I will always remember my first bite of cheesecake.  I was having  a difficult day and my American Mom/friend (what a wonderful woman) told me that it was time she introduced me to cheesecake.  I translated the word in my head, cheese= queijo, cake= bolo, “bolo de queijo”. Huh?!? No thanks! But she insisted and I tried it.  Yes it was a love at first bite! So good…

Cheesecake is also a lot of fun to make. It can be a little tricky to keep the top from cracking, but even if the top cracks it is still cheesecake and it is still delicious!  I will also share some tricks about keeping your top nice and smooth at the end of this post!

Bunches of Chocolate Cheesecake:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F if using a silver spring form pan, or 325 degrees F if using a dark nonstick spring form pan.

For the crust:
1  cup crushed oreo cookies
1/2 c crushed grahm crackers
1 T sugar
2 T melted butter

Lightly grease the bottom and sides of a spring form pan (9 inch). Mix the oreos, graham crackers and sugar together. Add butter and mix with your fingers. Press into the bottom of the pan and set it aside. You could use any type of crackers to make this crust. I like using oreos and graham crackers together. It feels like the graham crackers make the crust a little lighter then just using oreos alone.

For the Chocolate Cheesecake:
16 ounces of cream cheese (softened at room temperature)
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon chocolate essence (extract)
2 tablespoons flour
1 tablespoon cocoa
3 eggs
1 1/2 cup sour cream
8 ounces melted dove dark chocolate, cooled slightly

Using an electric mixer, combine cream cheese, sugar, vanilla and chocolate extracts and beat until creamy. Add the flour, cocoa and mix until smooth.

Add the melted chocolate and sour cream, mix well.

Then add the eggs, 1 at a time, mixing on low speed after each addition until just blended. Pour the batter into prepared pan and bake for about 1 hour. Or until the center is almost set. It will be a little wobbly when you touch.

Cool the cake on a wire rack. Top it with Chocolate Ganache:
4 ounces of melted chocolate (dove dark chocolate)
1/2 cup of heavy cream
Mix it well and spread it over the cheesecake.

Refrigerate. Top with chocolate shavings and fresh raspberry. Enjoy!

To prevent crack tops:
The top of the cheesecake can crack because of the temperature is too hot. You could cook your cheesecake in a water bath and bring it to cool very slowly to prevent the top to crack. Also running a knife around the rim of the pan when the cake is cooked and cooling will allow cake to pull it from the sides and prevents cracking.  You could also use a thermometer and make sure your cheesecake does not go over 150 degrees F.

Yes that is right, besides Nutella Day and Ice Cream Day, Cheesecake Day is one of my favorites!!!

If you are lucky to have a Cheesecake Factory close by, today is the day to go visit it.  They are offering 1/2 of on any slice of cheesecake! Which is an amazing deal!

Now if you are not brave to go to the cheesecake factory today, don’t you worry I am going to share with you my favorite No-Bake Cheesecake recipe. This is delicious and impressive for a No-Bake recipe.  If you want to make the “real” thing, just stay tuned. I will be making a chocolate cheesecake  for this Sunday’s dinner and will post the steps and recipe next week.

Here is the amazing No-Bake Cheesecake

1 (9 inch) Graham Cracker Crust

1 (8-oz) pkg. Cream Cheese, softened

1 (14-oz) can Sweetened Condensed Milk

1/3 cup Lemon Juice

1 tsp. Vanilla

1 (21-oz) can Cherry Pie Filling

Beat cream cheese until fluffy. Gradually beat in the sweetened condensed milk until nice and smooth.  Stir in lemon juice and vanilla.  Pour into prepared crust. Chill 3 hours, or until set up.  Top with pie filling before serving!

YUM

The July 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Sunita of Sunita’s world – life and food. Sunita challenged everyone to make an ice-cream filled Swiss roll that’s then used to make a bombe with hot fudge. Her recipe is based on an ice cream cake recipe from Taste of Home.

This was a fun challenge. It was perfect for the hot summer we are having!  I thought it was light and easy to use your creativity. You could make a white cake, chocolate cake. You can choose so many different ice cream flavors and the fudge just brings it all together.   I decided to make my bombe with a chocolate cake, filled with a Peach whipped cream. Inside the bombe I choose to have vanilla ice cream, chocolate fudge and peaches.

First you will need to make The cake:

6 medium sized eggs

1 C sugar + extra for rolling

6 tblsp   flour + 5 tblsp unsweetened cocoa powder, sifted together

2  boiling water

a little oil for brushing the pans

Pre heat the oven at 400 F . Brush the baking pans ( 11 inches by 9 inches ) with a little oil and line with parchment paper.

In a large mixing bowl, add the eggs and sugar and beat till very thick; when the beaters are lifted, it should leave a trail on the surface for at least 10 seconds.

Add the flour mixture, in three batches and fold in gently with a spatula. Fold in the water.

Divide the mixture among the two baking pans and spread it out evenly, into the corners of the pans.

Place a pan in the center of the pre-heated oven and bake for about 10-12 minutes or till the center is springy to the touch

Spread a kitchen towel on the counter and sprinkle a little sugar over it.

Turn the cake on to the towel and peel away the baking paper. Trim any crisp edges.

Starting from one of the shorter sides, start to make a roll with the towel going inside. Cool the wrapped roll on a rack, seam side down.

Repeat the same for the next cake.

The cake filling–

2 C whipping cream

1 vanilla pod, cut into small pieces of about ½ cm (or 1 tsp vanilla extract)

5 tblsp caster sugar

1/2 c of peaches (I took the skin out and diced them into small pieces)

Grind together the vanilla pieces and sugar in a food processor till nicely mixed together. If you are using vanilla extract, just grind the sugar on its own and then add the sugar and extract to the cream. Beat cream and vanilla sugar until very thick. Fold in cut peaches.

Open the cake rolls and spread the cream mixture, making sure it does not go right to the edges (a border of ½ an inch should be fine). Roll the cakes up again, this time without the towel. Wrap in plastic wrap and chill in the fridge till needed, seam side down.

The vanilla ice cream-

2 and ½ C whipping cream

1 vanilla bean, minced or 1 tsp vanilla extract

½ C of granulated sugar

Grind together the sugar and vanilla in a food processor. In a mixing bowl, add the cream and vanilla –sugar mixture and whisk lightly till everything is mixed together. If you are using the vanilla extract, grind the sugar on its own and then and the sugar along with the vanilla extract to the cream.

Pour into a freezer friendly container and freeze till firm around the edges. Remove from the freezer, beat till smooth and return to the freezer. Do this 3-4 times and then set completely.

The Hot fudge sauce-

 1 C sugar

3 tblsp cocoa powder

2 tblsp cornstarch

1 and ½ C water

1 tblsp butter

1 tsp vanilla extract

In a small saucepan, whisk together the sugar, cocoa powder, cornflour and water.

Place the pan over heat, and stir constantly, till it begins to thicken and is smooth (for about 2 minutes).

Remove from heat and mix in the butter and vanilla. Keep aside to cool .

How to put it all together:

Slice your cakes into about 1 inch slices.  Line a bowl with plastic wrap and  arrange two slices at the bottom of the bowl, with their seam sides facing each other. Arrange the Swiss roll slices up the bowl, with the seam sides facing away from the bottom, to cover the sides of the bowl. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and freeze till the slices are firm (at least 30 minutes).

Soften the vanilla ice cream. Take the bowl out of the freezer, remove the cling film cover and add the ice cream on top of the cake slices. Spread it out to cover the bottom and sides of the bowl. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and freeze till firm ( at least 1 hour)

Add the fudge sauce over the vanilla ice cream.  Fill it with peach slices and cover with the rest of cake. Freeze till firm ( at least an hour)

Place the serving plate on top of the bowl. Turn it upside down and remove the bowl and the plastic lining. If the bowl does not come away easily, wipe the outsides of the bowl with a kitchen towel dampened with hot water. The bowl will come away easily.

Slice and serve! YUM

This is one of our family’s favorite dishes.  You can’t go wrong with butter right?  I am always afraid to use a lot of butter in my dishes, but I will make an exception for this one. The burned butter for this recipe is just so delicious!  Maybe next time I make it, I will try to make it with Ghee.  I was reading my friend’s blog post on Ghee, on clarified butter and anyone that can rationalize the use of butter for good health reasons is a great friend of mine!

6 oz (half of box) thin spaghetti or angel hair pasta

1/2 c of shredded Mizithra cheese

1/3 c butter

Cooked Shrimp (to taste)

I like to shred the Mizithra Cheese in the fine size of my shredder.

Cook pasta according to package directions.  In a sauce pan, heat the butter on low heat until it is all melted. Turn up the heat a little bit and cook the butter until it starts to foam. Keep stirring so it doesn’t stick to the bottom or burn.  Cook until butter has a nice golden color. Keep an eye on the butter since it only takes seconds to turn from the nice golden brown color to a black burn color. You don’t want the black color!  The butter will have a nice aroma and it will look beautiful. This is called brown butter. It can be make ahead of time and refrigerated.  Then all you need to do is reheat when needed.

Gently toss the pasta in the butter sauce. Add cooked shrimp and Mizithra cheese. Sprinkle a little bit of parsley.

I like to serve this with a nice green vegetable. Steamed broccoli, green beans or bok choy.

Can top with parsley, sun dried tomatoes, chicken and/or mushroom!!!

I had a lot of fun at the Studio 4, Good Things Utah show today.  They are so nice and they make you feel right at home.

We made the Brazilian style meat loaf on the show.  It is one of the dishes I love because it is so easy to make and you can use your creativity. You can change the ingredients to your liking.  Here is the recipe:

• 2 lb ground beef
• 1 pkg Lipton onion soup mix
• 1 large carrot
• 2 boiled eggs
• 6-8 slices of ham
• 4 ounces shredded cheese (mozzarella or cheddar)
• 1 T mayo
• 3- 4 strips of bacon
• Oil (just enough to spread on your hands)

Mix onion soup mix and ground beef together, set aside.

Put a large sheet of plastic wrap on the counter, and lightly coat it with oil. Then, use your hands to gently open the meat mixture. (Just like you would for thin hamburgers.) It should be shaped into a 13×18 rectangle.  You may need to rub a little oil on your hands to make it easier to spread the meat.  You want a nice thin layer.

Then top it with the ham slices, carrots, sliced eggs and cheese.  Starting with the side closest to you, roll the meat. Use the plastic to help you form the loaf.

Transfer it to a cookie sheet (lined with foil).  Spread the mayo on top.  Add strips of bacon over the top, wrapping around the sides of the loaf. Bake at 350 for 40-50 minutes (or until fully cooked).

Options: You can fill the loaf with any type of fillings. Here are some ideas: Spinach and cream cheese; 3 cheeses; prosciutto artichoke hearts and brie; vegetables (green peppers, red peppers, carrots, spinach, olives); all meat (ham, pepperoni and sausage).

Another option is to use ground chicken, sausage or turkey instead of beef.

Serve options:Brazilian Rice, green salad, and/or vegetables

Hello everyone! Just wanted to share some exciting news with you. I will be on Good Things Utah (ABC 4) this Friday July 9th at 10:00 am.  It will be a fun show!  I will be doing a delicious Brasilian meatloaf.  YUM

I hope you are able to watch it.  I am super excited! 

Ale 😀

Bok Choy, also known as Chinese Cabbage is a great vegetable to use for soup, stir-fry and other side dishes.  Here is how I like to make it as a side dish.

1 T olive Oil

2 cloves of Garlic

2 Baby Bok Choy or 1 Bok Choy (for this recipe I used baby bok choy)

Slice the Bok Choy and rinse it well.

In a frying pan heat the oil, add chopped garlic and let it get some color.  Then add cut Bok Choy. I like to add the stem cuts first and sear them for about 2 minutes before I add the leaves.  Let is cook until it is nice and tender.

There are so many amazing ideas out there for a 4th of July treat.  I decided to make one of the most cleaver cake ideas I have seen. It came from the blog 17 and baking.  Elissa is inspiring!  I hope you enjoy this idea as much as I did. 

As for the recipe I decided to try the recipe featured on the blog Delectable deliciousness.  The cake was fabolous, lemony, moinst and very good.  The frosting, was heavenly!  I thought it complemented the cake beautifully! 

Happy 4th of July to everyone!

I forgot to bring my camera to the BBQ party we went, so my dear husband took the picture for me, but if you notice, the blue part of flag is on the wrong side! oops!!!

Perfect Party Cake 

from Dorie Greenspan’s “Baking: From My Home to Yours”

2 1/4 cup cake flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 cups whole milk or buttermilk (I used buttermilk)
4 large egg whites
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 teaspoons grated lemon zest
1 stick (8 tablespoons) unsalted butter, room temperature
1/2 teaspoon pure lemon extract

1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Spray two 9-inch round cake pans with non stick spray. Optional – line the bottoms with a round of parchment. If using, also spray the parchment with non stick spray.

2. Sift together flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.

3. Whisk together the milk and egg whites in a medium bowl. Set aside.

4. In the bowl of your electric mixer, combine the sugar and lemon zest and rub the lemon zest into the sugar with your fingers until well incorporated. The mixture will become moist and very fragrant.

5. Add the butter to the sugar/zest mixture and, using the paddle attachment, beat on medium speed for a full 3 minutes. Add the lemon extract and 1/3 of the flour mixture; add 1/2 of the milk/egg white mixture and continue to beat at medium speed, then add half of the remaining flour mixture, then the rest of the milk/eggs and finish with the remaining flour. Once all ingredients are combined, beat the batter for a good 2 minutes to ensure it is thoroughly mixed and well areated.

6. Pour into prepared pans and bake for approximately 30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

 Make 1 and 1/2 recipes for the red, white and blue cake.  I used about 1 t of gel food coloring to color red and blue.

White Chocolate Frosting
adapted from foodnetwork

5 ounces good quality white chocolate, chopped fine
2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter, room temperature
3 cups powdered sugar, sifted
pinch salt
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup sour cream

1. Melt white chocolate over a double boiler or in microwave. Set aside to cool.

2. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter until light a fluffly. Slowly add the powdered sugar until well combined.

3. Add the salt, vanilla extract and sour cream and beat until very smooth.

4. Add the melted white chocolate and beat just until combined.

The June 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Dawn of Doable and Delicious. Dawn challenged the Daring Bakers’ to make Chocolate Pavlovas and Chocolate Mascarpone Mousse. The challenge recipe is based on a recipe from the book Chocolate Epiphany by Francois Payard

Pavlova is meringue based dessert usually filled with cream and fresh fruits. It is very light and delicious.  The challenge this month had us make a chocolate version filled with chocolate mousse and drizzled with  a Mascarpone Cream that use Crème Anglaise as a base.  It was very good.  I decided to make mini pavlovas. I also had a bit of chocolate mousse and mascarpone cream left which turned into an amazing cake!  Will post pictures!  I hope you try this recipe. It was way worth it. There will be 4 recipes here. The first will be the meringue for the pavlova shell. Second will be the chocolate mouse. Third and Fourth will go together. You need to make Third (Crème Anglaise) so you can make recipe four which is the Mascarpone Cream

Recipes are adapted from the Daring Kitchen Arquives

Recipe 1: Chocolate Meringue (for the chocolate Pavlova):

3 egg whites
½ cup plus 1 tbsp granulated sugar
¼ cup powder sugar
1/3 cup cocoa powder

Line two baking sheets with silpat or parchment and set aside. Preheat the oven to 200º F.

In the mixer, whip the egg whites until soft peaks form. Increase speed to high and gradually add granulated sugar about 1 tbsp at a time until stiff peaks form. (The whites should be firm but moist.)

Sift the powder sugar and cocoa powder over the egg whites and fold the dry ingredients into the white.

Fill a pastry bag with the meringue. Pipe the meringue into whatever shapes you desire. Alternatively, you could just free form your shapes and level them a bit with the back of a spoon. (Class made rounds, hearts, diamonds and an attempt at a clover was made!) As you can see I made little cups.  I used the star tip and just piped the bottom as a circle, then piped one more time around creating the edge.

Bake for 2-3 hours until the meringues become dry and crisp. Cool and store in an airtight container for up to 3 days.

Recipe 2: Chocolate Mascarpone Mousse:

1 ½ cups  heavy cream
grated zest of 1 average sized lemon
9 ounces 72% chocolate, chopped
1 2/3 cups mascarpone
pinch of nutmeg
2 tbsp orange juice

Put ½ cup of the heavy cream and the lemon zest in a saucepan over medium high heat. Once warm, add the chocolate and whisk until melted and smooth. Transfer the mixture to a bowl and let sit at room temperature until cool.

Place the mascarpone, the remaining cup of cream and nutmeg in a bowl. Whip on low for a minute until the mascarpone is loose. Add the orange juice and whip on medium speed until it holds soft peaks. (DO NOT OVERBEAT AS THE MASCARPONE WILL BREAK.)

Mix about ¼ of the mascarpone mixture into the chocolate to lighten. Fold in the remaining mascarpone until well incorporated. Fill a pastry bag with the mousse.  Pipe or fill your meringue shells.

Recipe 3: Crème Anglaise (a component of the Mascarpone Cream below): (I made half of this recipe)

1 cup whole milk
1 cup heavy cream
1 vanilla bean, split or 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
6 large egg yolks
6 tbsp sugar

In a bowl, whisk together the egg yolks and sugar until the mixture turns pale yellow.

Combine the milk, cream and vanilla in a saucepan over medium high heat, bringing the mixture to a boil. Take off the heat.

Pour about ½ cup of the hot liquid into the yolk mixture, whisking constantly to keep from making scrambled eggs. Pour the yolk mixture into the pan with the remaining cream mixture and put the heat back on medium. Stir constantly with a wooden spoon until the mixture thickens enough to lightly coat the back of a wooden spoon. DO NOT OVERCOOK.

Remove the mixture from the heat and strain it through a fine mesh sieve into a bowl. Cover and refrigerate until the mixture is thoroughly chilled, about 2 hours or overnight.

Recipe 4: Mascarpone Cream (for drizzling): (also made half of this recipe)

1 recipe crème anglaise
½ cup (120 mls) mascarpone
2 tbsp orange juice
½ cup (120 mls) heavy cream

Prepare the crème anglaise. Slowly whisk in the mascarpone and the orange juice and let the mixture cool.

Put the cream in a bowl and beat with electric mixer until very soft peaks are formed.

Fold the cream into the mascarpone mixture.

Assembly:
Pipe the mousse onto the pavlovas and drizzle with the mascarpone cream over the top. Dust with confectioner’s sugar and fresh fruit if desired.

Here is the cake idea I made with the leftovers.

It is a chocolate cake filled with chocolate mouse and mascarpone cream. Covered with Chocolate mouse. Topped with bitters sweet chocolate mouse, chocolate mouse, raspberries. Sides are crushed pavlovas and drizzled with mascarpone cream.