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Place the turtle bodies on a parchment lined baking sheet, leaving 2″ in between each turtle.Flip over the dough so the sealed side is facing down – repeat with the other 5 pieces of dough & the turtle bodies are done.
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Fold the dough up & around the white chocolate, pressing the dough together to ensure it is well sealed
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The answer to making these rolls taste as good as they looked was white chocolate. Not to mention, it would not be good enough for these matcha milk bread turtles to only be seriously cute, they had to be seriously delicious! It was as if this matcha/chocolate dutch crunch torch had been placed directly in my hand and it was now my duty to bring her crazy request to life.Īdding matcha to milk bread dough and cocoa powder to the dutch crunch topping was not the simple answer to this creation, because both matcha and cocoa are naturally bitter and need good amounts of sweetener to counter their bitterness. Considering my history with dutch crunch, I felt qualified to take on the challenge that Sarah Jampel had put out into the inter-webs. Many of my meager high school student lunches consisted of one of those famous dutch crunch rolls with a little pack of cream cheese. I went to high school down the street from a bakery that was infamous for its dutch crunch rolls (sadly the owners of this bakery have since retired & closed their doors). I have always been a huge dutch crunch fan. Destiny had dawned – these little matcha milk bread turtles were meant to be and nothing was going to stop me from bringing them to life in time for them to be celebrated and make their world debut on #worldturtleday! I woke up Monday morning, May 23rd, to find out through Instagram that it just so happened to be World Turtle Day. I got to developing the recipe and late that night I dreamt of shaping this matcha bread into little turtle rolls with a chocolate dutch crunch topping for their shell. In my minds eye, I could envision this combo having an uncanny resemblance to a turtle. Understanding that a matcha dutch crunch topping would brown and diminish its vibrant green color, I then pictured a matcha bread with a chocolate dutch crunch topping instead. I began to picture what this kind of loaf would actually look like. It all started with a plead by Food52 contributor Sarah Jampel in her article about dutch crunch. She requested for someone to create chocolate bread with a matcha dutch crunch crackle and that request got my wheels turning.
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