Attempts to make my first Christmas cake were both successful and unsuccesful. Success in view that it was actually rather delicious. Unsuccessful, in that we ended eating it rather than wait for Christmas before doing so, and the cake tin I put the cake mixture in was too big. I'll try making another one next week.

While getting the ingredients ready for the Christmas cake, I made a rather interesting discovery. Noone had ever told me this before, but black treacle, I found, tasted very similar, although much thicker and more concentrated (and yummier) than kecap manis. At 70p per 454g tin at Tesco and 79p at Waitrose, it was a right bargain. That led to a char kway teow version of 'char spaghetti', which was surprisingly good. I'm glad to say that this solves the problem of having to find sweet soya sauce for popiah, char kway teow, chai tao kway in the future.