Cheesecake galore!

This was a cheesecake weekend galore! I baked an oreo cheesecake and a Japanese cheesecake.

Oreo cheesecake: Basically the same recipe as per the marble cheesecake, but I took out the dark chocolate and replaced this with 150g of crushed oreo cookies. I basically just broke the cookies up, didnt hammer or smash it, just crumbled it. It turned out really nice, and I liked the thin brown layer that formed at the top. This time however, I actually had a tin of water which I placed on the bottom layer of the oven... this was one of the tips given by Kraft cheese. Not sure what the difference was....

Oh yes and I finally found a blender that could really process the digestive biscuits (australian recipes usually ask for 'Marie' or 'Nice' biscuits, but I used McVites Digestive biscuits instead, which is preferred by the British recipes... it is a bit nicer) - so it was this very fine powder and mixed with the melted butter actually gave a very buttery almost sticky mixture. I panicked! And then decided to follow a tip I read somewhere of baking it... so I did... the base wasn't super crunchy, but it seemed to turn out okay. And actually processing it finely does give the base a more professional appearance.


Next was the Japanese cheesecake: Not sure if many people have tasted it, but you can easily buy it in Singapore. It uses cream cheese as well, but less of it, and more eggs, which you have to separate and whisk the eggs and combine the yolks separately. It is very light, almost like a sponge cake, but with more taste. Anyhow, i wanted to make it green tea flavoured, but i think the cheese flavour was too overpowering. Also, I used a spatula to fold the mixture, as a result, taste was still good, but the mixture could have been smoother. Will use a cake mixer the next time!

Scones.... yumm! :)

Okay, dont ask me why, but I have not had much success in the past in making scones! Yes, I know, scones are meant to be like the easiest thing to bake right? Apparently I have managed to prove this theory wrong!!!

So it was with great delight when these scones baked perfectly! It was fragrant, soft and fluffy! I always suspected it was my kneading that caused my scones to look like piklets with the weight of a rock bun! Dense! So I'm not sure what I did right this time... but it worked! Perhaps it was the use of the knife to initially mix the ingredients up?

(This recipe was taken from the June 06 issue of Food Ideas)

So here's how it turned out... scones dont seem to be all that photogenic!

A quiet kitchen...

Yes, believe it or not, this weekend my kitchen is completely silent ... unfortunately studies and stuff have to take priority. Yes, no contribution by me... :( It is with great sadness that I write this... it also means no pictures to post!!! :(

However, I bought 2 what looks like awesome cookbooks yesterday from Myer City (their collection has thankfully been updated! Had lunch hour not finished, I would have spent a lot more time and $$$ there!) on both chinese and japanese food. I have decided I really should spend more time cooking savoury food! They have some amazing food in there (and as my friend Cheryl and I would say, food that would make us cry...:P) - I can't wait to get started! It's actually really hard to buy decent asian cuisine cookbooks here, so I was extremely delighted to get these 2 buys. Agedashi tofu, sukiyaki, yakitori.... yuummm...

Next weekend is my turn to make refreshments for church, so yes there will definitely be a posting with pictures next weekend!!!

Stay tuned!

Brownies & Marble Cheesecake...!

Ahhhhhh.... these brownies were really good... I know, it sounds terribly arrogant to say this, but really, I think it has been the most successful batch I've made so far! I used Nigella Lawson's brownie recipe again, but this time took out the white chocolate and made it a plain but extremely rich chocolate brownie. It was incredibly smooth and moist and extremely tasty! The trick I believe must be in using the machine to beat the ingredients together, far more effective than using the spatula!

And then I baked a marble cheesecake! This time, I decided to make some patterns at the top, so combining with a tiny bit of leftover thickened cream, I melted the dark chocolate and simply poured this on top of the cheesecake mixture, and using a cake tester needle, simply swirled it to make patterns :) I am absolutely thrilled at the effect, next time may try using blueberries or raspberries!!!

Don't be alarmed if you see the cheesecake rising quite high during baking, and deflate after it is cooked, must be the effect of the eggs!

All in all, a very very enjoyable weekend!

Fiesta!

Wow! What an incredible weekend!

It was one full day of cooking and baking! Thoroughly enjoyable! I didn't end up baking the bread in the end, but instead cooked a 3 course meal for my family and refreshments for Mother's Day! The dinner was all taken out of Jamie Oliver's "Jamie's Dinners" book - except for the spaghetti which was out of the May 2006 issue of Delicious (also a jamie oliver pasta recipe tho! - with some modificatons!)

French Onion Soup with Cheese bread

Spaghetti with sundried tomato pesto, prawns and fish and baby spinach!

Basil roast chicken! :)

I bought the pana di casa type of roll from Bakers Delight and sliced this up, and placed it on the soup with drizzles of morzella cheese and baked it in the oven till it was slightly brown and crunchy! At first, you will think this bread is rock hard! But it actually goes really well, it's a very 'strong' type of bread, thick and quite dense... perfect for soups :)

The french onion soup was not bad, but it had a bit of a bitter after taste, I'm not sure why... I'm wondering whether it is from the thyme stems? But it was still quite nice in the end! I did forget to brown the onions a bit further tho.. argg!!!

I modified the seafood pasta a bit, never used sundried tomato pesto before, Jamie asked for sundried tomato puree... not sure if this is the same but that's all I could find at Coles... not bad... we modified it by adding in a can of crushed tomatos, a bit of salt and sugar and took out the lemon juice as suggested by the recipe. The fish was soo nice, and fresh prawns are unbeatable!

The chicken... this must be the easiest chicken dish ever! You'll have to try it, there isn't really a name for it, so I've called it Oven Basil Chicken :P Yummmy!

Country Rd, Jamie Oliver & Federal Budget...

Yesterday, I had lunch at the Country Rd cafe in the city with my manager and colleague. I wish I brought my camera to take a photo - actually I did have that thought, but decided against it at the fact that I would look like a total weirdo! So you'll have to bear with my very brief descriptions!

I ordered a chicken foccacia (sp?) - and whilst it sounds very normal, it was actually very lovely! The chicken was soft, it was shredded, and had some sorta nice mayo, with fresh tomatos, alfa alfa sprouts and spinach, all toasted with a small side of salad with this really yummy creamy dressing. Unfortunately though, the foccacia was quite thin and hence I think it was a little too crunchy. I would have preferred it to be a little thicker to feel the texture of the bread. My colleague ordered the same and had the fresh fruit drink, which was a mixture of passionfruit, pear and some other fruit which I forget. It looked amazing. It's really quite a nice cafe, and prices were reasonable too. Open Mon to Saturday for breakfast and lunch. I also noticed that there was 30% off the dinnerware... hmmm... might take a stroll down during one lunch time.... :)

Jamie Oliver! My favourite british chef! He makes cooking an experience in itself and does cooks and bakes with such enthusiasm, it's totally contagious! I'm one of his fans, and decided that I would like to collect all his books, and hence I do own majority of it :)

This weekend shall be the "Jamie Oliver Weekend" if all goes to plan. I saw this recipe for a Banana and Honey bread which upon calculation takes about 2hours to bake, since you have to let it rest and sit in lots of 30mins. So I think I might kick off the weekend by waking up early on Sat and baking this!

As you have probably noticed, I have been baking lots of sweets these few weeks, so this week I'm going to cook main food. I haven't exactly decided what to cook yet - but perhaps this chicken dish that I've done a few times, which is a total no-brainer, so hence definitely eatible! Or perhaps this other interesting looking chicken dish, and perhaps might try out one of his pastas.... YUMMMY!!! Will let you know how it turns out.

Federal budget came out yesterday - I shall be gettng $10 extra each week - yay, more to put to my cooking adventures! :P I'm still in the process of reading this article about the budget... ahhh... some professional behaviour at last.... :)

Cookies or Rock Cakes?!!!

I decided on Friday night before dinner at Terence's place (where Eulynn cooked a really yummy yummy dinner! It's such a lovely treat and blessing to have someone cook for you - and not feeding you leftovers but proper food, proper pumpkin soup and strawberry yoghurt panna cotta - I think she's going to post it up at her blog - check out her link "Yummilicious Moments" under my Links) to bake! I found this fantastic recipe for this fudge cookies with hershey kisses! However, we realised though that I had already baked choc chip cookies a few days ago (refer to "Cookie time" Post) - so thought I should save it for another occassion!



However, at Coles... by the way a totally dangerous place to go if you're hungry - I saw Betty Crocker's "White Choc Chunk Cookies" and thought perhaps they would be like the Subway Cookies... so I bought it to try!

Anyway, they were really quick to make (just add an egg and some butter), but ewwwwwww the turn out wasnt that good! First thing it didnt spread out like how the picture on the box seemed to indicate, so they appeared more like ROCK CAKES/BUNS than cookies! It never spread... it remained the same height and size... hmmm... I didnt bother to take a pic of it, it was too depressing :P Taste wise was okay, but way way too sweet unfortunately :(

All in all - a bit of a wasted effort!

Stay turned for my lunch restaurant review on Tuesday........ :)

Cookie Time!!!

So, I did decide to bake... I baked tonight after work... hahaha! So here it is... but I didnt try the new recipe, I chickened out... I preferred to make these other Choc Chip Cookies because they seem a lot simpler than the other one I found yesterday - plus I know they taste yummy!

This is what it looked like after creaming the butter and the brown sugar, the vanilla essence and the egg - added quite a lot of dark cooking chocolate!

And these are the end products! The texture was nice, light and crunchy!!! This recipe was kindly passed on to me by my friend, SiewBee (thanks heaps!)!

I'm going to bring it to work tomorrow for my colleagues... it's month end time, we need chocolate to boost up our spirits!!! hehehe!

By the way, this is Cruise.... my beautiful Golden Retriever - he was distracted by his dinner held above his head.... hahaha!