Ham and Cheese Elephant Rolls #BreadBakers

Children and adults alike will love these soft ham and cheese elephant rolls. They are cute AND tasty! I mean really. Look at their golden ears and currant eyes!

I have no idea what I was browsing the internet for when I came across bread dough shaped like animals last year. There were hedgehogs, bunnies, puppy and kitty faces, even some starfish and so much more. 

That gave me this idea for a Bread Bakers theme and, bless their hearts, my bread baking friends were up for the challenge to start off the new year. Make sure you scroll down to the bottom to see the menagerie they’ve created! 

Many years ago, while we were living in Malaysia, we had several opportunities to visit an elephant sanctuary a short distance from our home. Whenever we had visitors to entertain, it became a highlight of their holiday. We’d put on our swimsuits topped with t-shirts and shorts, load up the car with fruit to share with the elephants and make our way through up the highway, then into the jungle. 

The sanctuary showed small groups of visitors a short introductory film where we learned about their work rescuing orphaned or threatened elephants and then came the exciting part, we got to feed and bathe them! 

(Hence the swimsuits – the latter part was a wet job! If you got really lucky, you got to ride one of the elephants down to the river for the bath. We all got lucky a few times over the years.)

Possibly due to this frequent early exposure, our younger daughter became a collector of elephant statues, big and small. I thought it would be fun to create some of those wonderful creatures and take photos of the elephant rolls with some of her collection. 

Ham and Cheese Elephant Rolls

This recipe is adapted from one I found originally on the Japanese site Cookpad. Fortunately they also have a sister site in the UK which has been translated into English - which still took me a while to work through. I got there in the end!

Ingredients

For the dough:

1/3 cup or 80ml milk 

2 teaspoons butter

1 teaspoon active dry yeast

1/2 teaspoon sugar

1 1/4 cups or 156g bread flour

1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt

1 egg, separated into white and yolk

For the filling:

3 oz or 85g thick sliced ham (I used leftover spiral cut cooked ham.)

1 3/4 oz or 50g extra sharp cheddar or your favorite aged cheese

For the eyes:

6 raisins or currants

Method

Warm the milk and butter in the microwave or in a small pot on the stove until the butter is melted and the milk is lukewarm to the touch. 

In a mixing bowl, combine the milk with the yeast and sugar and set the mixture aside to prove. Within a few minutes, you should see bubbles forming which assure you that the yeast is indeed active. 

Sift the flour and salt into the bowl, add the egg white and mix well to make a soft dough. 

Knead until your dough is smooth and elastic. Set the bowl in a warm place for the first rise of about 45 minutes till it doubles in size. 

Meanwhile, slice your ham into rounded pieces about 1/4 in or 1/2cm thick and 2 x 2.5 in or 5 x 6.5cm. Cut your cheese into similar size slices and lay one piece of cheese on each slice of ham. I also trimmed the top corners of the cheese off to match the curve of the ham. 

Once your dough has risen sufficiently, cut it into six equal pieces. (My dough weighed about 284g so each piece was about 47g, if you are a user of a digital scale.)

Roll each piece into balls and then roll them into long ovals a little more than twice the length of your ham.

Place the ham and cheese on top of the oval, a little closer to the right to leave room for cutting the trunk. Fold the dough up over the ham and cheese, pressing any air out and sealing the edges all around. 

Use a sharp knife to cut a triangle on the left side to form the trunk and a small slit on the right side for the tail. According to Feng Shui, elephant trunks pointed up indicate a good mood, so I turned mine up! 

Roll the little triangle of dough into a ball then roll it out in a small oval to form the elephant’s ear. Lightly press the ear on to attach it. 

Continue the process until all six ham and cheese elephant rolls are done. Use the end of a chopstick to press an eyehole into each. 

Place them on your baking pan lined with a silicone liner or baking parchment and put them in a warm place to rise for 30 minutes. I’ve discovered that my microwave oven is large enough to hold my pan so I heat a small bowl of water to almost boiling, then pop the pan on top and close the microwave door. Game changer for those of us without proving drawers!

In a small bowl, soak the six currants for the eyes in a little hot water. Leave them to plump. 

Depending on how long your oven takes to preheat, start that process setting the oven to 350°F or 180°C sometime in the 30 minutes of rising time. 

When the little elephants have risen sufficiently, whisk your egg yolk with two tablespoons of water and brush them with the elephants with the mixture. 

Drain the currants and dry them off. Use the end of your chopstick to poke one into each eyehole. 

Bake the elephants in your preheated oven for about 18-20 minutes or until they are puffed and golden. 

Remove from the oven and leave to cool for as long as you can resist before eating.  

Enjoy! 

Check out all of the other animal bread my Bread Bakers are sharing today!

• Beef and Sweet Onion Dim Sum Pandas from Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Bird Bread Rolls from Ambrosia
• Easter Bunny Buns from Cook with Renu
• Ham and Cheese Elephant Rolls from Food Lust People Love
• Hedgehog Bread from Making Miracles
• Honey Bear Loaf from A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Sourdough Animal-shaped Breads from Zesty South Indian Kitchen
• Matcha Milk Bread Turtles from A Messy Kitchen
• Meyer Lemon Custard-Filled Matcha Turtles from Culinary Adventures with Camilla
• Peacock Shaped Pizza Rolls from Magical Ingredients
• Piglet Bread Rolls from Sneha's Recipe
• Turtle Bread from Passion Kneaded

#BreadBakers is a group of bread loving bakers who get together once a month to bake bread with a common ingredient or theme. You can see all our lovely bread by following our Pinterest board right here. Links are also updated after each event on the #BreadBakers home page. We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient.

Pin these Ham and Cheese Elephant Rolls!

 .