New York Cheesecake

Have been down with a sore throat for almost the entire week and that throat of mine does not seem to be recovering as it should be. My mum would reckon that the cause of my sore throat is due to my baking and eating the food straight out of the oven. Oh well I will still bake with a sore throat!

Its been almost a month since I baked sweet stuff and today I crave for something light and simply. With three packet of cream cheese sitting in my fridge. Cheesecake is just perfect!

No dramas, No fancy dressing. Just simply Cheesecake.

The best recipe I found has to be this recipe from allrecipes.

Ingredient ( I halved the recipe)

15 Pieces of Wholemeal biscuit ( I used Leibniz biscuit)

2 Tbs Butter

Filling

425g cream cheese

3/4C white sugar

1/4C and 2 Tbs Milk

2 Eggs

1/2 C Sour cream ( I used 1/2C yoghurt + 1.5 Tsp baking powder)

1.5 Tsp Vanilla extract

2 Tbs All-purpose flour  

1) Preheat oven to 175 degree C. Grease a 9 inch springfoam pan.

2) In a medium bowl, mix biscuit crumbs with melted butter. Press onto bottom of springform pan.

3) In a large bowl, mix cream cheese with sugar until smooth. Blend in milk, and then mix in the eggs one at a time, mixing just enough to incorporate. Mix in yoghurt, baking powder, vanilla and flour until smooth. Pour filling into prepared crust.

4) Bake in preheated oven for 1 hour ( Mine took only 40mins because its only half the ingredients). Turn the oven off, and let cake cool in oven with the door closed for 2-3 hours; this prevents cracking. Chill in refrigerator until serving.

( I tried it while its warm, and it tasted great too! )

Japanese Cheesecake.

This week was a rather unusual week, many highs and many lows. Perhaps its the weather perhaps its hormones. At the end of the day we still have to live each day as it is. We can neither turn back time nor fast forward. We could look back and pause and think about all the silly, foolish and happy moments in our lives. Reflect at how complicated and tiring it all seems while we were in that moment, yet when we look back at it again, everything seem so simple. Every single moment makes us all wiser and smarter. Now why am I going on about life when I am posting a food entry. Well I think baking is very much like life. All the different steps needed to bake something, some easy some complicate, at the end, we get  the reward of tasting the delights we make.

I am sure everyone has a list of things to bake and this japanese cheesecake has been on my list ever since I can remember, I know I say this for almost every other thing I bake, oh well there are too many things I would like to bake! I did not bake this cheesecake in the past because I did not have the equipment and ingredients to do so. But I finally got down to buying the stuff. Tadah! here it is.

What I like about japanese cheesecake is its light, fluffy and soft texture. Much lighter than the American cheesecakes. I must admit this cheesecake had some a missing ingredient, so I was not able to try the recipe proper. But I must say, I think the lemon in this recipe plays a big roll! Never underestimate that few drops of lemon juice! I thought there was something missing..

So after searching high and low for the perfect recipe, I concluded with This recipe as most people use the same recipe to bake japanese cheesecake. The plus point is, even though there are a number of steps to baking the cheesecake, its really not that complicated!

Chocolate cheese cake brownie.

Ah huat's mum gave me a cook book when they were in town last week. Now that I have some time on hand to bum around, I decided to open the book and check it out. I sure do miss baking and really wanted to bake something savory for a change this time. Wanted to bake something with puff pastry. But again, wanting to do something and actually getting my butt out to get the ingredients is another thing. So I decided to bake something thats on my to bake list, since...donkey years. And since I have the ingredients anyways, I decided to give it a go!

So today I baked Chocolate cheese cake brownie. The first time I came across this recipe was actually from Tastespotting. Unfortunately the recipe was in spanish or something. So I was too lazy to check out for translation and stuff and kinda forgot about it, until I was gonna have a potluck with my hall mates one fine day. ( Which did not work out, because I had to stay for a meeting till 9.30pm of all days!) That would be the perfect dessert to bake! That did not happen of course. Hence today was a perfect day to try it out.

I kinda combined two recipes into one. The first one is from an awesome One Bowl Brownie and the second is from a Chunky Cheesecake Brownie recipe. Okay does not make sense that I used two recipe when the latter is the recipe of the Brownie I am gonna bake. My only reason is that I wanted to bake with the best brownie recipe I could find. Hence the added step, only to realise that I had some missing ingredients, because sister Tan stole some of my chocolate! Hence I used cocoa powder as a substitute for the missing chocolate, which I believe is also a healthier alternative.

28g of chocolate in baking could be substituted with 3tbsp unsweeten cocoa powder and 1 tsbp of butter
or
28g of premelted baking chocolate could be substituted with 3 tbsp of unsweeten cocoa powder and 1 tbsp of vegetable oil.
I modified the recipe such that it makes 12 cupcakes.

Ingredients
Cheesecake portion
112g Cream cheese
1/4 C White Sugar
1 Egg

Brownie portion
50g Chocolate ( I used 70% dark chocolate)
3 Tbs Unsweeten Cocoa ( To substitute the remaining shortage of Chocolate)
 ( The recipe asked for 75g chocolate)
110g Butter
1/2 C White Sugar
2 Eggs
2/3 C Flour
1 Tsp Vanilla

1) Preheat oven to 175 degree C.

2) Combine cream cheese with 1/4 cup sugar and 1 egg in a mixing bowl; beat until smooth.

3) In a double boil, melt butter and chocolate, together with the cocoa powder.

4) Stir until chocolate is melted. Stir in sugar. Mix in eggs and vanilla. Stir in flour.

5) Pour half of the batter into the muffin tin. Spread the cream cheese mixture over the chocolate layer.

Top with remaining Chocolate mixture

 

Using a knife/ toothpick, swirl the top chocolate layer into the cream cheese to make a marble pattern.

6) Bake in preheated oven at 175 degree C for 25-30 minutes, or until top is crinkled and edges pull away from sides of the pan. Cool throughly. Store in the refrigerator or freeze.

Cheesecake does not like brownie.

( Please pardon the terrible lightening!)

Marshmallow Cake

As usual I am still searching for something light and not too sweet to bake. Today is Mother Tan's birthday and I decided to make Marshmallow cake. Well I wanted to make something with marshmallow but have yet to figure out what exactly I could bake/make with it. So I was doing my usual google and allrecipe sites doing research on funky stuff to bake. So I found a recipe called Marshmallow cheese cake. Well I could not really believe imagine how it will taste because there were marshmallows instead of sugar. Perfect! Something not too sweet and light and it was suppose to be inspired by japanese cheese cake. ( which is rather difficult to bake, because I am still a noob, so I think this is a good substitute.) And its NO BAKE! Wunderbar!

Initially when I first placed it in the fridge, it looked a little too fluffy and watery and I was not sure if it will set. So I decided to leave it overnight till its really firm before eating it. And the result was fantastic. Finally I made something the whole family likes! The texture is actually more pudding like, very soft. My dad says it taste like egg tarts. Its not too sweet and pretty light too. Great for breakfast and tea!

Its my mum's 48th birthday. But as you can see from the pictures below, we could not decide how many candles to place because we only had 12. So we were just randomly placing candles on the cake. I can't remember what the final number of candles were on the cake.

After settling on the number of candles and singing birthday song. Mother Tan blew the candles. In my face -_-

Yea we were too lazy to get plates and were still feeling full from dinner so we just ask from the mould.

Here is the original recipe (from all recipes):

• Serves 8
• 
  
• 1/2 (10.5 ounce) package marshmallows
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
• 1 egg yolk
• 1/2 lemon, juiced
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 1 small pack of digestive chocolate biscuits

1. In a saucepan on low heat, combine marshmallows and milk. Cook until marshmallows are melted, and mixture starts to boil. Remove from heat.
2. In a large bowl, beat cream cheese until smooth. Stir in egg yolk. Fold in 1/3 of the melted marshmallow mixture, then quickly fold in remaining marshmallow until no streaks remain. Stir in lemon juice.
3. In a large bowl, beat cream until soft peaks form. Fold the whipped cream into the cream cheese mixture until no streaks remain. Spread into biscuit crust. Refrigerate for 3 hours.

Mini Cheese Cake

My First attempt at baking cheese cake! I thought it tasted better not baked ( I placed it in the fridge till ready to eat and thought it was a little too hard for my liking, however even though the outside is hard, the inside is relatively soft.)  but I'm not sure if its possible to eat it, not baked, without having a tummy ache. 

Original Cheese cake recipe is here 

 

• • Crust
  • 1/3 cup graham cracker crumbs ( I used some chocolate wheat cookie as substitue.)
  • 1 tablespoon white sugar
  • 1 tablespoon margarine, melted
  •  
  • Filling
  • 1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
  • 1/4 cup white sugar
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons lemon juice
  • 1/2 teaspoon grated lemon zest
  • 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1 egg
•  

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C). Grease a 6 cup muffin pan.
2. In a medium bowl, mix together the graham cracker crumbs, sugar and margarine with a fork until combined. Measure a rounded tablespoon of the mixture into the bottom of each muffin cup, pressing firmly. Bake in the pre-heated oven for 5 minutes, then remove to cool. Keep the oven on.
3. Beat together the cream cheese, sugar, lemon juice, lemon zest and vanilla until fluffy. Mix in the egg.
4. Pour the cream cheese mixture into the muffin cups, filling each until 3/4 full. Bake at 325 degrees F (165 degrees C) for 25 minutes. Cool completely in pan before removing. Refrigerate until ready to serve.