My Cheesecake Brings All My Friends to the Yard

This week I decided to try my all time favorite dessert. Can anyone guess what that is? If you've been reading my blog at all you'd know that I love cream cheese, in fact I love all cheese so it should be no surprise to you that my favorite dessert is cheesecake. I've tasted many, many cheesecakes, so I consider myself an expert in sensory evaluation of them, but when it comes to baking them I'm a complete novice. This made me nervous. I mean who wants to screw up their favorite thing to eat, not me! Additionally, I've tasted a lot of disappointing cheesecakes. Ones that missed the mark by having the wrong texture, being too cakey, too sweet, not sweet enough and the list of faults goes on and on. I didn't want to be one of those. I wanted mine to be great!

After reading other bloggers' raving reviews about Dorie Greenspan's recipe for Tall and Creamy Cheesecake, I decided to use her recipe to bake my very first cheesecake.I prepared the crust by combining graham cracker crumbs, sugar and butter to make the crust and fitting into into my buttered spring-form pan which was double wrapped in tin foil. I placed the tin in the freezer. I met upon a major setback when I preheated the oven and realized it wasn't heating up enough. Noooo! I felt pretty disappointed. But the next day I woke up with a new sense of determination, mixed up my batter, got in the car and drove over to my parents house and used their oven to bake it. I decided to make the lime version of Dorie's cheesecake because I like the brightness that a little citrus adds to desserts. So in addition to mixing together the cream cheese, sugar, vanilla, eggs, sour cream, heavy cream and salt, I also added lime juice and lime zest. The crust baked at 350 for 10 minutes, then after it cooled I poured the filling into it and baked the cheesecake in a water bath at 325 for an hour and a half. Then the cheesecake was left in the water bath with the oven door slightly opened for another hour, then I removed it and cooled it on a wire rack.

The hardest part about making cheesecake is the waiting. After baking for an hour and a half, sitting for another hour in the slightly cracked oven and then cooling on the wire rack, it then has to chilled for at least 4 hours! This felt like the longest wait of all time. At around 9pm that night I just had to go and take a small sliver to see how my masterpiece turned out. It was wonderful! the texture was perfect! Really creamy! The lime was such a wonderful addition and gave it a little zing. It was just the right amount of sweet. It was lovely. It was so lovely that I invited my friends to come over and eat it before I ate it all myself.

So not only did my cheesecake turn out great but it inspired a gathering of great friends laughing and talking in my kitchen for a few hours last night. The cheesecake got rave reviews, and I had amazing company. Not only did I accomplish making my first cheesecake but I brought friends together, which doubles the benefits!

Tropical Treats

For the last few weeks I've been feeling a tropical vibe. It came through in my desserts. Coconut macaroons are something I ate a lot as a child. My mom loves them and used to take them home for us as an occasional treat. Incidentally I happened to be talking to her on the phone for the entire time I was making them, which wasn't that long since they're so easy to make. Too easy in fact, I'm tempted to just through some together for a sweet snack. A temptation I will resist in the name of vanity. When I made the Chewy Lime and Coconut Sugar Cookies, I discovered the beauty of a marriage between the flavours and decided that I'd make Coconut Lime Macaroons. The flavours were just as delicious in macaroon form and I ate one everyday until they were done.

Revisiting things that worked seemed to be the second theme of the last couple weeks. I had a visit from my aunt who happens to be a huge fan of my blog. Since she lives abroad, this was her first opportunity to taste my goods. I remembered her comments about the Nectarine and Mascarpone Tart with Gingersnap Crust  and decided to do a version with mango, one of her favorite fruits. The ginger and lime zest in the tart went very well with the mango. I have to say I prefer this version to the Nectarines, but perhaps I'm biased towards tropical fruits. I served the tart with Moscato which according to my internet research, would go well with the fresh fruit in the dessert. I rushed to make this on the same day it was served, it was a rather busy weekend. But if you make this recipe it really is best to make it the day before and add the fruit topping just before you serve it. That way the creamy filling has more time to set. The piece I had the day after was just perfect! This is by far one of my favorite recipes.

Good friends introduce you to good food

I have a longtime friend named Danae, who lives in NYC. Our parents are very good friends and we practically grew up together. She's older and wiser than me, especially in matters concerning food. It's no surprise that she introduced me to some of my favorite foods, like sushi, and Juniors cheesecake. On one of my trips to visit her she took me to Cake Man Raven. This was the first time I tasted red velvet cake and since I've started baking, I wanted to try to make it myself. So this week I made Red Velvet Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting. I took the recipe from one of my favorite blogs, Brown Eyed Baker.

I also got a chance to try out one of the new pastry tips I bought on my last trip to Miami. I first combined the butter, sugar and egg. Then I mixed the food colouring, cocoa powder and vanilla together into a paste and added it to the sugar butter and egg mixture.The vinegar and dry ingredients were gradually added to the mixture and when it was thoroughly combined, I baked the cupcakes in the oven for 20 minutes. The frosting was made my mixing butter, cream cheese (mmmm cream cheese ), powdered sugar and vanilla. After the cupcakes cooled I piped the frosting on with a piping bag and open star tip.

The cake was moist and fluffy, just how I like my cake and the cream cheese frosting was delicious. But in terms of the taste of the cake it was just ok. One reviewer said she could taste the food colouring, I'd reduce it next time around and see how it tastes. The cake itself wasn't sweet, but the frosting made up for that, adding just the right amount of sweetness. I didn't quite make red velvet that rivals Cake Man Raven's but hey! I bet even Cake Man Raven didn't make his best red velvet on the first try.

Put the lime in the coconut

This week I decided I wasn't going to buy anything. Whatever I baked had to be from ingredients I already had on hand. Now, its pretty difficult to do this without the basics: eggs, flour, sugar and butter. Lucky I had them all. I chose a recipe from one the the blogs I follow, Two Peas and Their Pod, and made Chewy Lime and Coconut Sugar Cookies.

These cookies were very simple to make. First I combined the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt in a bowl. In another bowl I beat together the sugar and butter, then added the egg, vanilla, lime zest, lime juice and desiccated coconut. I gradually added the dry mixture to the wet one and beat til combined. I took heaped tablespoons, rolled them into a ball with the palms of my hands and then rolled them in sugar and placed them on a baking sheet.

The cookies baked for about 10 minutes in a preheated oven at 350 degrees until the tops were cracked and very slightly golden. They were left to cool on the pan for 2 minutes and then transferred to the cooling rack where they completed the cooling process. I had my first taste with a cup of tea.

These cookies are more than meets the eye, they are absolutely divine, delectable, delicate, delicious. The lime and coconut work together so well and the texture, just the right amount of crisp on the outside but chewy at the heart of it without being doughy. Wonderful! And they took such a short time to make. I didn't bake all the batter at once. Some of it sat in the fridge for a day or two and wow the second batch was even more delicious. I'm on to batch number three now, making between 12 and 18 each time and I still have a little batter left. This recipe is yielding more than 36 cookies for me. I have to get rid of them quickly! Its too dangerous to have them here with me, alone. I may even have to resort to taking some to work. I spent nothing, used up some left over ingredients and ate some very very tasty cookies. Thumbs up for this one!

Passion-ate about Ice Cream, Crazy for Mangoes

This week my fiance's parents were visiting from Barbados and I decided to make some strawberry ice cream. Well, as luck would have it, there were no strawberries in the grocery store. Disappointed, I paced, trying to decide what other flavour I'd like to make. Then I passed by one of the produce displays and saw something that was even better than strawberries, passion fruit. I grabbed two bags and merrily skipped to the cash register. I have had passion fruit ice cream only a few times but each and every time it has left a lasting impression on me. I love the flavour of passion fruit.

I'm also discovering that I LOVE making ice cream. I used Food Blog Search to track down a recipe. I came upon David Lebovitz's recipe on several blogs. I've been wanting to get his book The Perfect Scoop for quite some time now. Everything I read about it is positive.

I began by extracting the juice from the passion fruits. This was done by pressing the juicy seeds in a strainer with the back of a spoon which was the most time consuming part of the recipe. I decided to double the recipe to yield a quart. Then I added a cup of cream. I warmed the sugar, salt and remaining cream in a medium saucepan and slowly added it to six whisked egg yolks in a bowl. Then I put the custard back in the pot and cooked it until it coated the spoon. I then added this mixture to the passion fruit mixture. I chilled the mixture, churned it in my ice cream maker and let it freeze overnight.

The ice cream was lovely. It had the fresh, vibrant flavour passion fruit with just the right amount of sweetness, mm mm mm superb!

Later on in the week, my fiance's Dad brought home some mangoes from St. Thomas, providing me with the inspiration for my next two desserts. I decided to make Mango Sorbet (using another David Lebovitz recipe).The sorbet was simple to make. I simply put sugar, water, diced mango, lime juice, a tablespoon of dark rum and a pinch of salt into the food processor and pureed it until smooth. Then I chilled the mixture, churned it in the good ole ice cream machine and froze it for several hours. The sorbet tasted completely authentic, it was just like biting into a sweet, ripe, juicy Julie mango. One of my testers even said it was better than Haagen Daaz! What a compliment! :-)

I still had many mangoes left so I figured I'd bake something. After all this is "The Baker Within". So I decided to make Fresh Mango Bread from Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From My Home to Yours. It was made by combining the dry ingredients and spices, mixing together the wet ingredients, marrying both mixtures and then adding the diced mangoes, lime zest and golden raisins.

After making sure everything was well incorporated, I placed it into a loaf pan and baked it for an hour and a half. The center was still wet, so I had to bake it for another 20 minutes.

The bread was delicious and moist, the spice and sweetness just right. But even though I could see the chunks of mango all throughout the bread it just didn't taste mango-y enough. It should've been bursting with mango flavour. Next time I try this recipe I'll either increase the amount of mango or pulse the mango in the food processor first so that it can be even more incorporated into the batter or heck maybe I'll even do both.

June 2011 Daring Bakers Challenge: Baklava

Erica of Erica’s Edibles was our host for the Daring Baker’s June challenge. Erica challenged us to be truly DARING by making homemade phyllo dough and then to use that homemade dough to make Baklava.


For those of you unfamiliar with Baklava, its a rich, sweet pastry made of layers of phyllo pastry filled with chopped nuts and sweetened with syrup or honey. I was first introduced to it while studying in Canada and I'm definitely a fan but I haven't had any since I left, so when I saw that it was this month's challenge, I was very excited. It would normally be pretty simple to make using store bought phyllo but this challenge required that we make homemade phyllo, which was, well, difficult. The recipe can be found on the Daring Bakers Website. 

I began with the phyllo dough which was made by combining flour, salt, water, vegetable oil and cider vinegar then kneading it until smooth and letting it rest for 2 hours wrapped tightly in plastic wrap. During the resting time I prepared the syrup by boiling a cinnamon stick, lime rind, cloves, honey, sugar and water together for 10 minutes. 

While the syrup cooled, I created the nut mixture by grinding the walnuts, almonds, pistachios, allspice and cinnamon in the food processor. 

The phyllo dough was ready for rolling and I followed the instructions as best I could, trying to get it as thin as possible by rolling and stretching. I then layered about 5 sheets of phyllo, making sure to butter in between sheets, then 1/3 nut mixture, then another 5 sheets, more nut mixture, until the phyllo and nut mixture were all used up. I cut the baklava into pieces and generously buttered the top.

I baked it for 30 minutes at 350 degrees F, then cut it again and baked it for another 30 minutes. It smelled amazing when it was baking which made me a little upset that it had to sit overnight and I wouldn't be able to eat it until the next day. I removed it from the oven and it was lovely and golden. 

It looked just like the picture in the recipe and I felt a sense of achievement. I poured the syrup over it and left it to absorb overnight. There was so much syrup that my baklava actually began to float but I wasn't concerned since the recipe said we should expect it to be a lot of syrup but it would be absorbed overnight. The next day though I awoke to disappointment. The baklava was drowning in tons of syrup. I had to pour off the excess.

The flavour of the baklava was sweet, with wonderful spice. The flavour was terrific. But everything else was turned out to be well, not so great. The baklava was very wet and sticky, the  "phyllo" I made wasn't thin or flaky enough and the cinnamon sticks hadn't been ground up small enough so every now and then I bit into a very tough bite of stick. Had I known that would happen I would've just used cinnamon powder. I was very disappointed since I was so looking forward to recreating this dessert. I will definitely try it again one day, but with store bought phyllo and a different recipe and see if I have better luck. 

Chocolate Covered Chocolate Dipped in Chocolate

A good friend of mine was leaving for Spain for six weeks and she made one request "Something Chocolate". I begun to quiz her on what she liked with chocolate. Did she like nuts, caramel,coconut, what accompaniments could I put in this dessert. To which she replied that all those things were just distractions, she wanted chocolate, forget the other stuff. So when I saw this recipe for Life by Chocolate on Pioneer Woman's Blog, I thought of her. These are chocolate cupcakes with a Hersheys Kiss inside dipped in chocolate ganache. Unfortunately the weekend before she left I bit off more than I could chew and fell ill, so I couldn't make them for her departure, however I made them this weekend to commemorate her long awaited return.

Dry mixture

These cupcakes were simple to make. I combined the salt, sugar and flour in a bowl. I used whole wheat flour instead of white because with all this chocolate I figured noone could tell the difference and we could all use some extra fiber here and there. Then I whisked the eggs, vanilla, baking soda and natural yogurt (used instead of buttermilk) together in a measuring cup. I melted the butter over medium heat and added the cocoa.  I used Hersheys Special Dark Cocoa Powder. I added the boiling water and removed the pot from the heat. Then I combined all three mixtures, the dry, the wet and the cocoa.

Wet mixture

Cocoa mixture

  

Dry, wet and cocoa mixtures combined

I filled each muffin cup with 1/4cup batter and placed a kiss lightly in the centre of each muffin cup. The muffins baked for 20 minutes.

As they cooled I made the chocolate ganache by adding warm cream, corn syrup and vanilla to chopped chocolate and whisking until smooth. When both the cupcakes and the ganache were cool, I dipped the cupcakes in them.

These were very chocolaty, not too sweet, with a sweet surprise milk chocolate kiss in the middle. This was chocolaty, chocolaty, chocolaty and quite dark. They were good and although I got rave reviews from my tasters, I didn't think it was great.A moister, fluffier cupcake recipe would take this from good to great!