Friday, October 21, 2011

Italian Cheesecake

I don't know what "kind" of cheesecake our good old cream cheese cheesecake is considered, but I recently stumbled across a recipe for an "Italian" cheesecake

This particular recipe called for cream cheese and ricotta cheese. Honestly, I'd never tried ricotta cheese before a few weeks ago, but it's definitely different than anything I'd tried before that time.  The author claims that this particular combination makes the cheesecake "creamy and not thick". 

Since cheesecake is Chris's favorite and he once told me that the cheesecakes I make are not "fluffy" enough I decided to try it.  Clearly we both need to try more desserts as he describes cheesecakes in terms of "fluffiness" and I have little to compare things to.

First off, it struck me as strange that this cheesecake does not have a crust or bottom of any sort.  Next, it was frustrating that the recipe does not state what size pan to bake the cheese cake in.  That being said, it was hard to know when it was finished baking. 

In the end, it turned out pretty good.  It looked really nice and the suggested method of leaving it to cool in the oven for three hours worked well to keep it from cracking (I also baked it in a pan of water).  When I cut it, it was very moist- sticking to the knife and other parts of the cheesecake.   I'm not sure if it was under baked or if that's how it was supposed to be, but it tasted just fine.  It is definitely different from a plain cream cheese cheesecake, but very smooth and light.  I would like to try another Italian cheesecake just to compare and I definitely wouldn't mind sampling some dessert menus.

-Beth

Thursday, October 20, 2011

Pumpkin Bars with Cream Cheese Icing

I was in the grocery store the other day and mid sentence about something to do with tomatoes I noticed they had pie pumpkins out.  I promptly forgot what I was saying and rushed over to the pumpkins leaving Chris hanging on whatever I was oh so important about the tomatoes.  Chris wasn't nearly as excited as I was, but we ended up going home with a pumpkin.

The puree from one pumpkin supplied me with enough pumpkin for bars, a pie, and pumpkin spiced lattes.  For now, the pumpkin bars. 

I used a recipe from the Food Network's website.  I've never made a bad recipe off their site and this was no exception.  The bars came out moist, dense, and perfectly done in the allotted time.  I did add a few dashes of nutmeg and ground cloves since just cinnamon seemed a little plain.  I've never made pumpkin bars before but I've sampled plenty- these were by far the best I've tried.  I brought them to school and left them in the teacher's lounge. They were gone before lunch.

A friend of mine has a special spot in her heart for the seasonal pumpkin spice lattes at the coffee shops, so we decided to give homemade ones a try.  I used this recipe.  It tasted wonderful.  I wasn't a fan of the pumpkin "pulp" that settled to the bottom of the mug, but my friend didn't seem to mind.

Simple Chocolate cake

The weekend after I moved into my new apartment, Chris and I had my parents over for dinner as a thank you for helping with the move.  I figured if we were having dinner then dessert was a must.  I seem to be in a cake rut lately, so cake it was.  Both my parents like chocolate, so I made a chocolate cake with chocolate cream cheese icing.

 The icing has cocoa powder and shaved chocolate in it.  I also put chocolate chips as a boarder along the edge of the cake.  I'm in the process of using up all the extra decorations I have left over from my cake courses, so I had my pick of gum paste and fondant flowers.  In the end, I didn't feel like getting out any butter cream to make leaves or vines or anything else that would go with a bunch of flowers, so I stuck a daisy on it and called it good.  Not an amazingly spectacular cake (and not very good lighting for the pictures) but it tasted good and worked for a short order desert.

All About Strawberries

I made this cake for a special friend of mine's 50th birthday.  He loves strawberries so that was the theme for this cake, inside and out.  


I used a white almond cake recipe to make two 10'' cakes, torted them, and layered a strawberry puree in between the layers.  The butter cream icing is strawberry flavored as well.  I used an piping gel transfer to outline a strawberry on the cake and filled it in with more icing.  I happened to have some brown sprinkles on hand, so I used those for the strawberry seeds.  The strawberries on the side are gummy strawberries that I "glued" on with more butter cream.  

Overall, I was absolutely pleased with this cake.  The only hitch I ran into was that the strawberry flavoring was colored a very dark red.  The end result was a slightly pink tint to the frosting. I ended up using less than I would have liked because I didn't feel a bright pink cake was going to appropriate for non-feminine cake as sexist as that might sound.  I was unfortunately not able to be there to taste the cake or celebrate the birthday, but everyone told me it was excellent.  One of my co-workers swore to me it was "seriously the best cake [she's] ever tasted".

Cake Pops!

Yay cake pops!  I actually made them into pops this time and everything.  This was also the last project I did at my old studio apartment so that's exciting too!

I used left over cake tops from the cakes I've made in the last two cake courses (and everything in between there).  It ended up being a ton of cake- way more than I anticipated....  So I ended up throwing a lot of it out unfortunately.  That being said, it was a nice selection of cake flavors.  I had almond pound cake, vanilla cake, chocolate cake, and red velvet. 

I used chocolate butter cream icing for the red velvet and chocolate cake and vanilla butter cream for the other flavors.  I also had a variety of candy coating.  The picture above shows chocolate and cherry, I also had vanilla but didn't have any completed at the end of the night (and I finished the rest in transit at Chris's apartment, not my best show of time management skills). 

The first few pops I made I used ribbon to tie off.  They definitely looked nice, but it was taking way too long so I switched to colored electrical tape instead.  In the end I learned a couple of things- first, never ever start a project the afternoon before you move; second, the bigger the pop, the bigger the probability the candy won't be enough to keep it on the stick; third, the ribbon looked nice and worked well, but the tape worked just as well and was a ton quicker; finally, using a foam floral arranging ring (from the dollar store) was a really handy way to allow the pops to set up.

To be honest, the cake pops weren't my favorite, but everyone else who tried them said they were great.  My soon-to-be brother-in-law was very disappointed that he was left only one to try by his parents.