This remains one of my favourite photos I’ve ever taken with my trusty iPhone. it was from our Godalming Food Festival in 2010. It’s what I associate with being out in the country and having access to some of the best Farmer’s Markets around.

Nothing beats a good spring cleaning

It was long overdue but it really needed to be done, and what better way to make sure I stayed off my broken foot then to finally finish the blog clean up I started a few weeks ago. It’s taken me almost a month to do so, not just because of the accidents and distractions but because I discovered I had far more recipes to catalogue than I’d realised. It’s my own fault really – I should have been doing this as I went along but admin isn’t one of my stronger points.

Still, it’s been a really useful exercise, and here’s just some of the things I discovered as part of my spring clean:

• I’ve posted far more vegetarian recipes than I thought – amazing given my love of all types of meat
• I’ve posted far, far too many sweet treats, which is probably why my waistline keeps expanding (so, sadly, I really must cut back on the baking and desserts!!!)
• Pork is truly my favourite meat, and that’s reflected in the sheer number of pork recipes I’ve posted compared to any other meat

The recipe and story I posted about my disastrous attempt at making The Hummingbird Bakery’s Sweet and Salty Chocolate Cake remains the most visited page on my blog to this day. It gets hits every single day. I don’t know whether it’s the recipe, or my disaster, or the fact that I saved the cake that’s made this post so popular

No more baking for a while. Boo!!! I’ll just have to stick to the fond memories of my Japanese cheesecake (chiizu keeki)

I haven’t changed the actual template of thebigfatnoodle but I have categorised my recipes so I hope you’ll all find it much easier to navigate and explore. I’ve got some ideas for new sections but that’ll have to wait until I’m back from our upcoming trip.

I wouldn’t have ever started this blog if it hadn’t been about my mum teaching my brothers and I how to fold Chinese dumplings many, many moons ago…

Looking back over the 15 odd months of posts, I’m generally quite pleased with what I’ve done. I’m not one to blow my own trumpet but I am really quite proud of some of my recipes. I’ve become a better cook as a result of cooking more things from scratch but I’ve also learnt a hell of a lot from my fellow bloggers – you are all a constant source of inspiration!

Now that I’ve finished my big spring clean, my husband and I are taking ourselves off on our first loooooong-ish holiday in a while. We’re off to Vancouver for a week before starting what I hope will be a fun-filled driving holiday from Seattle to San Francisco, with pit stops in Mount Hood, through the Redwood Forests, along the coast and into Sonoma (wine country!) before finally arriving in San Francisco for some frolicking with friends before we return home.

Sadly, I won’t be able to do quite a few things because of the ol’ storm trooper boot I’m still wearing but at least I’ll have more space since I’m only packing one shoe for my left leg. Let’s hope my inflatable cast is up to all the sightseeing we’ve planned.

Meantime, here’s a selection of some of my favourite recipes from the new tabs I’ve created on thebigfatnoodle toolbar.You’ll find all of the recipes listed in this wrap up post via the different new pages I’ve created.  Hope you like this look back in time.

Pork and prawn shui mai (steamed dumplings)

The best of my bests

It’s only fitting that I start with one of my all-time favourite pork dishes – my hawker-style roast belly pork.

One of the reasons I started this blog stemmed from having to recreate some of the street food I grew up eating in South-east Asia. You can find this roasted belly pork in any number of Chinese restaurants in London’s chinatown but as I now longer live in London, I make this myself.

It is so, so easy to make and my mouth is watering just thinking about it!

Hawker-style roast pork. This really is my favourite way to eat pork.

Slow roasted at a very low temperature for a few hours ensures perfect, crispy crackling every time.

Still on pork belly (it is my favourite cut)… I also posted a recipe for a slow-roasted rolled belly pork with a sage, onion and cranberry stuffing.

If you love your crackling, you really have to try this recipe because 1) the recipe is foolproof and 2), the fat renders out completely so you are really just left with crackling that looks like a shard of glass, and which shatters like it too…

This rolled pork belly makes a reappearance at our dining room table every time we have a lot of people to feed because it’s so economical too.

Slow cooked rolled roasted pork with a sage, cranberry and bacon stuffing. You can actually see right through the crackling, that’s how much the fat has rendered off it.

Spare rib and mustard greens soup – my favourite Chinese soup.

Thankfully, not all of my pork recipes are lardy; there are healthier ways of having it too, and this pork rib and mustard green soup is one I will never, ever get sick of eating. Its worth whatever trip you have to make to find a Chinese grocery store that sells pickled mustard greens.

It’s very common in Chinese cooking to cook pork with seafood too, and two Hawker style noodle dishes I’ve had to teach myself to cook combines pork with either prawns or other seafood too.

I pickle my own green chillies in fresh ginger and chinese rice wine vinegar.

If you’ve ever wanted to cook a noodle dish to impress any of your Chinese friends with, I don’t think you can go wrong with either one of these – Singapore style Hokkien mee, and fried mah mee.

Eating it with your own pickled green chillies are essential too!

It looks quite plain but this Singaporean hokkien mee is to die for!!!

Crispy noodles covered in crunchy vegetables in a lovely, glossy sauce – everything made from scratch again to recreate the hawker street flavours I no longer have access to.

Stir fried green beans cooked the way I know best. Simple. Clean. Nourishing.

And because I’m actually making myself hungry just by sorting through these images, I’m going to turn my attention to some of my favourite vegetarian recipes, that way I’ll at least feel a bit healthier…

… and you can’t get much healthier than simply stir-fried green beans or vegetables. Whenever I make this, I always think of my mum. After all, she was the one that first taught me how to cook them this way.

So often I find inspiration from Asia whenever I’m in need of what I call cleansing food, when I feel the need to keep things as raw and wholesome as possible, and my go-to recipe when this happens is this Thai salad with fresh green papaya. It’s hot, sour, spicy, sweet and savoury and perfect when you’re looking more something you can feel good about eating.

Thai tom sum – my all-time favourite oriental salad

What I have discovered however is that when I decide not to cook vegetables Chinese-style, I gravitate towards Italian/Mediterranean flavours. This spicy vegetarian pasta, though simple, is one of the dishes that I am most proud of. It’s packed with flavour and I have no qualms making this again and again because I know it’s packed full of goodness!

I’ve surprised myself with the number of meat free meals I’ve actually made and this spicy vegetarian pasta is one I’m particularly proud of.

Lemon, savoy cabbage, bacon and cheese make a great alternative to a tomato-based pasta sauce

I also make this lemon savoy cabbage linguini with bacon and parmesan A LOT! It was originally adapted from a Jamie Oliver recipe but I have made it my own now, as have my friends and family.

And if there’s one Italian ingredient that I know most of use wouldn’t be able to live without, it’s extra virgin olive oil. EVOO, plus a good balsamic vinegar and parmesan, is all I really need to take a simple salad and turn it into something special. I’ve created three salads this year that I genuinely adore eating, starting first with this fig, ham and mozzarella salad that I created totally by fluke.

I have to admit that I simply adore putting fruit in salads; I have a naturally sweet tooth and the additional colour fruit brings to a salad also helps make it look so pretty and appetising.

Fig, ham and mozzarella salad. Great for lunch. Great for dinner.

Chicken satay – proper Southeast-Asian style!

But nothing, and I really think nothing, is more appetising than the smell of a good BBQ or grill!

Salmon carpaccio before the zingy lime and ponzu marinade is poured over it.

Again, harking back to my love of Asian street food, I’ve learnt how to recreate the true flavours of proper, southeast-Asian satay.

If I had to recommend one marinade for you to try, this chicken satay marinade is definitely it! The smell of it always brings my friends closer and closer to the BBQ, under the pretext of ‘lending me a hand’, of course!

Cooking for friends and family is a theme you’ll probably find running through most of my recipes. It’s what I love to do. Nothing gives me greater pleasure than providing nourishment to the ones I love. But while I love cooking for people, I’m really not into the whole fancy dinner set-up; I’m into sharing plates, which is again very much in my Chinese pysche because Chinese dinners are all about sitting around the dining room table with everyone tucking into a variety of dishes. This salmon carpaccio starter, roasted curried chicken with fennel, and chocolate pavlova have become staples when cooking for many.

Lemongrass and curry-flavoured chicken, roasted in the oven with fennel, onions, shallots and garlic.

Monkfish Bomba

Quattro frutti chocolate pavlova. Yum.

Anyway, I’d better stop here now because I seriously need to finish packing for my trip, and I’ve made myself so hungry that I’m off to the kitchen to hunt down something to eat. Sadly, we’ve been running our fridge and freezer down before the trip so I’m probably going to end up going hungry!

I don’t know if I’ll be able to post while I’m away so if I don’t, see you in roughly 3 week’s time after I return from what I’m calling my big Canadian-American adventure.

The clock at London Waterloo station. I love this clock but I certainly won’t miss seeing it for the next 3 weeks

We are finally revelling in a week of super-hot, deliciously sunny weather in the UK though one never knows how long the warm spell will last in this country. I’ll leave you with a picture I took of Westminster Abbey in the blazing sunshine and a shot I took of the clock in Waterloo station – I pass it twice daily and it’s been so nice being able to take a photo of it against a blue sky compared to the usual grey and cloudy backdrop.

Ta ta for now!

Lots of love

thebigfatnoodle

For those of you in the UK, I hope the weather stays this brilliantly warm and sunny. For everyone else, I hope it’s lovely wherever you are as well. See you in 3 week’s time!

Our local supermarket had hake on offer, and this huge lot set us back a mere £2.

A fish dish fit for a king

I haven’t done a Friday Is For Fish recipe in a really long time, so it’s really disappointing for me when the photos I take don’t come out as nice as I’d like them to.

This week, I made some steamed fish, Chinese-style, which I was really looking forward to sharing with you… I don’t think my pictures do the dish justice, and I’m very sorry about that, but I hope you won’t let the pictures put you off too much.

Steamed fish is something families eat a lot of in Asia. While it’s normally the cakes and desserts that get the ‘oohs’ and ‘ahhs’ at restaurants here, I remember the steamed fish as the dish that would get that kind of response at a Chinese dinner table (or similarly when they serve suckling pig at a special occasion like a Chinese wedding banquet).

Start by creating a bed of spring onions and fresh ginger over your steamer.

The steamed fish is normally brought out to the table as one of the later dishes, and it’s usually presented with a kind of flourish, like a pièce de résistance, when you order it at Chinese restaurants. Quite funny really; but that kind of ceremony is, for me, understandable because steamed fish, Chinese-style, is simply divine. D.I.V.I.N.E.

It’s all about the marriage of a mere handful of ingredients – good fresh fish, fresh ginger, fresh spring onions, some soy and sugar, and some heated oil brought together by the genteel magic of the steaming process.

Its simplicity is what makes this recipe so unique and so special– the steaming process helps the ginger and spring onions release their flavours and the fish ends up almost gently poached in these juices. All it takes is some searingly hot oil poured over the fish followed by the soy to create its own unique sauce. I stick to soy and sugar because it works though you can try adding any myriad of flavoured soys as well.

Then place your lightly seasoned fish fillets skin side up on top of your bed of herbs.

I don’t have a wok or steamer large enough to steam a whole fish (head and all) so, sadly, I tend to have to use fillets – a fully boned fish would have provided so much more flavour, but that’s what I have to miss out on sometimes. We bought this hake at our local supermarket and it cost us a mere £2 for what came up to about 450 grams of fish – a not so insignificant amount!

All this dish needs is a bit of plain white rice and some yummy vegetable side dishes, which I think makes this one of the healthiest meals around.

If you’ve never tried this style of steaming fish before, please do because I think it’s truly awesome.

Lots of love

thebigfatnoodle

Steamed fish (hake this time), Chinese-style. The best thing about this dish is once it’s cooked, you can eat everything that’s in the bowl – the fish, the softened ginger/spring onions, the sauce, EVERYTHING!

Freshly steamed hake with fresh ginger and spring onions

Steamed fish (Chinese style)

Click here for a printer-friendlier recipe card.

450 grams fresh hake, de-scaled

50 grams finely sliced fresh ginger

100 grams spring onions, finely sliced

3 tablespoons soy sauce

1 teaspoon sugar

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

Salt and white pepper for seasoning

Prepare your fish by making sure it’s de-scaled, washed and then dried.

In your steaming bowl, lay down ¾ of your fresh ginger and spring onions.

Season the flesh side of your fish with salt and finely ground white pepper, then lay your fish flesh side down onto the bed of ginger and spring onions.

Top the fish with the remaining ginger and spring onions (retain a few spring onions to use as a garnish when the dish is done).

Steam the fish for 10-15 minutes until cooked through. While the fish is steaming, heat your oil in a small saucepan until very hot, and in a separate bowl, dissolve the sugar in your soy sauce.

When the fish is cooked, you’ll find that steaming, ginger and spring onions will have released a lot of liquid into your bowl – don’t tip this out because this broth is like liquid gold!

When your fish is cooked and your oil is heated to very hot, brush away some of the spring onions and ginger off the top of the fish (push them to your side of the dish) and carefully pour the hot oil over the skin of the fish – it will splutter a little bit so be careful!

Then pour your sweetened soy sauce over the fish, garnish with some fresh spring onions.

It’s best eaten hot with nothing more than some plain white rice and vegetables.

My very sceptical looking cat keeping me and my temporary cast company on Monday morning.

Be careful what you wish for…

When I was growing up, I always wanted to break a limb, ideally my arm.

It had nothing to do with wanting broken bones and everything to do with wearing a cast.

Kids in the neighbourhood who did break bones and wear casts lorded it over every other able-bodied kid in the playground. Injuring yourself enough to require stitches was pretty cool too but the ultimate badge of honour was always the cast. No matter if it turned yellow/grey and slightly smelly within days, that didn’t matter…

Well, at 40 years of age, I finally got my wish, didn’t I?

My careless slip in the rain last Friday resulted in 3 hairline fractures on my right metatarsal. After being put in a temporary cast on Friday, I pretty much spent the weekend doing really not much at all. Perhaps I was still in shock on Saturday, but the ‘doing nothing’ bit wasn’t that bad, quite relaxing and fun in fact.

However, by Monday morning, after 2 uncomfortable days in bed unable to sleep properly because of the cast, unable to even sit up to use my laptop, the novelty of having broken anything was wearing really, really thin.

The thought that I might need to be in a fixed cast for a further 5-6 weeks was starting to fill me with dread, so imagine my relief when, on Monday, I found out I simply needed a funky inflatable boot to wear for the next 6 weeks, wooo hoooooo! What’s quite pathetic is realising how three tiny hairline fractures can cause so much pain; seriously, I wouldn’t have been able to see them if the doc hadn’t pointed them out to us.

On the bright side, I’ll save on luggage space since I’ll only need to pack 1 shoe out of every pair

On the flip side, what is amazing is how quickly my foot’s recovering too. After the first painful few days, I’m today back up and walking around again (without crutches most of the time too), and the walking is getting easier every day. As long as I’m careful, life can start getting back to normal.

More importantly, our holiday plans to Canada & the US can go ahead, phew!

I think some of my colleagues are quite disappointed though, some of them were really looking forward to decorating the cast but instead of permanent marker pens, I suspect my removable boot will simply end up being adorned with stickers instead.

In fact, given that I’m going to have to wear this boot throughout my big Canadian-American adventure, I’m setting myself a mini goal of finding stickers of each town we stop in to decorate my boot with.

Sitting at our kitchen counter getting ready to make the pancake batter.

Stuck at home but unable to cook, grrrr!

What has been frustrating this week though has been being at home and not actually being able to cook properly. Earlier in the week when I still needed to use my crutches for support, I made some pasta and suddenly realised I wouldn’t be able to drain the pasta because I couldn’t hold the sieve, pot of boiling pasta and my crutches at the same time… I ended up having to sit the sieve in the bottom of the sink and used one hand to carefully pour the pasta through the sieve in the sink.

My husband has obviously been a superstar, given that he basically had to do all the cooking and washing earlier this week.

One whisk. One bowl. Simples.

So being able to sit in a chair in the kitchen today to make something from scratch has been deeply satisfying, and what better comfort food can there be other than pancakes?

Everyone has their own pancake recipe. I love the fluffy American style pancakes  and I love French crepes, but I have to say that I think English pancakes are far superior to both – thin enough to get crispy edges like a crepe, but denser so you have something you can really sink your teeth into.

Every day really should be pancake day.

There isn’t anything you can’t eat with a pancake, and if I’m not doing savoury fillings, I stick to two favourite sweet treats – one with nutella, and the other with castor sugar and freshly squeezed lemon juice.

I have this funny thing though because I ALWAYS have to have the sugar-lemon pancakes rolled up like a fat cigar, but my nutella pancakes must always be folded into triangles. Don’t ask me why, they just do! :O

Pancakes. One of the best comfort food around.

Having been laid up most of the week, I haven’t been round to visit but I do hope you’ve all been well.

Mmmmmm, nutella…mmmmmmmmmm

It’s yet another dreary, wet and cold summer day in England, so now filled to the brim with pancake, I’m climbing back into bed to rest my foot and find a cheesy movie to watch on the box.

Happy weekend everyone.

Lots of love

thebigfatnoodle

thebigfatnoodle’s pancake mix (makes about 12-13 pancakes)

Click here for a printer-friendlier recipe card

200 grams plain flour

60 gram of melted butter

3 medium eggs

300ml full fat milk

A good pinch of salt

Pancakes. Yum, yum, yum!

In a mixing bowl, sift your flour (holding it up high so you get lots of air through) with a decent pinch of salt.

Make a well in the flour and crack in your eggs.

Whisk the eggs and flour together, and slowly add the milk a little bit at a time, and whisk until you get a batter with the consistency of a thinnish cream. If you like thinner pancakes, add more milk, if you prefer it thicker, either add another 10-20 grams of flour or reduce the amount of milk you use.

When you have a batter with no lumps, add 2 tablespoons of melted butter to the mixture and pop your batter into the fridge for at least 20-30 minutes.

To make your pancakes, lightly grease a non-stick fry pan with some melted butter and ladle about ¼ cup of batter for each pancake.

You’ll know your pancakes ready to flip over when you shake the pan and the pancake starts to slip around the pan.

Eat them with whatever fillings you like, savoury or sweet!

Today is my town’s annual food fair – the Godalming Food Festival 2012.

Today is also the launch of my husband’s new community-based online channel.

He came up with the idea of creating a local, online video channel when he realised there wasn’t really anything on the Internet that really brought our town to life.

Since moving to Godalming over 5 years ago, we’ve really come to love our town but if you searched online for Godalming, all the websites are pretty bland and boring.

What makes anywhere special? More often than not, it’s not just what a place might look like, but how a place feels. Since meeting all of the people in Godalming who have made us feel so welcome and happy, my husband came up with the idea of creating videos to bring the people and places of where we live to life. Most important of all, it’s all about the people – what they do, what they like and are like, because ultimately, it’s the people that give a place its character.

So after several weeks of filming stories about local people, ourgodalming.com is launching today. If you have a few minutes, please do go and check it out!

Needless to say, I am so very, very, very proud of him.

I was meant to be judging the Godalming Bake-off competition too before helping him promote his website today but I am instead laid up at home instead. I stupidly slipped in the rain yesterday morning and have ended up fracturing my foot. Oh the joys of British summertime weather… Thanks to this mishap, I will have to wait impatiently to find out what our townspeople think of the website he’s created for them.

Our sage last summer!

I am alone at home today.

My husband has gone to visit his family, providing me with the rare treat of having the house to myself to veg out in as I see fit. I am using this time to clean up this blog and am creating new tabs so it’s easier for people to search and find recipes.

Unfortunately, as I have been away lots and as he has also been very busy filming and editing, there is barely any food in the cupboard or fridge. Normally, this would mean that I would automatically turn to my instant noodle cupboard but the prospect of that today just wasn’t very satisfying.

I was therefore shaking my head slightly in despair until I looked out the window and spied the beautiful flowers blooming on the sage growing in the garden, which formed the inspiration for today’s unexpected post and recipe.

I have made crispy sage before (I love it) and decided to fry some again to have with some pasta. I guess spaghetti isn’t too far off from the traditional noodles I would have normally had anyway but combined with some toasted pine nuts, lemon juice and parmesan, I’m pleased I ended up with a very simple but enjoyable lunch which I could eat using nothing more than a plate and fork.

Fresh sage from the garden (two varieties) and some pine nuts.

Takes just a couple of minutes to toast the nuts and fry the sage leaves to make them crispy.

Best of all, it took a mere 15 minutes to knock up, which is a good thing as I would have otherwise been too tempted to have turned on the TV to spend the rest of the afternoon watching crap and not doing much at all.

15 minutes is all you need to make this crispy sage and pine nut pasta.

Hope you’ll enjoy this simple recipe and the soon-to-be tidier site.

Enjoy the rest of your Sunday.

Lots of love

thebigfatnoodle

Simple summer pasta for one.

Crispy sage and pine nut pasta (for one)

Click here for the printer-friendlier recipe.

Pasta of your choice

1/8 cup of pine nuts (toasted)

5-6 fresh sage leaves

1/4 parmesan cheese, grated

2 tablespoons lemon juice

salt & pepper for seasoning

1 tablespoon EVOO (extra virgin olive oil)

15 grams butter

Sage, pine nuts, lemon juice and parmesan. Simple.

In a small fry pan or saucepan, toast your pine nuts until golden. Remove and set aside.

in the same pan, heat your butter and olive oil until all the butter has melted. Drop in your sage leaves into the hot oil mixture, toast it quickly but don’t allow it to burn. Turn off the heat immediately and keep tossing the leaves in oil for a few more seconds. Use a slotted spoon to remove the fried leaves and allow them to sit on kitchen paper to absorb any excess oil (do not throw your butter/oil mixture away!).

Cook your pasta according to the instructions. Drain and toss into your still warm oil. Pour over your lemon juice and add your toasted pine nuts. Toss well to mix thoroughly and season to taste with salt/pepper.

To serve, scatter the fried sage leaves on top. Garnish with lost of grated parmesan.

One batch actually enabled me to fill 3 x 18cm sandwich cake tins as well as a part of a loaf tin.

Japanese cheesecake

If you’re a fan of cheesecake but have never tried Japanese cheesecake (chiizu keeki) before, all I can say is that you really don’t know what you’re missing.

Japanese cheesecake is pure unadulterated pleasure – it’s soft, pillowy, creamy goodness – and what gives it its unique, velvety, gently cheesy creaminess is that it’s baked in a bain-marie (water bath) in a very low oven, making it super soft, super moist and super delicious.

I still had extra batter left after filling 3 cake tins so I bunged the rest into a lined loaf tin.

It also uses cake flour, which is quite hard to find in the UK, so I played around with the flour and corn flour quantities and am pleased to say that it turned out perfectly! Other than tweaking the quantities of flour as a substitute for cake flour, I based the Japanese cheesecake recipe from a blog I found called Christine’s Recipes – it is a wonderful blog filled with a mix of Asian, Chinese and Western recipes.

Japanese cheesecakes are normally baked taller than this but I used sandwich tins as I’m making a layer cake instead.

However, as much as I love Japanese cheesecake on its own (BTW, it’s incredibly moreish!), there have been times when I have wanted to give it a bit of ‘oomph!’ and so today’s recipe is the result of that.

My Japanese cheesecake cake.

Underneath that frosting is more lightness – layers of japanese cheesecake and soft vanilla sponge.

This Japanese cheesecake-inspired sponge layer cake is my very own creation, and something I’ve wanted to do for a while because I am planning a surprise party for a dear friend soon, and I wanted to create something that was different, that most people in the UK probably wouldn’t have eaten before, and something that looks celebratory and tastes divine.

A frosting made with whipped cream keeps the ‘light’ theme going.

Layers of soft, creamy yummyness

How can I best describe this cake to you?

Well, overwhelmingly, it is incredibly light!

Japanese cheesecake is in itself really soft and fluffy but I didn’t just want to make a cheesecake, I wanted to make a cake, complete with scrummy frosting and all.

Therefore, what I did was to make some Japanese cheesecake and some vanilla sponge, and created a layered cheesecake / sponge cake with a very, very light frosting using whipping cream, icing sugar and some lemon juice to keep the light theme going throughout.

I road tested this recipe with some of my friends this weekend and I’m very pleased to say everyone loved it, so much so that my girlfriend went back for seconds!

The top and bottom layers are made with Japanese cheesecake. The middle layer is a light vanilla sponge. They’re all joined together and covered in a light, lemony whipped cream frosting.

Cheesecake, sponge and whipped cream frosting. What’s not to love?

A word of warning; because of the two different types of cake you have to make and the amount of cooling time required, you’re looking at a whole afternoon’s worth of baking but trust me, the end result really is worth it.

I had to take most of my pictures at night, hence the darker shots.

Start by making the Japanese cheesecake first, then the sponge cake and finally make the frosting when all the cakes have cooled.

Because of the freshness of the ingredients and the whipped cream frosting, this cake is best eaten within 1-2 days if you’re not going to keep it in the fridge.

In all honesty, we devoured this cake within 24 hours so I genuinely can’t tell you how long it would last for… . It’s actually a cake that tastes best when it’s been in the fridge – Japanese cheesecake is best eaten nicely chilled.

I wasn’t happy with all the night shots so took this the next day before we ate the rest with friends.

Hope you like it!

Lots of love

thebigfatnoodle

Japanese cheesecake and sponge layered celebration cake

Click here for a printer-friendlier recipe.

The quantities below should allow you to make 2 standard loaf sized cheesecakes. In my case, I filled 3 x 18 cm sandwich cake with some left over to go into a sandwich tin as well.

Christine’s blog provides wonderful instructions and step-by-step images so rather than recreate it on my blog, I recommend you visit hers for the full instructions: Christine’s Recipes.

For the cheesecake:

250ml full cream milk

250 grams cream cheese

60 grams butter, softened

6 (large) egg yolks

6 (large) egg whites

50 grams of plain white flour (all-purpose)

25 grams of corn flour

Zest of one lemon, finely chopped

½ teaspoon of cream of tartare

130 grams of castor sugar

For the vanilla sponge (makes 2 x 18cm sandwich cakes of which I used one for the final cake)

130 grams self-raising flour

130 grams castor sugar

130 grams of softened, unsalted butter

2 large eggs

1 tablespoon of milk

2 teaspoons of vanilla essence

For the whipped cream frosting

300ml whipping cream

1 cup icing sugar

1-2 teaspoons lemon juice

To make the Japanese cheesecake

Line your cake tins with baking parchment and preheat your oven to 150C.

Sift your flour and corn flour together until well combined.

Set a bowl over simmering water (don’t let the simmering water touch the bowl), and add your cream cheese and milk together. Whisk/mix until the cream cheese completely dissolves into the milk.

Remove from the heat and add your butter, stirring until the butter melts completely.

Allow the mixture to cool slightly before whisking in the egg yolks, one at a time to ensure that it mixes completely.

Gradually whisk in your flour/corn flour, ensuring there are no lumps, before finally mixing in your lemon zest.

In another bowl or using a stand mixer, whisk your egg whites to form soft peaks. Add the cream of tartare and sugar gradually and keep whisking until you form a stiff, meringue mixture.

Fold your meringue mixture into your egg yolk/cake mixture.

Fold them together until well combined and then pour your cake batter into your cake tins.

Sit your cake tins in a baking tray filled halfway with boiling water and bake in the oven for about 50mins to 1hr. Leave the oven door ajar for 10 minutes before removing the cakes and allowing them to cool completely.

The top of the cheesecake will turn golden brown and may crack a little. When you peel the parchment away from the sides, you should however reveal the creamy white, soft cheesecake.

To make the vanilla sponge

Preheat your oven to 180C and line 2 cake tins.

Cream your butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Gradually add your eggs, one at a team, continuing to beat the mixture. I would ensure at least 30 seconds to 1 minute of beating before you add each egg. Then add your vanilla essence and milk and beat in.

Finally, add your self-raising flour and fold in well.

Distribute your cake mixture evenly between the tins and bake in the oven for 25 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean.

Allow the cakes to cool completely before making the frosting.

To make the frosting

Whisk your whipping cream until they form peaks. Add your icing sugar and continue to whisk before adding your lemon juice.

Use immediately or store in the fridge straightaway.

Our epileptic weather system isn’t just restricted to the UK. I took a bunch of journalists to watch the Czech Rep v Portugal UEFA Euro 2012 game and it was super muggy in Warsaw too.

Cooking by weather

Unfortunately, the ever-changing climate we are experiencing in Europe has turned summer topsy-turvy. I know people already associate the UK with rain and bad weather but what we are going through this summer really is bordering on the ridiculous. Parts of the country are flooded again while in the South-east where I live, a hose pipe ban still remains in place. The constantly changing combination of rain and cloud, with sunny spells in generally still warm air temperatures, means we wander around in uncomfortably muggy weather still feeling chilly and cold throughout the day.

I remember a friend from Singapore commenting to me that ever since I moved to the UK, I seem to talk (and moan) endlessly about the weather all the time. Easy for them to say that when the weather back home is pretty much constant, at least temperature wise. Here, weather news and reports are rendered practically useless when it can change from hour to hour, and vary from one neighbouring county to the next.

This makes it invariably difficult to decide what one feels like eating. BBQs are simply out of the question because you don’t know if the sun will hold out long enough for you to even cook anything, yet casseroles and stews are at times just too warm because the thermostat still measures between 19 to 22 degrees.

So last weekend, I tried to create something that represented a bit of all of the seasons we seem to be experiencing simultaneously– grilled pork chops more suited to sunnier climes, eaten with a casserole-style bean stew cooked in cider to provide the gentler warmth we still need to get through the cooler parts of our day and night.

My summery take on a classic pork and beans recipe. Grilled lemon & thyme pork chops with a bean stew cooked with cider.

If you’re pressed for time, use tinned beans in water. They’re just as good.

Speed and simplicity are also what I have focused on, and I’ve cut out a lot of cooking time by simply using a tin of pre-cooked beans (in water), which means apart from the time required for marinating the meat, it actually took only about 20 minutes to prepare this meal.

I don’t often grill pork chops because it’s hard to gauge when you overcook and dry them out but this marinade is great for tenderising the meat, which meant I only needed a couple of minutes grilling on each side to keep these chops succulent, juicy and full of flavour.

However, don’t let the picture of the grilled pork chops fool you – today’s star of the dish is undoubtedly the casserole-style bean stew, though stew is misleading because these only took 10 minutes to cook.

Bean stews can lack a bit of texture so my idea was to add some fresh edamame beans and spinach to the stew – the edamame beans retain a bit of crunch and the spinach just helps to lift this into a summery rather than wintry dish.

This was so nice that the grilled pork chop could easily be surplus to requirement.

A really simple casserole-style bean stew cooked in cider which you can knock up in minutes. The edamame provides a lovely contrasting but gentle crunch for extra texture.

A mix of summer and winter in one.

As always, because of the differing taste we have in food, I used my husband as my guide and critic; when I first told him I was making this bean dish, I could tell he was a bit sceptical though had the good grace not to say anything. He was not only worried about the potential consequences of eating so many beans but I could also tell the lack of potatoes or other starchy carb weighed on his mind. However, both of us needn’t have worried.

Nowadays, it takes quite a lot for him to give me a ‘two thumbs up’ but two thumbs he did indeed bestow. He liked this dish so much he actually even tried to recreate it himself while I was away on business this week. As he didn’t actually have my recipe to hand, he made his own version but didn’t take any pictures to show you. However, the fact that he chose to cook a bean dish to replace his normal carb intake was proof enough that we can find stodge-free recipes that remain equally satisfying and tasty.

Have a great weekend.

Lots of love

thebigfatnoodle

Pork and beans (in cider) – serves 2 as a main meal

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(I start grilling the pork chops at the same time I start cooking the casserole. The chops really shouldn’t need more than 5-6 minutes on a super hot grill, which means that they have time to rest as I finish making the bean stew. If you can handle cooking both at the same time, you’ll definitely be able to make this dish in under 20 minutes).

For the pork chops (marinate for at least 3 hours)

Go for boneless pork chops to reduce cooking time but do allow at least 3 hours for marinating.

2 boneless pork chops

1 tablespoon dried thyme (or fresh if you have it)

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon soy sauce (or 1 teaspoon Maggi Seasoning)

Ground black pepper

1 tablespoon lemon juice

Place your pork chops and all of marinade ingredients into either a plastic zip-lock bag or bowl and mix well. Seal your bag/bowl and marinate in the fridge for at least 2 hours. An hour before you intend to eat, remove your pork chops and allow them to come back up to room temperature (about an hour).

Edamame & bean casserole/stew cooked in cider

1 x 400 gram tin of mixed beans (in water)
1 teaspoon dried thyme
½ cup fresh edamame beans
1 cup chicken stock
½ cup cider
1 large shallot, roughly chopped
70 grams pancetta
½ large onion (or 1 small onion), roughly chopped
10 grams butter
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 cups chopped freshly spinach
1 clove garlic, finely chopped

Minimum effort. Maximum flavour.

Melt the butter in olive oil in a sauce pan. Fry your pancetta until they start going crispy and the oil has been released from the pancetta.

Add the onion, shallots and garlic, turn down the heat and sauté on medium heat for 5 minutes.

Turn the heat back to high, and then add the cider, stirring the bacon and onions constantly and allowing the onions to absorb all of the cider (like adding stock to a risotto).

When the cider has been absorbed, add your beans and edamame, toss well and then add your chicken stock and thyme.

Once it starts to boil, add a squeeze of lemon juice, reduce the heat and simmer for 5-6 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Add your fresh spinach, cook for another 1-2 minutes and add some roughly chopped parsley.

Ladle into a bowl and eat as is or with the grilled lamp chops.

The real star of today’s dish.

Spice is life – Britain’s continuing love for Indian spices and flavours.

Curry in a hurry

If there’s one type of food that the Brits have truly taken to their hearts and made their own, it is the curry.

It’s Britain’s favourite take-away and I daresay the number of Indian restaurants could rival the number of pubs in the UK quite easily. Anyone know if that might actually be true?

Curry is big business, with some analysts saying it’s worth between £777million pounds and £3.6billion – generated by over 10,000 restaurants in this country alone – and that’s just from Indian restaurants and not counting curries that are also sold in pubs, cafes, other restaurants and supermarkets.

My curry filo puffs – wrapped up like a samosa but baked and not fried. We ate this with a simple salad for supper last night.

The flavour of curry is so popular that the last few times I’ve stopped to buy a pasty at a pasty shop, I’ve noticed that many have stopped selling traditional flavours like pork and apple (or only offer this periodically) yet there’s always a ubiquitous curry version on offer.

But whenever I see a curry pasty, I inevitably think of my home because in Southeast Asia, they are again a staple snack food but we call them curry puffs.

Chicken curry stuffing mixture – not much to look at but boy does it taste good. I had trouble stopping my husband from eating it all before I made the puffs.

Back home, they can come in all shapes and sizes but traditionally, curry puffs look like a little pasty (with the crimped edges) but are only about a third of the size of a regular pasty More often than not, they’re also fried as opposed to baked.

They are also traditionally blindingly hot, leaving your mouth and even oesophagus tingling for a good while.

My husband found them irresistible, and even though he would inevitably suffer from heartburn when he used to eat them in Singapore because they were so spicy, he could never say no to them.

thebigfatnoodle’s curry puff puffs – stay away if you can’t handle spicy food!

I didn’t seal my pastry properly but at least it means you get a sneak peak of the slice of egg

However, the curry puffs I grew up eating had a special suprise because sometimes, you would get a slice of hard boiled egg in them. It was pot luck though because you could never tell whether your curry puff would have a bit of egg in it. It was always horribly disappointing if you got a dud egg-less puff.

Quail’s eggs work brilliantly but normal eggs work just as well.

Again, I haven’t ever found a curry puff in London that comes close to the potency or taste of the hawker stall versions from home, so I decided to try and make my own version.

I used my own home-made puff pastry in the first batch I made, and we ate them cold with our friends at our town’s Jubilee celebrations – perfect after an afternoon of drinking pimm’s and cider, listening to local bands play at Godalming’s bandstand before the fireworks.

Despite the dreary weather, our townsfolk where out in force for the recent Jubilee celebrations. We were there armed with beer, cider, pimm’s and curry puffs!

At 4 pm, the sun broke free, just as I ordered my first Pimm’s, LOL!

I don’t generally rave about my cooking but I really am very, very proud of these curry puffs. As they say, the proof is in the pudding, and the 12 generously sized curry puffs were rapidly devoured by my husband and friends.

My Godalming neighbours getting ready for the Jubilee fireworks

I was worried that I’d made them too spicy but thankfully, all of my friends loved them!

I’d made about 15 curry puffs, along with numerous sausage rolls, all of which was devoured in a few short hours during the Jubilee Sunday celebrations.

The stuffing is basically a curry blend I’ve created and cooked with potatoes to make a chicken and potato curry. It’s so versatile because you can eat it on its own, as a sandwich stuffing, in these puffs or, as per my husband’s creation, stir fried with vermicelli rice noodles, fresh edamame beans, spinach and mushrooms. He made this for our brunch this morning as I sat here typing up this post.

Curried noodles, made with the same chicken and potato stuffing, but fried with some vermicelli rice noodles, spinach, edamame beans and mushrooms. YUM!

Ever since the Jubilee, my husband has been asking me to make them again so that’s what I have done this weekend.

I couldn’t resist adding this photo. This is Casper, whom we met at our local pub after the Godalming Jubilee fireworks.

Oozing with lovely, spicy chicken and potato curry stuffing.

I haven’t even been tempted to try and tweak the recipe in any way but what I have done this time to make some with filo pastry as well preparing more traditional ones in puff pastry.

Both versions are equally nice and it’s hard for me to say whether I prefer them when they’re hot or cold, with filo or with puff.

Curry filo cups.

The ones made with filo deliver that amazing but delicate crunch when the filo shatters in your mouth, but the puff pastry versions are deliciously rich and crumbly in your mouth.

If you’re eating them cold, then the puff pastry versions are the ultimate bomb because the filo ones simply go a bit soft when cold however can easily crisp up again when reheated in the oven.

Surprise! I get so excited when I hit the egg. It’s like the silly joy you get when you open a Kinder surprise and get the toy

The only word of warning I have to give is that these puffs are hot! Perhaps not quite as searingly hot as the ones I’ve eaten at home but these will nevertheless leave your mouth zinging!

What I’m extra pleased with is that it’s not like a vindaloo burn which numbs your taste buds completely; instead, this heat actually only kicks in a good few seconds after you swallow, and leaves a heady mix of curry, sweet, sour and salty flavours on your palate for quite a while.

The Jubilee weekend batch was also the first time I’d made my own puff pastry and I cheated by using a Gordon Ramsay recipe, which not only works but works brilliantly!

His buttery rough puff pastry doesn’t require endless rolling/folding but takes just 30 mins to make – it’s seriously worth a go, especially if you’ve never made puff pastry before. Because it was so easy to make, it’s also given me the confidence to try making a traditional batch of puff pastry the next time round.

I made a variety of puffs in different shapes using the puff pastry, ranging from a classic triangular turn-over, to ones that looked like sausage rolls. I also made some half-open pastry style puffs too.

Curry puffs in filo – samosa style.

Using filo, I wrapped the curry in filo (with a whole quail’s eggs in each) to make large samosas while I also made some open and closed curry cups using a muffin tray as a mould. I didn’t butter every sheet of filo pastry for the cups as I was again trying to keep things a little healthier.

Curry powder and freshly milled spices with a sprinkling of dried curry leaves because I can’t get hold of any fresh curry leaves.

Whatever shapes you make, with filo or with puff, I think you’ll really like these curry puffs particularly if you’re a curry fan.

If unsure what curry powder you should get, I have to say that the Waitrose curry powder is really, really good… that’s what I’ve used in these.

My husband made a couple of videos during our town’s Jubilee celebrations so if you’re interested in seeing what we got up to in our little town, I’ve added them to the end of this post.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend.

Lots of love

thebigfatnoodle

Click here the bigmonster’s Godalming Jubilee video here. 

I prefer using waxy potatoes, like these red Roseval potatoes. My husband loves them.

Thebigfatnoodle’s curry puff puffs and curry filo puffs

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1 tablespoon cumin

½ teaspoon black onion seeds

1 teaspoon coriander seeds

1 teaspoon very hot chilli powder

2 ½ tablespoons curry powder

1/2 teaspoon tikka powder

1 teaspoon crushed dried curry leaves

1 teaspoon sea salt

An eggy treat hidden in each curry filo cup.

500 grams waxy potatoes like red roseval, quartered and then sliced.

1 red onion, finely chopped

2 cloves garlic, finely chopped

2 shallots, finely chopped

4 chicken breasts, skin removed, roughly cut into smallish cubes and seasoned with 2 tablespoons of soy sauce

1-2 tablespoons mango chutney (add more if you prefer it sweeter or if you find the chicken curry too hot for your liking)

2 tablespoons groundnut oil.

1 freshly squeezed lemon

2 large hard boiled eggs, peeled anthem quartered (or you can also use quail’s eggs too)

Filo pastry (shop bought)

Puff pastry (Click here for Gordon Ramsay’s rough-puff pastry recipe)

Making the chicken curry

Start by boiling your potatoes in some salted water for about 6- 8 minutes – you want your sliced potatoes to be only just cooked with the tiniest bit of bite still left in them. Drain them well and rinse them in cold water to stop them from cooking further.

While the potatoes are cooking, toast the cumin seeds, black onion seeds and coriander seeds. Put the toasted spices into a mortar and pestle (or spice mill/grinder) and add your teaspoon of sea salt. Grind to a fine powder, then mix in your dried curry leaves, chilli and curry powder.

In a saucepan, heat 2 tablespoons of groundnut oil and sauté your shallots, onions and garlic over a medium low heat for 5 minutes until they’ve softened.

Turn the heat back up to high and then add in your dry spices. Fry the spices and toss with the onions well for a minute. The spices should turn dark brown.

Add your chicken and fry with the spices and onions, it shouldn’t take more than 5-7 minutes for the chicken to cook through because they’re in small pieces. Squeeze over your lemon juice, keep frying, and then add your mango chutney.

Finally, add your cold potatoes and toss well. There shouldn’t be too much liquid in your curry left and your potatoes should also absorb any liquid as well so you’ll end up with only a minimally wet curry mixture.

Allow the curry to cool, and then use either puff pastry or filo pastry to make your curry puffs.

Depending on the size or type of curry puffs you’re making, layer a bit of curry before placing a pice of egg and then covering the egg with more curry before sealing up with whatever pastry you’ve decided to use.

For the filo curry cups, I placed approximately 5 squares of filo in each mould and then topped them with another 1-2 pieces of filo squares, scrunched up and brushed with butter.

Brush the puff pastry versions with egg or milk wash or if you’re using filo pastry, brush each side of every sheet with melted butter.

Bake them in a 200C oven for about 10 minutes or until golden brown. I’d recommend you eat the filo versions piping hot. The puff pastry versions can be eaten cold and also frozen.

Curry puff puffs and curry filo puffs

We watched Sara Errani win her first set, then lose her second in a 6-1 defeat. She fought back in the 3rd set to win the game but we’d left by then

One of the perks of my job is that I get to go to Roland Garros (or more commonly known as the French Open) every year. The company I work for is one of the main sponsors of Roland Garros, so we take a bunch of journalists to meet up with some of our execs each time.

This year’s press trip could have ended horribly though. During our lunch at Roland Garros, the heaven’s opened up and, I kid you not, I haven’t seen such torrential rain since I was at home in Singapore during the monsoon season!

We’d all had to wake up at crack of arse to get to the train for Paris, and when it started to pour, all of the journalists and I had almost resigned ourselves to the possibility of returning to London without seeing any tennis whatsoever. Thankfully, just as we were about to leave, the rain stopped and blazing sunshine erupted again so that play could resume. We had all hoped to have watched the Sharapova match but as all the games were delayed, we at least still managed to catch a couple of hours watching S.Stusor and S.Errani play on Centre Court before we had to dash back to Gare Du Nord station. Phew!

It seems therefore only fitting that the recipe I’m posting today is French, and more importantly, one of my most favourite things to eat when in France.

No one can stop at one…!

les chouquettes

Whenever I’m in Paris, I invariably cannot resist walking into the nearest boulangerie to pick up at least 200 grams of ‘les chouquettes’ – these golden, delicious bite-sized balls of choux pastry puffs covered in pearl sugar – which equates to about 20 of these little treats.

I always buy a big bag to share with my French colleagues at work, and even though they live in Paris and pass at least 3-4 boulangeries on their way in to/from work, I’ve noticed that the bag of chouquettes never lasts long. It’s impossible to stop at just one!

The elusive (at least in the UK) pearl sugar…

Ever since I started thebigfatnoodle, I’ve always wanted to make my own chouquettes; after all, it really is simply choux pastry sprinkled with pearl sugar and baked in the oven. Unfortunately, it is IMPOSSIBLE to find pearl sugar in the UK. I have spent hours online trying to find a supplier and in the end, I resorted to getting my husband to pick some up from the supermarket when he went skiing in France earlier this year.

A basic and easy-to-make choux pastry.

If you have a preferred choux pastry recipe, I don’t see why you can’t stick to it. I went online and decided to try David Lebovitz’s recipe because it looks much crunchier than what you normally see at the bakery.

I did run out of eggs so instead of an egg glaze, I decided to create a milk-based sugar syrup, which worked a treat! The milky sugar syrup melted and caramelised on the bottom of each chouquette, giving it that extra crunch and stickiness at the same time.

It’s meant to be easier using a piping bag but I’m not very good at piping so two teaspoons worked just fine for me. Make sure you pile on the pearl sugar – it really is worth it!

Les Choquettes. Simple to make and totally awesome to eat.

A word of warning though if you’re following David Lebovitz’s recipe, he’s recommended a 220 (degrees celsius) but I found that much too high and I thankfully managed to save them before they got burnt (apart from some on the sides of my baking tray). I would recommend baking them in a 200 degree oven, especially if yours is a fan assisted oven like mine.

Little puffy balls of sugary heaven.

My neighbour’s are in for a treat as I’ve made so many we won’t be able to eat them all ourselves!

Godalming Great British Bake Off

Separately, some good news for me! I have been asked to be one of 20 judges at our upcoming Godalming Great British Bake Off, wooooo hoooooooo! It’s going to take place on 7 July and Dhruv Baker, the winner of Masterchef 2010, is going to be our celebrity chef judge. How exciting is that???

And as for the best bit about being asked?

When I checked with the organisers if they needed me to do anything beforehand, here’s what they said…

“All we require is for you to be there on the day to taste cake.”

Now that is music to my ears…!

Happy weekend everyone.

Lots of love

Thebigfatnoodle

A basic and easy-to-make choux pastry.

Click here for a printer-friendlier recipe

David Lebovitz’s recipe for Les Chouquettes (Make a big batch of about 40-50)

1 cup (250ml) water

½ teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons sugar

6 tablespoons (90g) unsalted butter, cut into small chunks

1 cup (135g) flour

4 large eggs, at room temperature

At least 2 cups of pearl sugar (also called crystal sugar)

Beat in the eggs one at a time until you get a beautiful silky smooth batter.

Thebigfatnoodle’s tweak for the glaze

1 tablespoon of milk

1 tablespoon of sugar

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees (220 degrees celsius) and line at least 2-3 baking trays.

In a saucepan, heat the butter, salt, sugar and water until the butter melts.

Empty your cup of flour into the mixture all at once and stir well until the pastry mix comes away easily from the side of the saucepan. Leave it to cool for 2 minutes.

Transfer the dough to a mixer or if you don’t have one, start beating in the eggs, one at a time, until it forms a silky, glossy batter.

Ladle about 1 teaspoon of batter onto your tray and space out each mound with at least 2 cm to spare – these puffs expand quite a lot.

Dab each mound with the milky sugar syrup and then top generously with pearl sugar.

You want to pile as much pearl sugar onto each mound as you can.

Bake these in the oven for

s Heat the water, salt, sugar, and butter in a small saucepan, stirring, until the butter is melted. Remove from heat and dump all the flour in at once. Stir rapidly until the mixture is smooth and pulls away from the sides of the pan.

Bake in the oven for about 30 minutes but keep an eye on them for temperature control.

Once they come out, use a skewer to punch a hole into them to allow the heat to escape – these will help make the choquettes extra crispy.

They are best eaten the day they’re baked but I quite like them the next day too when they’ve soft and really sticky from the sugar.

Les Choquettes.

While the cakes were baking, I was practising my union jack cake decorating skills.

The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee

As I sit here typing, I’m watching the Queen’s floating pageant take place on our TV. The 1,000 ships that are taking part in the flotilla will actually end up right outside our flat in London at the end of the day. Unfortunately, we no longer live there so we are instead joining in the festivities organised in Godalming this Bank holiday weekend.

I have been up since 8am baking furiously; my way of sharing in the wonderful spirit of celebration that has slowly been engulfing the UK as everyone gathers to party hearty everywhere for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee.

Though I have been living in the UK now for almost 15 years, I’m not actually British. I still hold on to my Singaporean passport. However, what most people don’t know is that for a brief spell, my family were actually considered ‘British’. I was born in Hong Kong when it was still a British colony and my family therefore had British passports. My parents decided to give up their British passports when they moved to Singapore after I was born, and opted to become Singaporeans in the 1970′s before China took Hong Kong back under its rule in 1997.

I’ve been in the kitchen baking since 8am this morning!

Singapore too used to be a British colony and it remains to this day a Commonwealth member nation.

I studied the British curriculum at school, as students in Singapore still do, and we all dutifully took our GCE ‘O’ and ‘A’ levels, with our exam papers actually shipped to the UK to be graded.

It’s actually only occurred to me today how Great Britain and all it stands for has therefore played a HUGE part in my life, more than I actually realised. And then of course I ended up marrying an Englishman too.

So, today I have gone all out – we have hung bunting outside our front door (I’ve never bought or hung bunting before ever in my life…!) and I have baked a special cake just for the occasion. I was originally planning to make a traditional victoria sponge, but then I realise I wouldn’t have been able to decorate it the way I wanted to. So, I’ve made a very simple but delicious vanilla sponge cake, layered using traditional English strawberry jam and fruits, covered in buttercream frosting and then topped with more fruit designed with the Union Jack in mind.

Hip, hip, hooray!

All over the UK today, I know hundreds of families have created similar union jack cakes. I love the idea that for once, British reserve is cast aside, and people have unleashed their patriotism to pay tribute to Queen and country.

Our contribution to the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations.

Tomorrow, I will do more baking – traditional English picnic food – as friends will be gathering at our house before we all trek into Godalming town centre to watch the special Queen’s Jubilee fireworks display – one of hundreds of displays up and down the country.

Happy Sunday everyone, and happy Diamond Jubilee celebrations to all!

Lots of love

thebigfatnoodle

The extra Jubilee celebration cupcakes I made had milky bar white chocolate buttons, strawberries and blueberries.

thebigfatnoodle’s special Diamond Jubilee vanilla and summer fruit cake

Click here for a printer-friendlier version. 

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees celsius. You’ll also need 3 18cm sandwich cake tins and 5-6 muffin cases and a muffin tray. The amount below enabled me to make a 3 layer vanilla cake and 5 extra large cupcakes.

260 grams self raising flour

260 grams sugar

260 grams butter

4 large eggs

1 tablespoon vanilla essence

1 tablespoon milk

Strawberry jam

Fresh fruit for decorating

I made a really nice buttercream frosting that I found online – it was divine! The blog I took it from has amazing pictures to show you how it’s made so here’s the link from the Tasty Kitchen if you want to learn to make it.

Cream your butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Gradually add your eggs, one at a team, continuing to beat the mixture. I would ensure at least 30 seconds to 1 minute of beating before you add each egg. Then add your vanilla essence and milk and beat in.

Finally, add your self-raising flour and fold in well.

Distribute your cake mixture evenly between the tins and put any extra batter into muffin cases.

Bake in the oven for 25 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean.

Wait until your cakes have cooled completely before decorating with buttercream and fruit. I used a traditional organic strawberry jam between one of my cake layers and then piled raspberries, blueberries and more buttercream on the second layer.

I decorated the extra cupcakes with buttercream, milky bar buttons, blueberries and strawberries.

For her Majesty. Happy Diamond Jubilee everyone!

Enjoy!