Strawberry Cheesecake

I made a cheesecake last weekend for my wedding anniversary. My husband isn't a huge sweet tooth, so it's hard to make him a sweet treat, as he doesn't really care...I suppose I used my anniversary as an excuse to make cheesecake, didn't I? Either way, we both enjoyed it, one of us more than the other.

I used a recipe that called for the ingredients I had on hand, but wow, there are a lot of cheesecake recipes out there. I have a fabulous cookbook FILLED with cheesecakes, each one barely varying from the next, but I still want to try all of them. The recipe I ended up using was from this book. I did my own base, and my own topping.

This cake baked up amazingly. NO CRACKS! And then I covered it with a mess of strawberry sauce. I think I did this last time I made a baked cheesecake too :(

Ingredients:
Base -
250-300g crushed Chocolate Cookies (Arnotts Choc Ripple / Oreo crumbs in North America, or whatever cookie you like best)
125g (1/2 cup) melted Butter

Cake -

500g Cream Cheese, softened
2/3 cup Caster Sugar
1 tsp Vanilla
1 tbsp Lemon Juice
4 Eggs

Topping -
1 punnet (250g) Strawberries
1/4 cup - 1/2 cup Sugar (optional)

Method:
1. Preheat oven to 180°C / 350°F
2. Prepare 20cm / 8" springform cake tin with baking paper, or grease. I always use baking paper, so I can get the cake out of the tin easier.
3. Melt butter & combine with crushed cookies / crumbs. I crush cookies in a large ziplock with a rolling pin. You can also use a food processor. Press mixture into your tin. Using a flat bottomed cup works really well.

4. Beat cream cheese until smooth with electric mixer. Add sugar, vanilla & lemon juice and beat until smooth.
5. Add eggs, one at a time, beating between each addition.
6. Poor mixture over base & bake for 45 minutes, or until done (just firm to the touch). Turn oven off, and open oven door slightly. Allow cake to cool completely in oven, with door ajar. Once cool, refrigerate until time to serve.

7. To make strawberry sauce, you can use your favorite method, or this method, which I just made up; I don't know if there is a proper way to do this. I cut up all the berries I want to use, add some sugar, and stir over medium heat. Once the mixture is hot, I will sometimes crush some of the berries with a potato masher to make more of a sauce. I cook until just boiling, and then allow to cool. Do not allow to burn!

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The Essential Dessert Cookbook

This is a cookbook I got a few years back for my birthday from a friend. It is a fabulous book, with lots of classic & lots of contemporary recipes, from pies to waffles, poached fruit to cheesecakes, low-fat to ice creams, it has a really nice selection of proper desserts (no cupcakes). Everything is classy, which I love. I have enough cupcake recipes.

You can get it here. It's from Murdoch Books.

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Mini "Pies"

I made a proper pie once. It was awful. But I've since learned that it was my oven's fault, not mine (my oven has given me a lot of grief). I guess I've been scared to go to all that work again in case I get let down. So, I've been making these little guys for a while, in different forms. It's not really a proper pie, but it's a quick & painless substitute when I want dessert without too much trouble.

I noticed my favorite Bakerella recently did a little something similar here. Her's look amazing!

Ingredients:
1 Granny Smith Apple
I sheet puff pastry or shortcrust pastry
1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
Raw sugar for dusting

Method:
1.Cut your pastry sheet into 4 pieces & preheat oven to 180°C / 350°F (or whatever your pastry sheet instructions say.
2. Cut up an apple into small pieces (preferably Granny Smith, I used a Gala in this photo, as I didn't have any Grannies)

 3. Mix sugar and cinnamon together, and toss apples in mixture to coat

 
4. Spoon apples onto pastry sheet pieces, and wrap up & pinch pastry together to form a small bowl.

5. Sprinkle edges of pastry with raw sugar & bake for about 20 minutes. Serve hot with ice cream.

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Dress - Butterick B5752

I've been doing a little more sewing lately, more than just make-up bags and baby bibs :) And I would like to start sharing it here, as I see myself making a lot more in the future, so hopefully it can become something I post about more regularly. It's a little scary posting photos of yourself online like this, but what the heck. This is something I enjoy doing. My favorite sewing blog is Gertie's New Blog For Better Sewing. She is who inspired me to get back into sewing for myself. She has tons of great tutorials.

This isn't my first dress. I sewed one a few years ago for a theme party, and since I've sewed another 3, which I will share here too. This is just the only one I have photos of.

I love vintage patterns & style, and try to buy it whenever possible. Most of my patterns are vintage or reprints. This is not vintage by any stretch, but most dresses are influenced from bygone eras, with nothing much being all that original these days. At least not in basic styles. I figured with the right material, and accessories (I have a gorgeous embroidered floral cardigan from the 60's to go with this) you could get a retro look with a modern pattern. This dress was made from Butterick, pattern B5752.

I lengthened the skirt by 2". I also had to add darts at the side of the bust area, as my bust is a little larger than allowed for in patterns. I first cut out my lining material and used that as a sort of muslin to work out where I needed to make adjustments. I really don't know that much about changing patterns, but I've picked up a bit from trial and error. The first dress I made to fit me, took a lot of sewing and re-sewing, but it was well worth it. I now take good measurements of myself, and of the pattern, and I usually only need to adjust the pattern once to make a good fit. It helps if you understand how your pattern will be constructed. Then you will know where the best place to make adjustments is.

My Favorite part of the dress is the small pleats in the neckline. Such a nice detail, I thought.

The back was supposed to use a hidden zipper. Well, I realized a little too late I don't have the right foot. So, not so much a hidden zipper. I think I will stick to my trusty way of doing zippers from here on out, called the Centered Zipper here. They always work nicely.

The material is 100% cotton, nothing special. It's a reprint of a vintage design. I thought it would make an excellent apron... but a dress? I did it anyways, and love it.

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Churros

Mexican food is the latest trend in Australia, with terrible little shops popping up all over... except one. Mad Mex.  I love it. The first time I had it, I fell head over heels for their churros, and resolved to be able to make my own. But I'd give these ones I made a 7/10 sadly, but I hope it was my fault & and not the recipe.  I plan to try them again after some further research. The cinnamon ratio is way off, in my opinion, and I love cinnamon. I would halve the cinnamon, or less. I also thought that maybe the oil was too hot... or something made them a little too doughy in the middle & almost burnt on the outside. I'll have to play around, but they were still edible. The reason I picked this recipe is that the author said he'd tried a lot of recipes and none measured up. I might need to research more about dough consistency & deep frying... as you'll see in a future post about doughnuts :)

Here is the recipe, and this guys photography is fantastic. Go HERE, you won't regret it.

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Strawberry Pear Dessert Smoothie

I am entering this smoothie recipe into a competition to win a new blender (cross your fingers for me). It's been a favorite drink of mine since I invented it (I'm very smart) 9 years ago.

Ingedients:
Frozen Strawberries (1-2 cups, or about a punnets worth 250g and freeze if you can wait)
Frozen Pear (cut up a pear or two and freeze them)
Ice cream, 2 scoops plus more for serving
Yogurt (optional) any flavour, I like Vaalia french vanilla flavour 150 g size.
1 Tsp Vanilla
1 Cup Milk

Method:
1. Cut up strawberries and freeze, or buy frozen strawberries. Cut up a pear and freeze, if you have the time, otherwise a fresh pear will do just fine.
2. In a blender, add strawberries, pear, milk and vanilla, and blend until smooth. Add ice cream and blend again.
3. Serve with another scoop of ice cream, and top with fresh strawberries. Enjoy! Makes about 1 litre.

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Lemon Layer Cake

I went to the most beautiful baby shower ever.  It was magazine worthy. I took a million photos, and here are some of my favorites:

I was asked to make a cake for the shower, and I was kind of nervous, as I knew there would be a lot of people there I'd never met before. That's a lot of pressure to make something nice, and I don't make many special cakes. I've made a few, but nothing spectacular, but I love to bake so I figured I could pull off something without too much skill. I'm not much of a decorator, but I have a nice selection of piping tips and bags, and I saw this idea of easy icing roses ages ago, and I wanted to try it. Perfect occasion. I'd also been seeing all those beautifully coloured layered cakes, so decided to try that too.

I got the recipe from here, using the lemon filling & icing as well.

I wanted to dye the layers nice shades of pink & purple. I added too much dye. I use the gel dyes, and used what I thought looked good in the batter. I actually used 3 different shades, but as you can see, it looks like 2. They seem to end up darker after baking. I wanted a really pale layer, then a bit brighter, and then a purple layer. Oh well. Lesson learned. Use LESS dye, a small enough amount that you think it's not enough.

I'd only done a filling once before this, and it didn't work very well. This time, I was lucky it worked. Here is the number one tip to adding a filling to a cake - DO AN ICING BARRIER! Pipe a healthy ring of icing along the outside of each layer that will be filled. This creates a wall that the filling will not squish out of. My cake was sliding around all over the place. I didn't do this barrier, so I propped it up in the fridge against large bowls, and stuck toothpicks all over the place. Not the simplest solution. Another lesson learned.

My next tip is to spread a thin layer of icing all over the cake once the filling is set, or once you are confident you won't push the cake over. A nice thin layer will smooth the cake out, and make a clean surface to decorate on. How many times have you gone to ice a cake and crumbs end up being pulled off the cake, and mixed in with the icing. Not pretty. Let this thin layer set in the fridge (or wherever you want)

To create the roses, you pipe circles, but backwards. So, you begin in the middle, and pipe to the outside. I tried almost ALL of my tips, but the nicest looking one was a 5 or 6 pointed open star tip, and a small one at that. Those large M1 tips are too big, in my opinion. Maybe on a large cake they would work. It's also A TON of icing using the M1 size. I don't know what my size was, but it wasn't tiny either. A medium size tip. Sorry I can't be more helpful, but a lot of tips don't have their size written on them.

This cake was delicious! It was so full of lemon flavour (as the buttercream icing was also lemon!), it was intense, but so amazing. Everyone seemed to enjoy it too, and that's what mattered to me!

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