Tiramisu Cheesecake

Oh the endless possibilities that cheesecake provides. Tiramisu cheesecake is just another example. And because it was an experiment and I decided to throw it together kind of last minute, my recipe is a little loose and you might need to change it for your own preferences.

Before I made it, I looked at a lot of different recipes online and found many that used the lady fingers crushed up and mixed with butter to provide the base, and some others that put them directly in the cake. I like the latter idea better and the rest of it was pretty simple. I did a normal cheesecake layer, then the soaked ladyfingers, and finally a top layer of sweetened mascarpone.

Not much else to say about this except I took it to a party and it was a big hit. And I was worried about soggy lady fingers sinking into cream cheese, but fears ended up being unfulfilled.


Tiramisu Cheesecake

crust
½ c butter (125 g)
1.5 box graham crackers or Maria cookies
pinch of salt

Crush cookies any way you can (beat them in a plastic bag, pulse them in a food processor), melt butter, and mix the two together with salt, then press on the bottom and up the sides of a springform pan. Bake at 170C/340F oven for 10 minutes.

cheesecake
600g cream cheese
1 c sugar, seperated
3 eggs
250g mascarpone
½ c marsala or sweet sherry
½ c espresso
ladyfingers
good chocolate for grating
pinch of salt

Mix the cream cheese at room temperature, with half the sugar. Seperate the eggs and whip the whites to soft peaks. Mix the yolks into the cream cheese, and then add a pinch of salt and fold in the egg whites. Pour the mixture into the prepared crust. Now mix the marsala and espresso together, dip the lady fingers in so they are well coated on all sides and moist, and then layer close together over the cream cheese. Finally mix the mascarpone with the remaining sugar, egg yolk, some salt, and when well combined, fold in the egg whites. Pour this over the ladyfingers and spread out evenly with a spatula. Now put in a preheated oven, still at 350F/170C and cook for about 30 minutes. My standard 'doneness' test is if the edges are set but it's still wobbly in the middle. When that happens, take it out and let cool. Store in the fridge overnight and just before serving, grate chocolate all over the top of it. Enjoy.

Super American Cheesecake

In Spain I would always use ingredients like lemons, rose water, coffee, chocolate, vanilla beans or other ‘natural’ ingredients like that. So it was kind of a relief and a celebration of all things American and processed to make a deliciously rich and unnatural (in a good way) cheesecake. I went straight to the candy aisle, because what isn’t made better with the addition of candy? I site chocolate chip cookies with broken up Andes mints; it definitely gives them that extra something.

I have a weak spot for Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. I think many people do, except those unfortunate enough to be allergic to peanuts. But I went straight for these after little deliberation. I’m sure in the future there will be many more variations of my candy cheesecake (I’m seeing Twix and M&M’s, perhaps Junior Mints too). But Reese’s are not where my Americanized version ends. I needed more processed sugar. A topping of some sort, so then I headed to the ice cream aisle, because we all know that’s where you get your gooey, melty junk food. I would suggest butterscotch or caramel, and I found one that was a mixture of both (I’m not really sure what it contained, probably large amounts of sugar and corn syrup).

There’s not much else to this cheesecake, the natural goodness of the products pretty much do all the work for you.


Super American Cheesecake

crust
½ c butter (125 g)
1.5 box graham crackers (I just use regular Honey Maid)
pinch of salt

Crush cookies any way you can (beat them in a plastic bag, pulse them in a food processor), melt butter, and mix the two together with salt, then press on the bottom and up the sides of a springform pan. Bake at 170C/340F oven for 10 minutes.

cheesecake
1 bag Reese’s peanut butter cups (not sure how many are in there, or how many ounces it is)
1 jar butterscotch/caramel sauce
24 oz cream cheese
½ - ¾ c sugar
3 eggs

Make sure your cream cheese is at room temperature. While the crust is baking, slice each Reese’s into quarters. When you take the crust out, scatter them over the crust and they will slightly melt onto it. Reserve about ¼ cream cheese for the topping. With remaining cream cheese, beat in the sugar and eggs, with a pinch of salt. Pour this over the crust and Reese’s, and bake at 350F/180C for about 30 minutes, until top is set but the cake still wobbles. Heat up the jar of butterscotch sauce and mix well with the cream cheese you’ve saved. When it’s well incorporated, pour slowly over the top of the cheesecake, around the edges (not all straight in the center, it’s more likely to go straight through the bottom layer if you do that). And make sure and cover the whole surface. Put back into the oven for another 10-20 minutes, until the top layer is set. Fair warning: this stuff is sticky, and probably will slightly caramelize to the edge of your springform pan. But it’s all worth it in the end, and you’ll truly appreciate how good it is to be in the land of plenty.

Birthday Cheesecake

And this was not just any birthday, but a lady’s birthday, so I wanted to find something fitting, and clean. I’ve been really into trying different flavor combinations and unordinary things, but nothing new was appealing to me. I needed something simple but sophisticated (if it’s possible for cheesecake to be sophisticated without sounding like an idiot). I could still have my hand at a new flavor, but no bruleeing or accompanying shots or anything like that.

Every now and then I see rose featured in desserts. In fact, after I made this cheesecake, I saw some rose gelato in a little town in the Costa Brava. I just had to figure out how to make a rose cheesecake without it tasting like soap/potpourri cheesecake. Let me tell you, this took lots of adding, mixing, tasting, adding more, mixing more, tasting more, and over and over again because I didn’t want the rose to be overpowering. I was using rose water, not essence, so it was more subtle, and I wanted to get enough flavor in there so you knew what you were eating. I ended up using about half the bottle, which I think would be around ¾ - 1 cup, seems like a lot of liquid, but it’s necessary to get the touch of rose in there (I think the testers of the final product were on the verge of guessing the flavor, had someone not told them what it was right as it was on the tip of their tongues).

I also put ricotta in this one, which I don’t normally use, and it made it a bit lighter but with a strong texture, as ricotta won’t come out perfectly smooth. Cheeses are the fun part to play around with, and ricotta and rose worked well out well together. You still get a very creamy cheesecake, just doesn’t seem quite as dense as with pure cream cheese.

Another plus of the rose cheesecake is it comes out pure and white. No pink food coloring, so it’s very fresh looking, not like pastel-y pink icing on a cake, and you can garnish it however you want, with different colors of roses or leave it plain. Of course for a birthday cake, roses were definitely necessary to add a little something extra.

Rose Cheesecake

crust
125 g butter
200 g Maria cookies (same as graham crackers, or any digestive ‘biscuit’ on this side of the ocean)

Crush cookies any way you can (in a plastic bag), melt butter, and mix the two together, then press on the bottom and up the sides of a springform pan. Bake at 170C/340F oven for 10 minutes.

cheesecake
600 g cream cheese
250 g ricotta
3 eggs, separated
150 g sugar (you might need more or less, depending on how much rose water you add)
¾-1 c rose water (remember, until you can taste it just a little too much, as some will bake out)
pinch of salt

In a large mixing bowl, cream your cream cheese and ricotta together to get them soft and fluffy. Now add the sugar, maybe skimp a little bit because you can always add more. Mix that well together and now start with the rose water. I did mine little bits at a time so you can monitor how strong the flavor is, and you can always taste as you go (this is why I add the eggs last, not that raw eggs ever stopped me from eating dough). After every addition, stir until it’s well blended. When you’re satisfied that you have a hearty rose flavor and not yet soap, beat the egg whites until soft peaks. Add the egg yolks to the cheesecake, stir, then a little bit of salt, stir, and finally fold in the egg whites. You don’t have to be so careful about breaking them, make sure and get everything well incorporated, they are just there to give some extra-fluffiness to your cheesecake. Pour into the prepared crust in the springform pan and bake for about 25-30 minutes at 180C/355F. It might seem extremely wobbly when you take it out, but as long as the edges are well set, then the middle is ok because it will firm up in the fridge overnight. Once it cools to room temperature, stick it in the fridge and be ready to enjoy the next day.

A Taste of Yellow

Ok, my food might not look that yellow. It might look more creamy, or off-yellow, if you will. Or maybe brown. There’s that big hunk of brown on the top. But it is yellow, and was made with some yellow food (egg yolks). Explanation: a Taste of Yellow is to support LiveStrong Day, in honor of Lance Armstrong (yay Austin!) and other cancer victims. I think this is only the second year for the actual Taste of Yellow to accompany LiveStrong Day, but it’s a big foodblogging event. Most people write about people they know who have been affected by cancer, I don’t think there’s anyone who hasn’t had some experience with it, but I’m not good at writing about that. And I don’t want to talk about sad stories, I want you to think sweet thoughts. So onto the yellow food, and if you want to read better composed accounts of cancer in people’s lives, there are lots other food blogs participating in a Taste of Yellow. For more information, look here.

Now to my yellow food. I didn’t make this with the intention of entering it into a Taste of Yellow, but the deadline’s approaching and I looked through pictures of food I’ve made recently that still haven’t posted about, and there it was. It’s another cheesecake. One that I’ve been wanting to do for a while, and I thought I was kind of clever with the idea, but apparently it’s been done before. Anyways, it’s a crème brulee cheesecake. I do loooove crème brulee, and it’s very easy, just a baked and burnt custard, so I thought why not incorporate some cream cheese in there and put it on a cookie crust. Great. And I had access to a blow torch, which I don’t normally have, so all the more reason for me to burn things. I was very happy with the results, it was rich and creamy and a perfect texture. The only thing is I got so caught up in the cream brulee part of the recipe, that I only put in 300 g of cream cheese, which is about half what I normally do, so it was a very thin layered cheese cake, but still great.

I also experimented with a water bath. Lots of cheesecake recipes, and crème brulee for that matter, call for water baths. They say it makes it bake evenly so it will come out without cracking. I always ignore that, and am happy with my results, because even if they do crack or puff up or whatever, they always seem to sink back down and work just fine. But I thought double whammy, as my two desserts that I’m mixing both call for water baths (looking back, I don’t know why I bothered, as I was just going to pour sugar on and burn the top anyway). So I wrapped my springform in foil before starting and got my water bath ready with warm water, and you know what, the stupid thing leaked. I ended up with soggy crust. I decided I do not like the water bath. It is bad, and I have reverted back to my usual method. Other than that little glitch, I definitely would make this again, it was twice as good because it’s composed of two delicious desserts.


Crème Brulee Cheesecake

125 g Maria cookies/graham crackers
75 g butter

300 g cream cheese (if you want thin layer, otherwise 600 g)
5 egg yolks
3 egg whites
2 vanilla beans
250 ml cream
½ - 1 c sugar (sorry, I didn’t measure this part…I just pour in a bit, and then add if I need to)
brown sugar for sprinkling

You know the routine now (mush up cookies, melt butter, press in springform, bake for 10 minutes) but if not, look here.
Now it’s the crème brulee part. Pour the cream into a pot and cut the vanilla beans in half, scraping the seeds out into the pan, and then put the beans into the cream too. Over medium high heat, bring the cream to a simmer, almost boil, then turn heat off. I put a lid on it and let it infuse while I get the other stuff ready. With a whisk, beat the egg yolks and sugar for a minute or two, until well mixed and a bit lighter in color. Take a fine mesh sieve and pour the vanilla cream through it into the egg yolks, whisking as you do this. In another bowl, beat the cream cheese a bit, just to loosen it up (this can be done with the same whisk). Then add the egg yolk mixture and whisk everything together again. Unless you’re afraid of raw egg yolks (which I am not) then stick your finger in and taste a bit to see if you need something more, a bit of sugar, pinch of salt, etc. Finally, add the egg whites. I know crème brulee doesn’t call for whites, but cheesecake does, and mine was seriously lacking in volume, so I added them and like I said already, I was totally satisfied with the flavor and texture of the cheesecake.
So this is the part where I put it in a water bath, although I wouldn’t suggest that, especially if you’re just going to destroy the top anyways. Bake at 170 C or 350 F until a toothpick comes out almost clean (could be anywhere from 20 min-1 hour). Chill overnight in the fridge.
Now, if I was having a party or something, I might pour brown sugar over the whole cake and torch the whole thing, because I think that would look very cool, but it’s not very practical, as when you try and cut into burnt sugar it doesn’t always break where you want it to, so pieces would end up in strange shapes. So, cut each piece individualy first and put a good layer of brown sugar over the top, and then torch it, and you’ll see the sugar bubbling and melting together. It’s great. If you don’t have a blow torch, a broiler in the oven works too, that’s what I normally use at home. Now feel free to shatter burnt sugar. Shatter away. It’s fun.

Margarita Cheesecake

Remember that Tex-Mex night I had? Well, I need to have one again. I’m working on supplies, although today at the store I saw some cheddar (I know, it’s nothing compared to Velveeta, but it could be a good substitute). Anyways, I still haven’t posted about the dessert we had. There are a couple Mexican desserts that come into my mind, but once again, it’s hard to find the ingredients necessary, and they’re nothing that will blow your mind. If I were to make something Tex-Mex, it would be sopapillas (delicious fried, puffy tortillas covered with honey) or tres leches cake, but you know how I’m partial to cheesecake. I just took this as another opportunity to expand my growing cheesecake menu.

Some people might disagree with me, but you can never have too much Margarita. I’m not speaking strictly of the drink, and this is why I don’t say ‘too many.’ I wanted to make a margarita cheesecake, which I thought would be fairly successful and simple. Most plain cheesecakes are flavored with lemon, so why not put lime instead, and then add a few extra flavors, like tequila and salt? At first I thought of putting all the flavors in one layer of cheesecake, but I realized that alcohol usually doesn’t come out very strong after being cooked in cheesecake (I’ve experienced this before. You have to use a lot for a little flavor). Not that I want to put people over the edge with the dessert, but I want you to know you’re eating a margarita cheesecake, not a lime cheesecake that tastes a bit like something else. The solution? Salty crust, lime cheesecake, and a shot of tequila (this last bit was a stroke of genius on my part at the last minute, before I had been thinking of doing a separate layer of tequila). The only problem is that shot of tequila might be hard to get down after a dinner already laced with margaritas, but it’s nice to sip on between bites.

I’m just going to link back to my first, plain cheesecake because you basically follow that recipe to a tee, with a few exceptions, which I’ll note below. iAndale!


Margarita Cheesecake

Follow this recipe with the following changes:
-In the cookie and butter mixture for the crust, add about ½ - 1 tsp of salt (or as much as you can handle. I put in a whole lot, and you could definitely tell, but it was balanced with the rich, fatty cheesecake, and of course the tequila)
-In the cheese mixture, instead of lemon, use the juice and zest of 2-3 small/medium limes, and a drop of lime flavoring if you have it

Now serve with a shot of tequila (I think silver would go down smoother than gold, but it’s your pick), and remember to sip slowly…

Turkey Day

Alright, alright, I guess I'll go ahead and skip over things that have been waiting longer and move pumpkin pie and Thanksgiving to the front of the line (just so I don't end up posting next Thanksgiving about what I did the previous year.) So I made a cheesecake. Shocker, I know. And it was a pumpkin cheesecake, another huge surprise at Thanksgiving, but what are you gonna do?
I decided to celebrate Thanksgiving here in Spain by inviting all my American friends (and some Brits too, I mean, I guess the pilgrims were pretty much them , fresh off the boat) to come over and have a nice Thanksgiving feast. I would take care of the turkey, gravy and dessert, and they would provide the rest. And it turned out really well, and the best part was I got to keep all the leftovers and have a second Turkey Day and then some turkey-stock soup. Dericious. Just take a look at everything:

So, starting from the top and going clockwise we have: cranberry sauce (they actually sold cranberry sauce here at a British and American food store, but it still wasn't the giant cylinder we're used to, it actually had cranberries in it, but it was good), cheesey mushrooms, carrot and parsnip mash (courtesy of a brit), corn pudding (simple but extremely delicious), broccoli casserole (made with Campbell's cream of mushroom soup, also very delicious), a salad of lettuce, asaparagus, and orange, and finally turkey, gravy, and mashed potatoes.

So now back to the cheesecake. I've actually made a pumpkin cheesecake before, but it was years ago and I don't think I liked it very much, I've never been a big fan of pumpkin pie. But just for this occasion, on my last trip over from America I brought a can of Libby's pumpkin puree. And I'll just remind everyone once again of how old school Spain can be, if you'll kindly direct your attention to the photo of the can opener that 'bites' around the edges of the can…and you have to do each 'bite' yourself. I tell you, the muscles I'm gonna have at the end of this...Anyways, finding a recipe for pumpkin cheesecake wasn't too difficult, and it's pretty well-known what flavors go well with pumpkin. So, my recipe is based loosely on one from good ole epicurious.com.

Pumpkin Cheesecake

crust
125 g butter
200 g maria cookies
fresh and already ground cinnamon

cheesecake
1 can pumpkin puree
600 g cream cheese, room temp, as always
about 100 g butter, also room temp
1 Tbsp cream
about 60 g brown sugar (until it's sweet enough)
big pinch of cinnamon
pinches of the following: ground ginger, clove, fresh nutmeg, and salt
3 eggs

topping
250 g quark (or sour cream)
lots of bourban
lots of sugar

First crush up the cookies and mix with melted butter. Then throw in the already ground cinnamon, mixing again. Press into the bottom and up the sides of a springform pan. Then take a cinnamon stick and grate it (it’s ok if you get some large pieces) directly onto the pressed crust, so that you get a nice sprinkling over the crust. Then put in the oven at 170 C for about 10 minutes
Now start mixing the cheesecake batter. Use your handy can opener (ahem), and open the pumpkin and mix it in a bowl with the cream cheese, then add the butter and cream and mix well. Now add the sugar and stir again. So now you have your basic batter and you can do what you want with the spices and alter them as you need. I start with a pinch of everything, just remembering that you always want more cinnamon than the other stuff (epicurious calls for 1 1/2 tsp cinnamon and just 1/2 tsp of the other three spices). But I'm not big on measuring, so I like to throw in and taste as I go (this is also why I put the eggs in last, but really, raw eggs never stopped me from eating dough). And remember to put in a touch of salt, as it’ll really bring out the pumpkin and spice flavors. Finally put the eggs in and give everything a good stir. Pour it into the crust and stick it back in the 180 C/350 F oven until the knife comes out almost clean and it's still wobbly except around the edges (maybe 35-50 minutes).
When you take it out, you can whip up the topping so it cools off a bit. Easiest part: it all goes on taste. Mix together the quark, powdered sugar, and bourbon until it’s sweet enough but you can taste the alcohol. Spread on top and put back in the oven for 10-15 minutes until it’s bubbling at the edges and take out and let cool at room temp. Finally, stick it in the fridge overnight and then on Thanksgiving stuff your guests full of turkey and sides until they think they can’t eat anymore, and then bring out the pumpkin cheesecake…

And it's only a month after the fact!

Vanilla Bean and Crème de Violette Cheesecake

I realize, cheesecake is nothing new to me, and you've seen a few pictures of my variations, but I'm going to have to come out and say it, you're about to see a lot more with this one. It's just sooo good looking, I can't help it. I took pictures from every angle, in all lighting, just to figure out which would come out best, and honestly I love them all. I'm like a proud parent of my little 9 inch, Vanilla Bean and Crème de Violette Cheesecake.
That top layer of Crème de Violette gave a brilliant, light blue color, and reminded me of Easter pastels or baby booties. And my favorite thing about using vanilla beans is seeing the little tiny seeds, a sign of authenticity. Not to say I don't swoon at the smell of a good vanilla extract. The combination of a thin layer of shiny blue and bean-specked cheese, against a buttery golden crust was a sight.
Enough about how it looks. How does it taste? I'm not gonna lie, it was good. Real good. So good Dan thinks it might've knocked my first, classic, reigning winner, plain Cheesecake out of the top position. So that's to say that the Vanilla Bean Cheesecake is up there. I think another key to getting a perfectly smooth textured cheesecake is taking it out about 5-10 minutes underdone. It will harden a bit in the fridge, but be just on the verge of melting if you take it out at the right time.
I only had one vanilla bean available (I've since taken care of that and ordered a whole pound, thanks to Traveler's Lunchbox), so I would've liked to see more seeds, but with a vanilla bean and extract the flavor was right on. I knew I wanted to do a vanilla cheesecake, and the top layer's always something fun you can play around with, and this time, I decided on crème de violette. So I strongly suggest you try a vanilla bean cheesecake, and think about some fun flavors you could add as the top layer, like rose essence.


Vanilla Bean Cheesecake

crust

125 g butter

200 g maria cookies

cheesecake

600 g cream cheese

75 g butter

1 vanilla bean

2-3 Tbsp vanilla extract

150 g sugar

4 eggs

crème de violette layer

250 g quark

Lots of creme de violette (2-3 Tbsp)

Powdered sugar

First preheat your oven to 170 C, then crush up the maria cookies and melt the butter and mix well together. Then press into the bottom and sides of a springform pan and put in the oven for about 10 minutes until the cookies turn a little darker.
Now make sure your cream cheese is room temperature (it's easy just to leave it out for a few hours before cooking). Take the butter and melt in a pan over low heat. While it's melting, split the vanilla bean in half, scrape out the seeds into the butter and throw in the bean and continue to cook over medium-low heat for about 10 minutes. Now stir the cream cheese around in a bowl until fluffy-ish, and pour in the butter, taking out the vanilla bean, and mix together. Add the sugar and stir well, then add vanilla extract to taste. Finally, stir in the eggs until everything is well mixed and you have a wonderful vanilla flavor and pour into the springform pan. At 180C, cook for 30-35 minutes, until the edges are set but it's still pretty wobbly in the middle.
Finally, you mix the top layer. Now I normally use crème fraiche or sour cream, but lacking that I went for quark (I'm not really sure what it is…a fresh cheese or something, consistency of yogurt) and it turned out great--I would use it again. So I mixed the quark with lots of Crème de Violette and powdered sugar until it was sweet and had an amazing baby blue color (as noted before). Then cook for 10-15 minutes (I can't even remember how long I did for, just keep an eye on it till it's bubbling and the edges are darkening). The only difference I noticed with the quark was that it came out a little firmer than the rest of the cheesecake, which is fine because the rest was silky and smooth...

Back to Business: Cheesecake

Another dinner party, another chance to make dessert, and what better dessert to test my little guinea pigs with than another cheesecake recipe. But these guinea pigs were very happy at the end of the meal, being injected with couscous, summer rolls, Catalan sausages, and of course Chocolate Coffee Cheesecake. I’d say these guinea pigs were more than happy, they would have been floating on Cloud Nine, had they not been so weighed down with delicious food, but they were nonetheless smiling.

Anyways, I can’t take credit for most of the food, but I will say the dessert was my doing. I’m happy I’ve come out of my slump (after a less-than-perfect Dulce de Leche Cheesecake, and a would’ve-been-near-perfect Goat Cheese Orange Cheesecake had it not been subjected to ovens without temperature gauges) I needed this Chocolate Coffee Cheesecake. I admit the flavor combination is not original at all, but man there’s a reason it’s still around: it’s goooood.

I started off how I normally do, looking over other recipes, browsing through numerous foodblogs, recipe sites, etc., and now I can’t even remember where, but one of these called for cinnamon in the crust. I normally don’t believe in chocolate on chocolate, and I was hoping I could do a layer of something in between a chocolate crust and a chocolate cheesecake, like caramel, or some sort of coffee cream. But when I saw the cinnamon, I immediately liked that idea. So I mixed it up from what I had originally hoped and put a bit of cocoa in the crust for some color and cinnamon, and then freshly ground cinnamon, lots of it. Then followed a layer of chocolate and coffee combined, and finally a creamy, lighter layer flavored with Amaretto.
I should say more, but when something’s so good, filling, comforting, and rich all at once, I don’t feel like I need to go on. It was happily received with open mouths. ‘Nuff said.

Chocolate Coffee Cheesecake

crust
200 g Maria cookies
125 g butter
a teaspoon or two of powdered cinnamon
about ¼ cup cocoa powder (mainly for flavor and a bit of color)
lots of freshly grated cinnamon

Like usual, crush up the cookies and mix with melted butter. Then throw in the cinnamon, cocoa, and grate some cinnamon, mixing again. Press into the bottom and up the sides of a springform pan. Then take a cinnamon stick and grate it (it’s ok if you get some large pieces) directly onto the pressed crust, so that you get a nice sprinkling over the crust. Then put in the oven at 170 C for about 10 minutes…be careful not to keep in to long, as it’s hard to tell when it starts to get brown because it’s already dark.

cheesecake
600 g cream cheese
75 g butter
100 g (at least) good dark chocolate (I used Lindt 85%)
1 Tbsp. sour cream and 1 package instant coffee (2 g or about 1 tsp.)
150 g sugar
3 eggs

Make sure your ingredients are at room temperature. Put the cream cheese in a bowl with the butter and whip with a whisk until well incorporated. Then, either over a low flame on the stove or low heat in the microwave, melt the chocolate. (Now if you want it to be super chocolately, I’d say up it to 150 or 200 grams. Mine tasted pretty strongly of coffee and lightly of chocolate). Once the chocolate’s melted, whip it into the cream cheese. In a small cup, put the sour cream with the instant coffee and stir to dissolve, it might take a minute or two, but make sure it’s not grainy and keep stirring. Once everything is dissolved, add this to the cream cheese and mix well with the whisk. Add the sugar in mix again. Taste and at this point you can put in more melted chocolate or coffee, if you think it might need more of one. Finally, whisk in the three eggs until everything is smooth and well incorporated. Pour this into the prepared crust in the springform pan and bake at 180 C until a knife comes out almost clean, a little undercooked, about 35 minutes. (You don’t want it completely done because it’s nice to be super-creamy and you’ll bake it a little longer with the topping).

topping
1 ½ - 2 c sour cream and crème fraiche combined (or one or the other, whatever’s easiest)
Amaretto to taste (I mean you can definitely taste it when you stick your finger in)
Powdered sugar (also to taste…make sure it’s sweet enough, not just sour cream)

This topping all depends on you. If you like it especially sweet, put in lots of powdered sugar. If you’re like me and like to be able to taste the liqueur, then make sure you put enough in. Taste as you go. First start with the sour cream/crème fraiche and then slowly add Amaretto and then powdered sugar until you get a nice balance between them both. I poured it onto the cake soon after taking it out of the oven, without letting it cool much, and it came out great. Spread over the top and put back in the oven for 15 minutes at 180 C. I kept thinking it wasn’t finished, but the sour cream/crème fraiche doesn’t really turn firm until it’s been cooled in the fridge for at least a few hours. So make sure not to overcook, and once it’s cooled on the counter, put it in the fridge overnight. Mmmm. Enjoy.

Berlin Kuchen: take two

For my second dessert experience in the land of abnormally-numbered ovens, I went back to my ever evolving cheesecake recipe (as I sit here writing this I’m making cheesecake: Chocolate Coffee…I’ll tell you how it goes soon enough). After some mulling over and consulting my principal taste-tester, we came up with orange and goat cheese with a rosemary crust.

Now rosemary is hard to come by in Berlin. At least in supermarkets and food stores, so the next best thing? A nursery. But I didn’t want to buy the whole plant, so I know confess I browsed some plant shops and hovered around the rosemary pots and took a sprig or two. The rest of the ingredients were easy enough.

I thought I had the ovens all figured out, and would not have any problems. And I didn’t at first. I made my crust (I had transported my springform pan from Spain. In a land with degree-less ovens, don’t expect a springform pan in your standard kitchen). I pulled the rosemary crust out of the oven and it was beautiful and I thought to myself this is gonna be good.

Then I mixed my cheesecake, looked good, tasted good, and stuck it in the oven. I know some people and recipes say do NOT open the oven during cooking, but I’m a curious, impatient type and I like to watch my stuff and see what it’s doing. Well about fifteen minutes through cooking, the top was already browning. A lot. I put tin foil on it and it was done in record time at about 25 minutes. Unfortunately what I couldn’t see was that the bottom was browning also. Too much. So I ended up with a superquick-bake cheesecake done in less than half the time of most cheesecakes, and a slightly burnt crust. It was like it separated into layers, and the part touching the pan was burned, but the part touching the cheesecake was fine. The cheesecake came out fine though, tasted of orange, not too much goat cheese flavor.

I don’t know if there wasn’t enough rosemary or the extra cooking of the crust caused it to lose its flavor, but we couldn’t really taste the rosemary. Next time will experiment with more.



Orange and Goat Cheese Cheesecake with Rosemary Crust

crust
200 g digestive cookies (graham crackers, Maria galletas, whatever you have)
150 g butter
a few sprigs of rosemary

First pull the rosemary off the branch and finely chop. Then put the butter in a saucepan and add the rosemary, melting the butter and stirring. While the butter melts, crush up your cookies finely, my favorite method in the absence of a food processor is jumping up and down on them after they have been properly tied into many bags. Mix well with the butter and rosemary and then press into the bottom and up the sides of a springform pan. Bake at 170 C for 10 minutes, or until the edges start to darken.

cheesecake
400 g cream cheese
300 g goat cheese
50 g butter
150 g sugar
juice from half an orange and zest of whole orange
3 eggs
pinch of salt

Make sure your cheeses and butter are room temperature and easily whipped. Either with a whisk or electric mixer whip the cheeses together and then mix in the butter until smooth. Now mix in the sugar, and then juice the orange and grate it directly into the batter.
I still am undecided on if it makes a difference beating the egg whites or not. Dan thinks it does, so this time, the egg whites were beaten. First add the yolk to the batter and stir them in, then beat the whites until soft peaks form and fold them in until just mixed. Lastly put a touch of salt in. Pour into the springform pan and bake at 180 about 35 minutes, maybe longer depending on your oven, until the top is beginning to brown and a knife comes out almost clean. This means it will be perfectly creamy; I think if you take it out when the knife is clean then the cake is overdone. It firms up a bit in the fridge and turns out the perfect consistency. Let cool until about room temperature and the chill, best if overnight.

The Long Awaited Second Cheesecake That Didn't Live Up to Expectations

So the week immediately after making my first cheesecake here, I was all excited (and so was Dan) and I was ready to make another. But I wanted to experiment with different flavors, and the next big one on my list was dulce de leche (I’m a huge sucker for the Cheesecake Factory’s dulce de leche cheesecake, I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing). So I looked at a few different recipes, just to get a general idea, but as I said in my first cheesecake posting, you have your base ingredients and you can pretty much play around with other flavorings.

This time I also wanted to do a top layer as I hadn’t before so I wanted to do something different that would compliment dulce de leche. I’m kind of obsessed with goat cheese. Dan kept suggesting things like hibiscus or star anise, but I thought maybe a tangy goat cheese would go well with sweet dulce de leche. So I thought.

That’s one of the reason’s this post has taken so long, I made this well over a month ago, but as it was not a complete success, I debated even posting it. The cheesecake wasn’t bad, it just tasted like plain cheesecake, but lacking in something. It was an experiment, and I think I learned what to do from it, but I’m going to post the original recipe and go ahead and give my tips for what I would do next time. I think it has potential (I know people out there make really good dulce de leche cheesecakes) but I think my quantities and flavors weren’t right. The one really great part of this was the chocolate crust: most recipes I’ve read call for crushed up Oreo cookies, or similar cookies, but I used my recipe for regular crust and added cocoa powder…turned out really well.

So you win some, you lose some. But I figured I should post my “non-victories” as they’ll be referred to, and maybe someone else can do something better with it. Please let me know! Here’s the recipe, suggestions follow.

Dulce de Leche and Goat Cheese Cheesecake

crust
150 g Mari Lu cookies
100 g butter
cocoa powder

dulce de leche
300 ml milk
200 g sugar

first layer
600 g cream cheese
75 g butter
dulce de leche
150-200 g sugar
3 eggs
salt

second layer
1 log of goat cheese (about 100-150 gr)
100 g crème fraiche
sugar

First crunch up the Mari Lu cookies or graham crackers, and mix with melted butter and then add cocoa, mixing well. Press on the bottom of a springform pan and bake at 170 Celsius for 10 minutes.
Now comes the real experimental part, one of the key ingredients (or the key ingredient) so maybe I should have paid more attention to quantities, cooking time and temperature. So I poured milk and sugar into a pot and cooked, stirring a lot over medium-low heat until it reached a light brown color, about 40 minutes. The problem was, when it cooled, it hardened, so upon reheating it to add to my cheesecake mixture I added more milk and think I lost some of the flavor. I had never made my own dulce de leche before, so I suggest following a recipe, or doing what I’m going to try next time: use a couple cans of sweetened condensed milk and boiling that for about 45 minutes, also something I’ve never done, but will sometimes soon. I also think a problem was not having enough dulce de leche, because the cream cheese will neutralize the flavor, so make sure you have lots of it, you can always find something to do with the extra…put it on ice cream, eat it with a spoon, whatever your fancy.
Next, mix the cream cheese, butter, and dulce de leche together. Next add the sugar and mix, then the eggs and mix, and finally a pinch of salt. Please taste and make sure you don’t need something else, of course, if it’s dulce de leche and you don’t have any more, there’s nothing you can do immediately, but you could add more sugar, or lemon or something and try and spice it up a bit. Otherwise it comes out not tasting like much (mine tasted like sweetened cream cheese…not dulce de leche).
Pour this batter over the crust. Now if you want two completely separate layers of dulce de leche and goat cheese, bake this at 180 for about 40 minutes. I thought I did, but I also wanted the goat cheese layer to be more substantial than just that thin, barely cooked sour cream layer a lot of cheesecakes have. So I decided to cook it along with the dulce de leche layer so it would get browned. Turns out, my dulce de leche layer was not thick enough to stand up to a second layer and instead it sunk through, but made for a nice swirling of two layers.
So, mix the goat cheese, crème fraiche, and sugar to taste and pour over the dulce de leche batter, evenly over the whole top, out to the edges, so that you get a swirl effect throughout the whole cheesecake.
Bake at 180 for 40-45 minutes until it’s browned, or if you’ve already baked the dulce de leche layer, back for another 10 minutes or so.
Now, how would I make this layer better? I need to experiment more (hopefully it will lead to good things), but I’ve been thinking about adding some lime juice, perhaps even some zest because that would bring out the tartness of the goat cheese and if you have a very good, sweet, dulce de leche, I think it might achieve the flavor combination I was looking for. But as I said, I need to try this again and see if I can make it work. I’m dying for some good dulce de leche cheesecake, so next time, I will try with the sweetened condensed milk, at least two cans, probably three. And squirt some lime and maybe a bit of salt into the top/swirled layer. If anyone has any other suggestions, please let me know, and good luck to you. At least the pictures came out alright, not to mention that chocolate crust.

One last note: this cheesecake was in no way horrible, but it wasn’t great. It could have been, but was lacking in a few ways. It was still consumed in about 24 hours between two people, but it had no personality. It needs someone to give it some personality.

Wine and Cheese and Cheese

Well I’m way behind. Apparently I’m a lot better at eating the food and making it than I am at writing about it. This means I have pictures and recipes just waiting for their chance, but I have to get around to posting them before I make another recipe. Two weeks ago I had one of my brilliant ideas: a wine and cheese party. I know, I know, it’s never been done before and I’m the first one to think of it. Regardless of who first put two and two together, I thought an even better, revolutionary change was necessary: have my guests bring the wine and the cheese. I don’t know if they agreed with this ‘innovative’ concept, but I for one loved it. One of the things I appreciate most in life is a fine assortment of cheese, and when you tell your guests to bring their favorites, that’s what you end up with, along with some nice wines. Unfortunately I don’t have pictures of the beauty of the cheese, but if I do this again (and I have a feeling I will) I’ll capture it on film.

Because my guests were kind enough to bring the cheese (and even some special wine with cowboy boots on it) I thought I’d be decent and provide some dessert. To go along with the cheese theme (I don’t think there’s such a thing as too much cheese, and if I were lactose intolerant it would be the end of my life as you and I know it), I thought cheesecake would provide an essential top-off to the night.

Ahhhhh cheesecake. I’ve gotten into a slight habit now of making cheesecake every weekend, and I didn’t make one last night, and I think I’m going to venture into tart-territory tonight and I’m a little lost without my cheesecake (Dan is also lost without his cheesecake breakfast). There’s something magical about cheesecake and the idea that I didn’t like it growing up shames me and seems surreal. At some point though, I underwent a magical transformation (I remember Sundays in high school watching Sex and the City with friends centered around a cheesecake).

Now my daydreams are devoted to what kind of cheesecake I should make next, what flavors I can combine to create a new obsession. I can’t wait to try them out. For my first cheesecake posting though, and to play the part of the finale in the wine and cheese night, I went with a classic, plain cheesecake and it was very well received, alongside a glass of Pedro Ximenez sweet sherry. I was told afterwards it would be hard to live up to that cheesecake, so now, with every new cheesecake I make, it presents a challenge and I get a little nervous. As expected, the cheesecake immediately following this one, unfortunately was not up to par. But that’s for another post though, when I’m feeling stronger.

I’ve made cheesecake before but always following recipes pretty strictly. After looking at many recipes from other blogs and cooking websites, I realized that most plain cheesecake recipes are all basically the same with slight variations in amounts and kind of cheeses, number of eggs, crust ingredients, or inclusion of a top layer, so it gives you a bit of freedom to do what you want as long as you follow the fundamental steps and use the base ingredients (cream cheese, sugar, eggs). I decided to get the ingredients I liked, and throw things into the mix using what I trust the most to test a recipe, my tongue.

My Cheesecake

crust
200 g MariLu cookies (something like that…in Spain they have round, graham-cracker like cookies that they eat at breakfast with Cola Cao or dipped in tea. There are many different brands, but they’re all pretty much the same, and I found I couldn’t tell a difference between them and graham-cracker crusts)
125 g butter

Crush up the cookies any way you can. I put them in two plastic bags, bang on them with various kitchen utensils then put them on the floor and jump up and down a few times. That usually does the trick. Melt the butter and mix it in with the cookies, then press into the bottom of a springform pan (I think mine is 8-inch, and I originally wanted to just do a bottom-only crust, but I had enough to go up the sides and it stuck very well…I’m always worried about it falling, but there was a good cookie to butter ratio). Put in an oven at 170 Celsius and bake for 10 minutes, until you can see the cookies have darkened a bit. Let it cool while you mix the cheesecake batter.

cheesecake
600 g cream cheese
150 g mascarpone
75 g butter
150 g sugar
zest from one whole lemon and juice from half
3 eggs, separated
pinch of salt

After buying the ingredients, I leave the cream cheese, mascarpone, and butter out on the counter to get nice and soft room-temperature. In a big bowl, whisk together the cream cheese, mascarpone, and butter until they’re creamy and well incorporated. If you really like mascarpone, feel free to put in some more. Add or subtract ingredients as you see (taste) necessary. Now add the sugar, whisk again, then grate the lemon zest directly into the bowl and squeeze half the lemon, and whisk again. I think this helps the creaminess, whisking after each addition instead of adding everything at once and giving one big stir. Now whisk in the egg yolks and a pinch of salt. Lastly, I beat the egg whites until they were past soft peaks, but not yet stiff peaks (I got this idea from Tartelette. I don’t know if this really made a difference in the fluffiness of the cheesecake or not, although it was extremely creamy, it might have been so anyways. I’ll have to experiment). Fold the egg whites in. Put in a 180 Celsius oven for 30-35 minutes until it’s still very wobbly but a toothpick comes out almost clean and the top is browning. Cool and then refrigerate until you can't wait any longer, best if overnight.

I admit after I took mine out I thought it was underdone and I’d have to put it back in the oven, but I didn’t and I’m glad for it. The next morning the breakfast of cheesecake was perfectly smooth and creamy, melt in your mouth goodness, having been taken out not a minute too early.