Tag: pancakes

Yelly Eats

So Fuwafuwa!

Yelly

So apparently, according to a google search, fuwafuwa means fluffy, airy, light – like a pillow or foam.

A few months ago, I noticed an interesting photo on Ed T’s (@onehungryasian) instagram feed.  He said he had a recipe for fluffy Japanese soufflé pancakes and I wanted to look at the recipe.  I was on the verge of perfecting my version of a Japanese matcha cheesecake and I was curious about the pancakes, whether they would really be soufflé-esque.  I noticed that one of the comments was this guy saying they were  opening a pop-up for Japanese soufflé pancakes.  I thought it would be good to find out where it was to try it so I knew what I was aiming for.  I followed the Instagram account and thought I’d look through the feed later.  And then I promptly forgot about it.

© by @onehungryasian

Then Ken Mok (@kingken_photography) wrote that he finally went to try the pancakes and they looked fabulously soft and pillowy.  Exactly what the name of the purveyors of these heavenly pancakes meant: Fuwafuwa.

© by @kingken_photography

So since then, I’ve been thinking about these gorgeous pillows and wondering when I can go and taste them and find out for myself how they felt in my mouth!

Yesterday, we were going to London to see a friend who was going on a trip at the end of the month and we wanted to spend time with her before she flew off on her adventures.  Alan suggested we stop over at Westfield in Stratford where Fuwafuwa (@fuwafuwalondon) had their pop up shop.  It was just before 9AM and on Saturdays they open from 9AM until 9PM.  I was looking forward to ordering the matcha pancakes, but they weren’t on the menu.  So I settled on Nutella and banana and Alan ordered S’mores.  But they changed the menu at the last minute and said they had the matcha pancakes and the lovely manager of Fuwafuwa allowed me to change my order from the Nutella and banana to the Matcha Love pancakes.

I absolutely LOVED them.  They are as airy, soft, cloud like, light, pillowy and soufflé-esque as I built them up in my head to be.  The matcha cream that accompanied my pancakes were generously flavoured with matcha and you could really taste the green tea, which I loved.  They were also VERY generous with the red bean paste that was served on the side.

Alan’s S’mores pancakes were yummy with marshmallows and chocolatey goodness that reminded me of childhood memories of marshmallows and chocolates melted and sandwiched between two pieces of graham crackers.  Alan’s pancakes were topped with a dusting of icing sugar and a couple of pretzels.  Knowing I loved pretzels, Alan very generously shared one with me!

I need to know what the name of that lovely manager of FuwaFuwa is.  He asked if he could take photos of our pancakes because, apparently, they were so busy that they rarely had time to photograph their heavenly creations.  We, of course, obliged.  I had brought my little Olympus EPL7 on this trip (I wanted to capture the cherry blossoms in London) so I was also busy snapping away with the sole purpose of posting it on Instagram.  I was also determined to write about it on the blog.  I offered to take photos of the pancakes with his phone.

He had a surprise for us though.  There was a Salted Caramel Miso and Popcorn pancake option on the menu.  I loved salted caramel.  I loved popcorn.  I loved miso soup.  I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted them all together on a plate.  So I was more than a little dubious and didn’t order this particular flavour.  He came back to our table and he gave us a double stack of the salted caramel miso and popcorn pancakes.  To say thank you for waiting for the pancakes (they opened late) and for taking photos.

It was absolutely gorgeous!  It was sweet and fabulously savoury with the crunch of the popcorn for brilliant texture.  I know miso was good but I didn’t know that it would be a great flavour that could be used for sweet treats as well.  You learn something new everyday.

Fuwa Fuwa London (@fuwafuwalondon on Instagram) is currently at their pop up at Westfield in Stratford City and according to Westfield’s website they will be open this week (16 April to 22 April) Monday to Friday from 10AM to 9PM, Saturday from 9AM to 9PM and on Sunday, 12PM to 6PM.  They’ve just announced that Matcha Love will now be available on weekends too!  I’d recommend going when you can and bringing a bag of patience with you because if you can’t get there early and be first in the queue, it might be a substantial wait.  The pancakes are made to order and can take until 30 minutes to make and if they’re busy, the wait will be a little longer. I know 30 minutes might seem to be a bit too long to wait for pancakes, but they are very definitely worth it.  It’s a heavenly party in your mouth!

Yelly Eats

A gem off the beaten path: Coleman Coffee Roasters

Yelly

Coleman Coffee Roasters frontWe came across this lovely café quite by accident.  We were exploring Lower Marsh and the rain started to come down quite heavily.  We were also looking for a place to have breakfast because our usual cheap eat favourite Marie’s on the same street was closed.

We took shelter and the smell of coffee  wafting from the beautifully gleaming vintage espresso machine was amazing!  We were greeted with a really welcome “Hello guys!” so we went further in and looked at the menu.  We were intending to be polite and just have coffee and possibly cake.  But they served Staffordshire oatcakes or “oaties” and there was quite a choice from sweet to savoury fillings for the oat pancakes.  We’d never had oaties before so our curiousity was piqued!  We chose to have bacon and stewed tomatoes.  The aroma of cooking bacon was amazing, and boy were the oaties oh-so-fabulously good!  It rated an “oh-my-God-this-is-amazing!” with my mouth full of oatie-bacon-tomato goodness!  The oaties were light but surprisingly filling.  I expected to feel full and bloated after, but I didn’t.  It was heaven on a plate.

oaties!Now. let’s get to the lovely brew!  I opted for drip coffee because it’s what I do when trying out a new coffee place (my better-safe-than-sorry coffee measure).  I was offered a choice between the Guatemalan and another blend (I think it was Costa Rican blend) and I chose the Guatemalan.  It was very nostalgic for me because it was served on a Duralex looking cup, which reminded me so much of the French coffee cups that my father favoured.  At first I was worried because the drip coffee looked light and watery.  But oh no, was I VERY wrong!  The coffee was rich, comforting and oh-so-flavourful.

Mmmm coffee!The staff are lovely, very friendly, so very helpful and they know their products.  They’re happy to explain what they sell, what you’re options are and they give you lovely recommendations.  They also love what they’re selling.  That’s key!

This isn’t quite on the main road from Waterloo Station, but this is definitely worth a visit.  The space is small and there are only a few seats, but that’s part of the charm.  If you have the opportunity to wander around Lower Marsh, pay the lovely folks at Coleman Coffee Roasters a visit.  It is DEFINITELY worth it!

Coffee and oaties!

Yelly Writes

No pancakes today!

Yelly

I didn’t make from-scratch pancakes today, and with today being Pancake Tuesday, that is a tiny bit of a travesty.  I will make my cheesecake pancakes on the weekend though.  Although, I am slightly hesitant because I do worry about the sugar element of having a pancake weekend!  It will need a rethink and a recipe retweak!  Ah to have a sweet tooth and be a diabetic!  What a life of contrariness do I lead, eh?

I am, however, baking blondies today.  A friend who has had a hip operation is visiting the office tomorrow and she mentioned on Facebook that she was craving blondies.  So I thought I’d send her home with my almond blondies.

It’s not going to be a surprise because she knows about it.  But I thought it would be a good thing to do!

Tomorrow, I’m thinking of baking whoopie pies.  Peanut butter and jelly whoopie pies.  Let’s see how that works out, shall we?

Yelly Eats

The Breakfast Club tribute pancakes

Yelly

It’s supposed to be Spring.  The sun is supposed to be out.  The weather should be warming up.  But Mother Nature didn’t seem to get the memo.  It is snowing almost everywhere in the UK today.

I’ve been craving The Breakfast Club‘s HamSoEggcited for some reason.  I think it was because of the weather and the fact that I wasn’t feeling very well (I’ve got a bad cold, if anyone’s interested in offering tea and sympathy!).  In my head, HamSoEggcited would cure all my ills.  I had visions of lovely fluffy pancakes, melting cheese sandwiched in ham slices and a perfectly fried sunny side up egg with the yolk all gooey and runny!

HamSoEggcited - The Breakfast Club

But because London wasn’t exactly a hop, skip and jump away, I thought I’d try to replicate it in my tiny kitchen.  I found a great recipe for fluffy pancakes recently and tweaked it so that the pancakes were how I wanted them to be.  I had gammon ham in the fridge and cheese that needed using up so I set about recreating the sweet-savoury pancake stack.

My recipe for fluffy pancakes is below:

Ingredients:Fluffy pancakes

  • 135g self-raising flour
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • ½ tsp salt
  • 3 tbsp caster sugar
  • 150ml milk
  • 1 large egg, lightly beaten
  • 30ml melted butter or olive oil
  • butter to cook pancakes

Directions:

  1. Combine the flour, baking powder, salt and sugar in a large bowl with a balloon whisk (I love using a balloon whisk to mix dry ingredients because it does it really quickly and really well!).
  2. In a jug, whisk the egg and milk together.  Then add the olive oil.
  3. Combine the flour mixture and the egg-milk mixture and beat until you have a smooth batter.  If there are any lumps, this should disappear soon with a little more mixing.  Let the batter stand for a few minutes.
  4. Heat a non-stick frying pan over medium heat and add a knob of butter and swivel the butter around to coat the pan, until all the butter has melted.  Add a ladle of the batter to the pan.  The batter will be thick, but don’t worry because this is how the batter should be.  Wait for the pancake to bubble and for the bubbles to burst.  Loosen the edges with a fish slice and flip over.  Cook until both sides are slightly golden brown.  The pancake should rise to about 1 cm thick.
  5. Repeat until all the batter is used up.  This makes 4 large pancakes.  I know that might not sound like much but a stack of 2 pancakes are more than generous for one person!
  6. Serve with lashings of syrup of your choice, and extra butter if you are so inclined!

To make the HamSoExcited, I kept each pancake warm in a low oven and each time I made a pancake, I stacked it with a folded piece of gammon with a slice of cheese inside (the gammon).  I did a stack of 3 pancakes and doused the pancakes (VERY liberally) with golden syrup (because I’d run out of maple syrup).  Leaving the pancakes in the oven while I cooked the eggs gave the pancakes a little crunch.  When I placed the fried egg over the pancake stack I had to take a photo because it was soooooo pretty.  Probably not as pretty as The Breakfast Club’s HamSoEggcited but it was close enough, I thought.  It certainly tasted like it!

tribute pancakes

I posted the photo on Instagram and the people managing The Breakfast Club’s instagram account thought it was a pretty impressive effort!

TheBrekkyClubComment

Yelly Eats

Wannabe Domestic Goddess Pancakes

Yelly

When I was growing up, hotcakes, or pancakes, were a breakfast staple.  For some reason, my mom would almost always cook them on a Saturday.  It was pancakes out of a packet but I thought it was the bees’ knees!  How my mom could make so many pancakes from one egg and a smallish looking packet of dry ingredients was beyond me.  I think all you had to add was either water or fat…I can’t remember now.  But I know that the brands we used to have at home were Maya and White King.  Eventually we did try to use Pillsbury…but I think Maya or White King was still the best.

When I was older, and fancied myself the capable cook, I experimented and tried making apple pancakes.  It was a DISASTER with a capital D.  My baby sister, Duckie, was ever so polite and she said it was okay…I don’t know if she remembers that day, but it was the first time I had given Duckie something to eat that she didn’t immediately finish (well that and anything aubergine!)!  So for a while I stopped experimenting with pancake recipes.  I’d given it up as a lost cause…for the meantime.

My favourite TV Chef is Nigella Lawson (stay with me, I’m not digressing! mentioning Nigella will eventually serve its purpose!).  While a lot of her recipes are absolutely rich and wonderfully calorific, some of them are absolutely practical and really quick to do.  Forever Summer is the Nigella series that, I think is, my favourite.  It’s where I got 2 of my favourite recipes.  A tamarind-based fish curry that’s absolutely deeee-vine over rice (ayayayayay!!  over rice again!  but then again, I am Filipino!) and pancakes from scratch.  Here’s my version of her recipe.  I’m finally learning to cook in smaller portions.  Hurrah!

This version is made with cream cheese.

Ingredients:

Makes 8 – 10 6-inch pancakeswannabe domestic goddess pancakes

  • 150 grams cream cheese (you can use full fat, low fat, non-fat)
  • 200 ml skim milk (the fattier the milk, the richer the pancake! butter milk is the best! yum yum!)
  • 3 eggs
  • 1/3 cup sugar (you can add more, but if you’re topping pancakes with syrup this is enough)
  • 2/3 cup self-raising flour (I use this so I don’t have to add baking powder)
  • 1 tsp vanilla (the better the vanilla, the better the pancakes 🙂 also, I’m very liberal with the vanilla!)
  • butter for greasing the pan

Directions:

  • Separate the egg yolks from the egg whites, and set aside.
  • Add the sugar to the egg yolks and beat until the egg yolk and sugar mixture turns very pale yellow.  Add the vanilla.  Add the cream cheese and mix until well-incorporated.  Add the flour slowly, making sure that there are no lumps.  Add the milk.  Set aside.
  • Beat the egg whites until soft peaks form.  Add 1/3 of the egg whites into the egg yolk mixture until well incorporated and then fold in the rest of the egg whites gently
  • Grease a non-stick pan with a little butter (don’t put too much butter as this will FRY the pancake—you don’t really want that).  Ladel pancake batter.  Wait until the larger bubbles burst before flipping over, this should take 1-2 minutes, depending on how hot the hob is.  The pancake is relatively ready if you shake the pan and the pancake moves around relatively easily (if you’re not using a non-stick pan, you may have to check if the pancake’s bubble-side is cooked).
  • You can garnish with whatever fruit tickles your heart strings and drizzle whatever flavoured syrup you want.
  • You can also cook a non-cream cheese version and just do away with the cream-cheese.  It still works! 🙂