Heavenly Cake - Ginger Cheesecake

ב''ה

Delicious Ginger Cheesecake!

Homemade gingerbread crumbled up.

Ginger Juice. Now that I know how to get this stuff out of the root I think I'll make some lemon-zest ginger ice cream...

Batter.

I have found that I prefer cup cakes when making cheesecake. It makes the whole thing easier for a number of reasons.

I gave these about 20 minutes in the toaster.

Heavenly Cake - No Bake Cheesecake as well as the 'retardation' of retardation.'

ב''ה

This fabulous cheesecake really is light as feather. Well done Rose, you really captured something nice here. This recipe seems rather unique what with the custard, italian merringue and whipped cream cheese. I did end up making some modifications because of our pantries limitations. First I used regular cream cheese instead of cream fraiche. Then, I only used 1/3 the amount of whipped cream cheese. At the end I decided to add an extra egg white to the merringue. I learned my lesson before when Rose includes random lemon juice ingredients. Unless you are expecting the dessert to have a lemon flavor, leave it out! There are already two other lemon cheesecakes in Rose's heavenly cakes and another was not what we were looking for.

I wondered if the butter really got incorperated nicely since it still seemed very crumbly but the crust turned out great! This, even though I mixed in the melted butter by hand to the already processed graham crackers.

Custard.

Old enough to actualy be of real help! :)

Merringue.

This time we had real Kolatin and the cakes set nicely.

And now for another little rant. Namely, with all the fancy baking books preaching on how much better bread tastes if you retard your dough what they fail to mention is that if you don't your bread (in this case pizza) will still be better than any thing you can get in a store. What is more, even if you don't let your dough rise, your homemade pizza dough can still taste better than store bought. I found this out the other night when my wife was out and, pressed for time, I made what we now call 'Silly Pizza' for dinner. I used 1 part corn meal to 3 parts AP flour a dash of salt and a dash of yeast. However, I was pressed for time and did not really let the yeast rise before throwing it in the oven. It was fabulous! Delicious! Better than anything you can by in the store.

Just a little something I made to break our fast on today.

Heavenly Cake - Cranberry Crown Cheesecake

ב''ה

This was a nice, standard cheesecake. I must admit that I left out the third cup of sour cream as I realized it was just going to be too much batter for the small pans I was using. Perhaps it would have made the cheesecake have a lighter quality to it.

I used store bought, hard, lady fingers for the sides and bottom. It really softened nicely and was a very nice and tender crust. Someone decided to poke their finger into one of them a couple times...

The cranberry mush was easy to make.

I do think I would have enjoyed this cheesecake more with another fruit topping such as strawberry or raspberry.

Nothing exceptional, just nice classic cheesecake. All in all, very pleased with this dessert. It went pretty fast!

Heavenly Cake - Coconut Cheeshecake

ב''ה

Delicious Coconut Cheesecake!

Mis en place:

Coconut and vanilla wafers with clarified butter. Before I attempted this cake I only knew about the Israeli style vanilla wafers. My wife was able to clear things up.

Cream Cheese and sugar.

Spin the cream o' coconut in the food processor. Here I made the mistake of putting the whole 15 ounce can in instead of the recommended 8 oz. Thus, I got to make some cupcakes too. :)

Mix in sour-cream and cream of coconut.

Prepared mini cheesecake pans.

Toast two at a time in the water bath.

Mmm.

Baby cakes. I ran out of the cookie crust bottom mixture so I put straight crumbled vanilla wafers. It actually gave a nice extra crunch on the bottom!

The extra cream of coconut did not seem to hurt the flavor too much. It may have had a slightly more languid flavor than it was supposed too. These were easy to make and really delicious. One of the fellows who I shared this with at work stated that it was the best cheesecake he had ever had and said: "You should have a blog!"

Heavenly Cake - Baby Lemon Cheesecakes

ב''ה



These were wonderful. I do think that the strong (but delicious!) lemon curd overpowered the lovely and subtle lemon flavor of the cheesecake.


I made a double batch of these for the upcoming Shavuot Holiday (May 19-20.) The Holiday commemorates the giving of the Law, when the 10 commandments were given at Mount Sinai as well as the oral and written tradition were handed down. Realizing that the new laws for slaughtering and preparing meat were complex, everyone just ate dairy instead until they got the hang of it (that's one of the reasons, anyway.) Cheesecake has become a ubiquitous jewish symbol, representing the holiday and the best in Jewish food.

Day 1: The Cake (got a bit burnt on top. No problem, just scrap it off. ;) Yes, you can make a sheet biscuit cake in the toaster! (in two batches)

Day two:

Mis en place:

I used the top from one of my spice bottles (cloves if your curious) to cut out the shapes.

Cream cheese and such.

Smooth and creamy.

Eggs, sour cream etc.

'Miriam's Well.' (a.k.a  -bain-marie) Miriam's Well was a miraculous rock that traveled together with everyone through the desert, providing water. It was there in the merit of Miriam's righteousness. Very appropriate for a holiday when the law was given by three, Moses, Aaron and Miriam.

Looking good. Ready for the freezer.

Day 3: The lemon curd.

They look awful purtee, even without the swirls.

I hope I'll have time for the next heavenly cake with the Holiday and all. I'll do my best. It's on the cover after all. :)

Heavenly Cake - Pumpkin Cheese Cake

ב''ה

This cheese cake was just wonderfull!

As a full sized spring-form pan will not fit in my toaster oven I had to make mini cheesecakes.

Needless to say, they did not last very long.

Blackened pecans and burnt noisette... err... I mean toasted Pecans and buerre noisette...


My first attempt at toasting these:

It is a bit more difficult to toast nuts in the toaster as they are very close to the heating element. The trick is just to use a lower temp and give it a little longer.


Here is what they looked like the second time around:

I never made buerre noisette before so the first try got a little burnt:

So I tried again:

Ahh, Much better! No burnt smell.

After a couple hours it looked like this:

Mis en Place:

My food-processor is parve so I had to make the crust in the blender. It worked fine actually, the blade just does not reach everything and creates a whirlpool effect in the middle. You have to keep taking it off and banging it to get the blade to process it all.

I had a little trouble figuring out how to push the crust up the sides. In the end I used the coffee canister. There must be a better way...

Pumpkin and sugar:

Mix mix...

Here the little guys are in their metallic undies and water bath ready for a nice toast:

Chava likes Cheesecake too.

Out of the oven:

Burnt object number 3... the caramel:

The caramel was still tolerable, delicious in fact. However, I may save the rest of it for some candy apples instead of putting the rest of it on the cheesecake. After doing two batches of toasted pecans I did not feel like making another batch for the top.

The cheesecake itself was out of this world! The buerre noisette really did add something and the texture really does change after a night in the fridge (we just had to try one of these when it first came out of the oven.)

The next cake I will make will be the carrot cake, G-d willing.