Creativity with Cheescake

Once again, a bit late in posting April's challenge. This thing they call "work" seems to be taking over my spare time these days..

The April 2009 challenge was hosted by Jenny from Jenny Bakes. She chose Abbey's Infamous Cheesecake as the challenge.

This was my first cheescake actually and it turned out great. The key with this challenge was to be creative, which is not really my thing (I wish it was..). The recipe was a basic cheescake, but instead of regular graham crackers, I used cinnamon grahams from Trader Joes that seemed to give the crust a richer flavor.

I also added a layer of rasberry preserves between the crust and the cheesecake filling, so that when you take a bite you get a nice little suprise.

For the topping, I made a dark chocolate ganache.

I brought this to our family's Easter celebration it went over well.

My Aunt Karen took home the leftovers and I got a voicemail from her later in the week, saying "it was the best week of my life, because I had that cheesecake to look forward to everyday." HaHa...

Happy Spring!

For the Love of Chocolate

I am a bit late in posting my February challenge, since we got a new computer (YES!) and I needed to transfer the photos.

The February 2009 challenge is hosted by We

ndy of WMPE's blog and Dharm of Dad ~ Baker & Chef.  The have chosen a Chocolate Valentino cake by Chef Wan; and a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Dharm and one from Wendy as the challenge.

I have to say that my pictures do not do this cake any justice.  

It was delicious - but looks kinda ugly (that is...if chocolate can be ugly..).  Also - even though there were only 3 ingredients in this cake - they key is the type of chocolate you use.  Whatever type of chocolate you use, that is what the cake will taste like.  I got a pound (yes.. a pound) of dark chocolate at Trader Joes and also added a few bars of milk chocolate for a bit more sweetness.

My taste testers (husband and parents) seem to love it - so I think it came out pretty good.  I actually didn't get to make the ice cream because I waited until the last minute before my parents were coming over (of course I did!).  Instead, I made home made sweet whipped cream.

Stay tuned for March!!

January Challenge - Tuiles!!

This month's challenge was brought to us by Karen of Bake My Day and Zorra of 1x umruehren bitte aka Kochtopf. They chose Tuiles from The Chocolate Book by Angélique Schmeink and Nougatine and Chocolate Tuiles from Michel Roux.

Tuiles are very delicate French cookies (I like to say it out-loud a lot, makes me feel like I am in France..). It's a pretty cool story actually - they are named for the french style tiled roofs - the cookies were to resemble the tiles after they were molded.

Overall, this challenge was fun because I had to figure out on my own how to "mold" the cookies and choose what to fill them with. My problem was what I chose... I decided to do a vanilla mousse (a variation from December's challenge) and of course didn't realize how much time that would take me. The cookies and the mousse turned out fabulous even after a snowy car ride to Hull (nothing broke!)

The dough is actually pretty easy to make, it is the sculpting and molding that is the difficult part.

I cut out stencils from cardboard we had lying around the house. I made large circles and butterflies.

The key was to grab the cookies right when they come out of the oven and mold them. For the butterflies, I just bent them a bit for the wings to go up and also added a bit of the dough with cocoa powder in it. To transform the circles into small dishes, I molded them around water glasses and pinched the sides together.