Cheesecake

The April 2009 challenge is hosted by Jenny from Jenny Bakes. She has chosen Abbey's Infamous Cheesecake as the challenge.

This is my first Daring Baker Challenge. I am very excited about it. Luckily it is something Hubbs is actually willing to eat, or at least try. I happen to LOVE cheesecake as well.

I had lots of fun with this one, and one TERRIBLE accident.

I started by making the crust.

Then I began to make the actual Cheesecake.

I then filled the pan
It was at this point that things went a little wonky! I am not exactly sure how it happened, but one moment I was taking the above picture and the next I was fishing the camera out of the camera out of the pan. I really have no idea how it happened. But it kinda threw my groove off. Luckily the camera stilled worked after I cleaned it up a bit. (by worked I mean it turned on and took pictures. It took about 2-3 days for the lens to open and close properly and I had to clean the lens every time I wanted to use the camera, and by cleaning a bit I mean I took a break from Cheesecake for about 20 min trying to figure out how to get the white creamy goopy goodness out of every crack and crevice on the camera)

Because of the camera mishaps I stopped all photo taking until the cake was done, SO sorry I do not have pictures of the next little bit.

I decided not to do a water bath because I knew water would leak into my springform pan. So I decided to try a couple of different things. I found many places online that talked about using a steam bath instead of a water bath with cheesecake. SO I went with that option, but I also added my own idea. I have some baking strips from my cake decorating days. I know they are meant to help cakes to come out even and prevent cracking. The water bath is to help cheesecake from cracking. I gave it a try. It worked.

I thought the camera had a hard enough day, so i gave it a rest and took pictures the next day. Here they are.
We really liked it.

The Recipe in case you want it!
Abbey's Infamous Cheesecake:
crust:
2 cups / 180 g graham cracker crumbs
1 stick / 4 oz butter, melted
2 tbsp. / 24 g sugar
1 tsp. vanilla extract
cheesecake:
3 sticks of cream cheese, 8 oz each (total of 24 oz) room temperature
1 cup / 210 g sugar
3 large eggs
1 cup / 8 oz heavy cream
1 tbsp. lemon juice
1 tbsp. vanilla extract (or the innards of a vanilla bean)
1 tbsp liqueur, optional, but choose what will work well with your cheesecake
DIRECTIONS:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (Gas Mark 4 = 180C = Moderate heat). Begin to boil a large pot of water for the water bath.
2. Mix together the crust ingredients and press into your preferred pan. You can press the crust just into the bottom, or up the sides of the pan too - baker's choice. Set crust aside.
3. Combine cream cheese and sugar in the bowl of a stand-mixer (or in a large bowl if using a hand-mixer) and cream together until smooth. Add eggs, one at a time, fully incorporating each before adding the next. Make sure to scrape down the bowl in between each egg. Add heavy cream, vanilla, lemon juice, and alcohol and blend until smooth and creamy.
4. Pour batter into prepared crust and tap the pan on the counter a few times to bring all air bubbles to the surface. Place pan into a larger pan and pour boiling water into the larger pan until halfway up the side of the cheesecake pan. If cheesecake pan is not airtight, cover bottom securely with foil before adding water.
5. Bake 45 to 55 minutes, until it is almost done - this can be hard to judge, but you're looking for the cake to hold together, but still have a lot of jiggle to it in the center. You don't want it to be completely firm at this stage. Close the oven door, turn the heat off, and let rest in the cooling oven for one hour. This lets the cake finish cooking and cool down gently enough so that it won't crack on the top. After one hour, remove cheesecake from oven and lift carefully out of water bath. Let it finish cooling on the counter, and then cover and put in the fridge to chill. Once fully chilled, it is ready to serve.
Pan note: The creator of this recipe used to use a springform pan, but no matter how well she wrapped the thing in tin foil, water would always seep in and make the crust soggy. Now she uses one of those 1-use foil "casserole" shaped pans from the grocery store. They're 8 or 9 inches wide and really deep, and best of all, water-tight. When it comes time to serve, just cut the foil away.
Prep notes: While the actual making of this cheesecake is a minimal time commitment, it does need to bake for almost an hour, cool in the oven for an hour, and chill overnight before it is served. Please plan accordingly!
Some variations from the recipe creator:
** Lavender-scented cheesecake w/ blueberries - heat the cup of heavy cream in the microwave or a saucepan until hot but not boiling. Add 2 tbsp of lavender flowers and stir. Let lavender steep in the cream for about 10-15 minutes, then strain the flowers out. Add strained cream to cheesecake batter as normal. Top with fresh blueberries, or make a quick stovetop blueberry sauce (splash of orange juice, blueberries, a little bit of sugar, and a dash of cinnamon - cook until berries burst, then cool)
** Cafe au lait cheesecake with caramel - take 1/4 cup of the heavy cream and heat it in the microwave for a short amount of time until very hot. Add 1-2 tbsp. instant espresso or instant coffee; stir to dissolve. Add this to the remainder of cream and use as normal. Top cheesecake with homemade caramel sauce (I usually find one on the food network website - just make sure it has heavy cream in it. You can use store-bought in a pinch, but the flavor is just not the same since its usually just sugar and corn syrup with no dairy).
** Tropical – add about a half cup of chopped macadamias to the crust, then top the cake with a mango-raspberry-mandarin orange puree.
** Mexican Turtle - add a bar of melted dark chocolate (between 3 and 5 oz., to taste) to the batter, along with a teaspoon of cinnamon and a dash of cayenne pepper (about 1/8 tsp.). Top it with pecan halves and a homemade caramel sauce.
** Honey-cinnamon with port-pomegranate poached pears – replace 1/2 cup of the sugar with 1/2 cup of honey, add about a teaspoon or more (to taste) of cinnamon. Take 2 pears (any variety you like or whatever is in season), peeled and cored, and poach them in a boiling poaching liquid of port wine, pomegranate juice/seeds, a couple of "coins" of fresh ginger, a cinnamon stick, and about a 1/4 cup of sugar. Poach them until tender, then let cool. Strain the poaching liquid and simmer until reduced to a syrupy-glaze consistency, then cool. Thinly slice the cooled pears and fan them out atop the cooled cheesecake. Pour the cooled poaching syrup over the pears, then sprinkle the top with chopped walnuts and fresh pomegranate seeds.
Some variations from Jenny (from JennyBakes):
**Key lime - add zest from one lime to sugar before mixing with cream cheese. Substitute lemon juice, alcohol, and vanilla with key lime juice.
**Cheesecakelets - put in muffin tins, ramekins, or custard cups. Try baking 20-35 minutes, or until still a little jiggly, and cool as before.

Picky Eater Chronicles: Mission Rainbow

Kiah is a Picky Eater. I HATE the fact that she is a picky eater. It drives me nuts. I love being adventurous in eating and living with a picky eaters truly thwarts my adventure. And I add a plural to the end of Picky Eaters because Chris is Picky too. I would have to say food issues were the biggest challenge at the beginning of our marriage. I hated it when I would take the time to prepare a meal and Chris wouldn't touch it. But I have learned what and how to make what he does eat more fun for me. And I do have to say Chris is good at picking around stuff. I mean, he has been picking around for over 30 years so he has developed a skill. I just try not to look at his plate because it makes me sad to see all the good stuff in a rejection pile at the edge of his plate.

Anyway, I now, and so does Chris, blame his genetic make-up of food pickiness, as the reason for Kiah being picky. I have tried so many things to try and "break" her of the habit. I just find her will is stronger than mine. I should have realized it when she was a baby and refused to nurse at first. I guess the cards were laid at the beginning. Overall she has liked, at some point, many different foods. Currently, she eats primarily noodles with Parmesan cheese and peanut butter sandwiches.

The main thing I try and do is ALWAYS offer lots of foods AND try and be creative. So the following is my latest failed attempt at diet diversity.

As we were driving to the store I began to lay the foundation for dinner. We were going to have a Rainbow Dinner. I explained we needed to find foods of every color to eat. Food, Glorious Food! of every color!

Red: strawberries and watermelon
Orange: carrots and cantaloupe
Yellow: bananas and corn
Green: grapes and broccoli
Blue: blueberries
Purple: grape juice
I also added Black Olives for another color.

Kiah makes me laugh because the girl is practically a vegetarian, a raw vegetarian.

I then plans to make a Rainbow Cake. The deal was IF you eat at least one bite of every color (black was not required) then you get to have the rainbow at the end of dinner. It turned out really cute, but it was still a hard sell. Even though she picked out the food, and she helped prepare it ALL she really only ate the watermelon. Then she got whiny, then she began to argue, then she went on time-out for not doing as she was asked and being disrespectful. Then an hour after Chris and I finished our rainbow she began to nibble a few things. So I guess I can't call it a complete failure!

Here is my plate

The cake

The directions on how to make the cake a re pretty easy. I first saw the cake as cupcakes on my friends blog (She made it for St Patrick's day.) So I did a Google search for it. I found this woman's directions. I have made cake with diet soda before and I have found it to be a bit more delicate of a cake, meaning it loses some of its durability and become fragile. She is smart and makes the layer WHOLE cakes, so it keeps some of it integrity. I was trying to make a layer cake and cut it. (I did it during a cake decorating class. I was TRYING to cut some calories. I decided to make awful flavor combos instead.) ANYWAY. I thought a bundt cake would make a cute rainbow cake. SO I took her idea and modified it as follows.

The recipe I used is a modification of my Aunt's AMAZING chocolate bundt cake recipe.

1 - package white cake mix
1 - 5.25 oz box of instant vanilla pudding
1C - sour cream (I had to use part sour cream part plain yogurt this time)
1/2C - oil
1/2C - warm water
4 - eggs (I used whole eggs, the yolk didn't yellow the batter too much)

for the colors I used gel food coloring

I mixed it all together.

Then I divided the batter into six parts
I added the food coloring

Kiah helped mix

I then began to layer the batter into the well grease pan. Since I wanted Red on the "top" I put it in first. The batter is thick so I had to work it around a bit.
I then layered in orange and worked it around, then yellow and worked it around, then green.Blue came next and purple last!
I then baked it at 350* for a little over and hour. The outside got a little dark(I think the temp is off on my oven, I NEED to get a thermometer,) but it wasn't burnt. A burnt bunt would be no good! The colors seemed to come out really nice.
I then frosted the top of the cake for a "cloud" effect. I was planning for whipped topping, but I ended-up using that for something else a couple of nights earlier. So regular ol' white frosting and some marshmallows to add to the cloud effect and to help stabilize. A few sprinkles and *poof* a rainbow!

Here is a picture of Kiah begging to skip a few colors to get to her Rainbow!

The Perfect Hard Boiled Egg!

With the Easter Season here I thought this would be a good post.

1. Buy your eggs a week in advance. Eggs that are a bit older are a LOT easier to peel. (fresh eggs lay flat in water, bad eggs float. Good peeling eggs don't lay perfectly flat, they tip up just a tad)
   
2. To center you yolk lay the carton on its side the day before you boil them.
3. Bring eggs to room temperature
   
4. Place eggs in a sauce pan in a single layer
5. Fill pot with cold tap water to a level about 1 in. above eggs
6. Bring water to a boil
7. Remove pot from heat and cover
8. Allow eggs to sit in hot water, covered for 15 min (that gives you the lighter yellow, more dry yolk. To get the darker yellow more moist yolk they only need to sit for about 10 min)
9. Immediately place the eggs into ice water. (this prevents that greenish ring from appearing on the outside of the yolk) I usually just pour out the hot water and run the cold water over them and throw in some ice cubes.
10. Allow eggs to sit in the ice water until cool, then transfer to the refrigerator for at least 30 min.

To peel the eggs, the best place to crack them should be on the flatter end because the air pocket should be there. Running the egg under cold water while peeling can help as well.

Enjoy!