepper, wash and slice the spring onions into rounds, slice the ham into small pieces.
Spread the tomato puree over one of the tortillas, then place it, tomato side up, in a clean dry frying pan. Sprinkle the grated cheese over the top of the tomato puree, then evenly scatter over the remaining fillings.
Place the second tortilla on top to form a sandwich with the fillings in the middle.
Dry-fry the tortilla for a couple of minutes until the base is golden. Once the base is cooked, carefully flip the quesadilla over in the pan. I find it easiest to use a plate to help me flip the tortilla - simply place the plate upside down on top the the tortilla, flip the pan over so that the tortilla ends up on the plate, then slide the tortilla back into the pan to cook on the other side.
Cook for a few minutes more until the cheese is melted and the quesadilla cooked through.
Slide the quesadilla out of the pan onto a cooling rack and leave for a few minutes until cool enough to handle.
Place the quesadilla on a chopping board, then cut out a rough Fatcat shape using a sharp knife. Remove the offcuts, but don't throw them away - feed them to a passing hungry child or munch them up yourself - chef's perk!
Once you've cut out the Fatcat shape, transfer the quesadilla to a plate ready to decorate.
To decorate, start by drawing in plenty of detail using an edible marker pen, copying the design from the book. Cut pieces from cheese to add more features - use 2 circles for the eyes, a roughly triangular piece for the nose and two triangles for the ears.
Cut a tiny nose from ham and pupils for the eyes from cucumber skin. Finish off by drawing in any remaining details, such as whiskers, with the edible marker pen.
Serve immediately and enjoy!
Billy and the Beast is available now, and you can order your copy here.
Grace
Disclosure: This blog post was commissioned by Puffin Books to promote the new book Billy and the Beast by Nadia Shireen. I was sent a free copy of the book and was compensated for my time and the cost of ingredients, however all opinions expressed in this post are my own.
This post contains some Amazon affiliate links; I may receive commission on items purchased through the links.
Fatcat Pizza Quesadilla Recipe
Ingredients
For the quesadilla:
- 2 tortilla wraps
- 2 tsp tomato puree
- 40 g cheddar cheese
- fillings of your choice (we used ¼ yellow pepper, 1 spring onion and 1 slice of ham)
To decorate:
- edible marker pen
- 1 slice cheese
- small piece of ham
- small slice of cucumber skin
Instructions
- Prepare your fillings – grate the cheese, de-seed and chop the pepper, wash and slice the spring onions into rounds, slice the ham into small pieces.
- Spread the tomato puree over one of the tortillas, then place it, tomato side up, in a clean dry frying pan. Sprinkle the grated cheese over the top of the tomato puree, then evenly scatter over the remaining fillings.
- Place the second tortilla on top to form a sandwich with the fillings in the middle.
- Dry-fry the tortilla for a couple of minutes until the base is golden. Once the base is cooked, carefully flip the quesadilla over in the pan. I find it easiest to use a plate to help me flip the tortilla - simply place on top the the tortilla, flip the pan over so that the tortilla ends up on the plate, then slide the tortilla back into the pan to cook the other side.
- Cook for a few minutes more until the cheese is melted and the quesadilla cooked through. Once cooked, slide the quesadilla out of the pan onto a cooling rack and leave for a few minutes until cool enough to handle.
- Place the quesadilla on a chopping board, then cut out a Fatcat shape using a sharp knife. Remove the offcuts.
- Once you've cut out the Fatcat shape, transfer the quesadilla to a plate ready to decorate.
- To decorate, start by drawing in plenty of detail using an edible marker pen, copying the design from the book. Cut pieces from cheese to add more features - use 2 circles for the eyes, a roughly triangular piece for the nose and two triangles for the ears.
- Cut a tiny nose from ham and pupils for the eyes from cucumber skin. Finish off by drawing in any remaining details, such as whiskers, with the edible marker pen.
- Serve immediately.
Love these fun food ideas? Why not save this post to Pinterest so you can easily find them again!
Allison Banks says
Sounds like a great book! What lovely recipes you’ve adapted! Would be fun for a preschool to incorporate your ideas.