I love having blocks of butter and cream cheese at home. I love the I-need-to-clear-my-butters-so-I'm-baking! feeling whenever I open the fridge and see them arranged on top of one another. Its like a reflection of my passion for baking!
I don't know if that's the same for you, but they certainly are the fastest-moving yet most expensive ingredients I use.
Cakes, cookies, pies, tarts, bars...... I can hardly escape from opening sticks after sticks of butter. Especially when baking becomes a little more intensive, like how I've been baking almost every day for the past one week, I've finish almost 4 cups of butter!
Last night, I was really tempted to 'clear' my cream cheese again. LOL. It'd be the best chance for me to finish my remaining sour cream from the superlicious Blueberry Crumb Cake too! After much consideration on what cheesecake I should I bake, I decided on New York Cheesecake!
The recipe was from a book bought by one of my best boyfriend in Taiwan. Although the entire book was written in CHINESE..... (Okay, I'm a Chinese, but I really dislike reading chinese words!) I still wanted to use its recipe because I'm actually very appreciative to get his support for my interest! I adjusted the recipe a little as I was a bit disturbed by one of the ingredient "butter" in the cream cheese filling. I substitute it with milk instead =)
The result was really great. I love how the surface of the cheesecake is slightly brown. The best part was that it didn't cracked, it didn't sink in the center, and it wasn't over-baked!
See. Still nice and creamy, one of the best cheesecake texture I'd made!
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The February 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Aparna of My Diverse Kitchen and Deeba of Passionate About Baking. They chose Tiramisu as the challenge for the month. Their challenge recipe is based on recipes from The Washington Post, Cordon Bleu at Home and Baking Obsession.
Tiramisu brings back a very exciting familiarity for me as this was just what I had been preparing weekly one month ago at the restaurant I worked! Yes, a very traditional Italian restaurant selling Cannoli too, remember? Haha! There is a very huge difference, though, between the recipe chosen for this month's challenge and the one I used at work. Ours are actually simpler in the ingredients used but still unique in its own way.
(My sponge fingers were really delicate, thus I brushed the coffee syrup over them instead of soaking them in it. I was very sure that it might melt within the 0.5 seconds in liquid LOL.)
Anyway, I'd been really busy the past few days and didn't got the chance to use the computer, so here's a very late post!
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On the 18th was the birthday of one of the loveliest girl I know in school :) We were from the same sportsclass during our lower secondary - she plays badminton! And she is really so sincere in everything she does. She writes card and buy donuts for me! HAHA She loves media & photographs-editing too. If I had 3 hands, I'd have given her 3 thumbs up for all the videos she'd made for our class and sports performance :D
Anyway the images of the cake is a little lacking because there's something wrong with my DSLR's focus. I took all these using the manual mode because photographs taken by the Auto mode is worse! Arghs, sent it for repair already though. I miss having it and capturing all my baking moments =\
So one of my buddy came over to my house on a RAINY morning to get her cheesecake done (she loves cheesecake. she loves coffee). Therefore, we made Cuppucino Cheesecake :) Brilliant. Whipped Cream on top of the cheesecake because she love cream, too. And I like watching her eating sweetened whipped cream on its own (at Starbucks) LOL.
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My post title says it all. Are you laughing at my pathetic & thin layered cheesecake? :( I don't have a smaller cake pan and since it's not my plan to use an extra package of cream cheese, I decided to just go ahead with my 'budget cheesecake'. Laughs!!
Cream cheese are ridiculously expensive if you don't buy them from suppliers, but then again, even if you get them from suppliers you end up with blocks of cream cheese weighing at least 2kg. I agree 2kg for cream cheese is not a lot, but with the limited space for pastry items in the fridge, I can't buy 2kg of cheese at a go!! o_O
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HELLOOOO AGAIN! :D I've got two great treats up,
Blueberry cheesecake with hazelnut crust
Pumpkin cheesecake with Marshmallow Sour Cream topping
I made both of them last week together (scroll down for more pictures). Lovely yeah? I've been really crazy over cheesecake ever since I baked my first one. I like how dense and neat they are! The blueberry cheesecake ones were great, but I reckon I'd put lesser almond extract next time because the almond taste is really empowering. I wonder if it has got to do with the brand I use..?
I served this with some sliced apricot (bought from Fremantle market in Perth previously :D ) I got the pumpkin puree from Jason's Marketplace. Not sure if you can get the same brand from FairPrice or Cold Storage though. By the way, I did not use the Gingersnap cookies as the cheesecake base. I really cannot find them anywhere!!! Not even in Perth =\ I used Pumpkin oat cracker instead. Haha. (but I still believe Gingersnap cookies would be a better choice!)
continue for the recipes ....
