I would bet a hundred dollars that when my friends and family see this, they won’t actually believe they’re reading something new on my site. Most of them have given up asking me about it. [I won't name any names... Ha ha.]
The past summer, Shulie, asked me if I would be interested in contributing to the tree nut-free macaron series she’s hosting on her website, Food Wanderings. I immediately replied that of course, I would, but admitting that realistically it probably won’t be until Fall that I can commit to it. She assured me that October would be fine. Super. [Thanks so much, Shulie!]
Fast forward to our Thanksgiving month here in Canada. I managed to whip up a few batches of macarons to test, including my worst macaron experiment to date — it never even made it to the parchment paper. I found a workaround so that I still had my craving for toasted coconuts satisfied in macaron form. Because I like to humour myself, I made a very macaroon-ish macaron, that still tasted like the macaroon, but not quite. It’s still a macaron. Am I confusing you?
Coconut Macaron with White Chocolate and Lime Ganache
A friend and I were just discussing the virtues of butter. To be more precise, I was oozing with my love for butter and in a mission to convince her (friend, not butter) that it is worth the sacrifice of fat when it comes to baking. Forget about the fat, think of the flavor! Omg, do it for the children. [Hmmm...children of the dairy fat?] Jokes aside, I told her I would rather use real butter and eat in moderation than let the integrity of the recipe suffer.
Oh, here it comes….words I would have to eat.
After all my Hail Butter! Hail Butter! I found another test of my love for it. Imagine seeing the LA Times recipe for Water Kringle and searching for the butter in the recipe and being face-planted with more than half a pound of…M-MM…M-Margarine. And not a single trace of butter. Oh, my.
What’s a girl who’s never bought it or touched it in over a decade to do? Run out for some before her midnight baking spree? I put on my stubborn hat and told the recipe that it will have to do with butter. And while I was at it, I also took the liberty of omitting the vanilla custard or thick custard crème. Just because…
Sometimes I offer my sacred flours to failure experimentation. Behold, Exhibit A:
Water Kringle Deconstructed
Lightly flavored cinnamon bread with delicious brown butter cinnamon praline never looked so good, yet disappointing and humbling. I didn’t even continue to make the frosting and proceeded to gnaw at my defeat with a cup of coffee. Yes, the filling escaped! ACK!
All the hard work and mess of a counter looked so promising, too.
This weekend, we shall meet again, Danish pastry. I’ll come armed with margarine and custard. If you guys want to bake along with me, the recipe is here.
So what are you planning to make this weekend? Are you trying to conquer a particular recipe like I am?
After a busy day, there’s nothing more that I want than fast food. Not the McD kind or the pizza kind. I want something I could fix ASAP without having to fret over ingredients I’m missing. You must think I just bake and eat baked goods all the time with everything that I’ve been posting lately, but I still do cook. I want to spend my time in the kitchen wisely (=quickly), making something that’s good enough to eat and enjoy, but still healthy. I mean, cutting out the part where I drink wine is eating healthier, right? Aha.
There were still fresh pasta and prosciutto from my last trip to Granville Island, and a bunch of almost- forgotten Swiss chard that commanded attention or they will take a direct trip to the food scrap recycling bin. And then there’s the leftover ricotta from my crumb cake baking, plus a lonely shallot bulb. I’m not organized enough to have my market loot assigned into dishes and menus, so this is a regular plight: Get available and/or in-season ingredients and figure it out in the kitchen later. The pantry and fridge supplies my cooking notes, and sometimes we orchestrate some magic. This one will be added to my pile of go-to quick food, with the greens adapted to what’s in season or easily available.
Simple food can be satisfying, you just have to be willing to try. And don’t forget to check what you already have in your kitchen. Yes, that is a lesson for myself as well.
If you’re into Swiss chard, check this other recipe, too: Eggplant & Chard Lasagne. It’s a vegetarian dish that has a good chance of winning the meat lovers over. :)
And I’m back for more #GreatHallowTweet. BOO!!! Do check out my fellow ghoulish frighteners in crime on the left sidebar (look for the pumpkin!). Get some inspiration from them this Halloween season — trust me, they have lots of wonderful stuff for you!
As for today here at Gourmeted, I bring you: Mummified Sweet Potatoes! Yes, it’s all about the mummies. I love the cute side of mummies. I love wrapping things, especially gifts. I like wrapping food in crunch. I like wrapping, period. Wrapping means surprises, and I sure do love those.
Goodness, do I sound drunk from sweet potatoes? Perhaps.
This Halloween snack was borne out of necessity almost. Deep fried sweet potatoes with sugar were my favorite after-school snack, an indulgence I get 8 times out of ten when I beg our helpers to make them for me us. When you’re a kid, you get a lot of things for free, with a smile, too. These days, my taste buds (and hips) aren’t too fond of deep fried, but the fact remains that I have never successfully baked sweet potato fries or wedges that are crispy on the outside as the deep fried goodness. They become limp faster than burn my mouth from fresh-out-of-the-oven sweet potatoes. [Never do that, promise me, please.]
These were incredibly good and addicting.
Enter Phyllo Dough, which in my book, will always pack a crunch when you need it! You see, there’s a bit of a phyllo-mena here in the household. I’ve been on a filo kick lately because they are so darn handy with food, be it sweet or savory, snack or main meal. It’s a perfectly sane idea to keep a box or two in the freezer, just as you would do for butter. What, you don’t do that? :)
This sweet and healthy snack is easy to do, all you need are:
1 medium sweet potato
2 tablespoons of melted butter
2 t0 3 tablespoons of brown or demerara sugar (depending on how sugary you want it to be)
2 sheets of phyllo dough. for every medium size sweet potato
You can double this recipe, just use the 2 butter, 2 (or 3) sugar 2 phyllo ratio and you’ll be fine.
Oven is preheated to 400°F and potato pieces are baked 10 minutes, turned, then baked for another 15 minutes. Easy enough, right? The construction is the tricky part, but I was able to do everything under an hour, including the baking time and even while shooting photos. Once you get into the groove, there’s no stopping the mummy production line.
Here’s how I did each piece:
Cut the sweet potato into wedges or a-little-fatter-than-fries size (half an inch x a quarter inch is perfect) and place in a bowl.
Lightly brush half a sheet of phyllo dough with butter, fold, then butter the exteriors, and cut into 16 strips. Sprinkle or rub each strip with sugar.
Use the remaining butter to toss the wedges in.
Fold each phyllo strip in half, lengthwise, and wrap around each piece of sweet potato.
Just tuck the beginning of the strip by overlapping after the first turn.
Tuck the end underneath the strip looping before it.
Just a little push would do. The tine of a fork could help, too. And there you have it, one mummy!
Place on a baking/cookie sheet lined with parchment paper.
And bake for 10 minutes in an oven preheated to 400°F.
Turn each piece, exposing the caramel-y side and bake for another 15 minutes.
VOILA!
For bulkier pieces, wrap them twice with phyllo for that extra crunch and finger-food stability if you’re serving it for a party.
The good news is, the crunch of the phyllo stays for hours. Mmm!!!
Goldilocks is a well-known institution of baked goods and pastries in the Philippines. Even though I can easily go to their Vancouver location to get my mocha cake fix, I’ve always dreamed of baking a copycat so I can enjoy it anytime at home and knowing the ingredients in the cake I’m eating.
Finally, this summer, I set out to do just that. I got insanely lucky on my first try of the series and the flavor and texture was right on. My family declared it identical to (and even better than) Goldilocks. It was too good to be true and I can tell you that I got teary eyed on the final tasting of the buttercream after tweaking the flavors. Just to be sure, I’ve baked it numerous times since that first time. It helps that another batch of cake is requested before the current one gets eaten, so I don’t have to bury my face in mocha cake. Hah! One cake is just not enough. In fact, I’ve been asked not to post it on the blog because it really does taste like the real thing. However, what kind of food blogger am I if, after all the testing and perfecting, I don’t share it? That pretty much defeats my purpose for this site.
So here it is, one item off my To-Cook-and-Bake-From-Scratch list:
This was my sister-in-law's birthday cake.
The mocha cake from Goldilocks defined my love for cakes at an early age. What cake do I want for my birthday? Goldilocks mocha cake please!
Back in university, whenever I felt down, all I needed was a quick jeepney ride to Philcoa to order a half roll of mocha cake and — gasp — finish most of it myself. [Either that, or Betty's Sans Rival.] I was shameless and guiltless in my 5 foot frame and in the 90-pound mark then. These days, I don’t want to think about that, but I still want to a slice of mocha cake or two with my cup of coffee.
The cake is light, fluffy, and soft, and the icing is a luscious combination of extra smooth coffee and cocoa, buttery but not greasy. To get the authentic taste, you will need to use Nescafe coffee granules. You can also use espresso granules (= coffee taste is bolder and more pronounced) or Starbucks VIA Italian roast (=icing has bitter and sour notes), but it’s up to you if you want to use what you have available. You will also need amaretto, an Italian almond liqueur to finish off the flavor and must not be skipped. I’ve never tried to substitute it with anything, so I cannot advise you on that for now. I’ll try making this with almond extract next time and see if that can be used!
Please enjoy!
The recipe can be made into a two-layer 9-inch round cake or a roll. I’ve included instructions for the roll in the recipe Notes if you want to take a stab at it.
It’s funny how when I get my writing mojo back, I can’t seem to lay off of it. [This is a Leo thing, right Tracy?] So here I am, burning the midnight New Moon oil with a lot of things swirling in my head. I still have two or more IFBC posts, but I’m giving it a break or you might think I’m utterly stuck waxing poetic about food blogging conferences and friends.
I’m sure you other food bloggers will agree that not everything we prepare in the kitchen makes it on our respective blogs. In my case, about half of what I cook and bake never gets featured here because they:
taste meh, bad, or just okay,
look gross,
accidentally fell on the floor or disintegrated before taking photos,
were not photographed,
were badly photographed,
inedible,
or most likely: lost in notation
I had this Filipino dish to have you try, called Tortang Talong (Filipino Eggplant Omelette), but it had a case of #7. It’s super simple, but my limited short-term memory didn’t retain the oven setting and time. It’s easy enough to search online on how others do it, but I just don’t include a method, technique, or other parts of a recipe if I didn’t test it myself. So this will have to wait until I buy more eggplants and oven-roast them again. On the other hand, more eggplant goodness for my belly.
Still on a Southeast Asian Motherland kick, I’ve been wanting to share the Filipino Chicken Empanada recipe that I learned while observing relatives of relatives on the East Coast. BUT. Guess what? #7.
If this keeps going on, I don’t think I’d even get to my golden years!
Tonight I wasn’t particularly keen on cooking. I began reviewing a friend’s book draft (I’m not a professional, but she asked me to check it out…as a friend) after a 4-hour meeting the previous night, and now with 3 hours of sleep. Long story short, this Energizer bunny needs to rest. All my residual charge could muster up to do was boil, peel, and slice beets. And then I decided they need some other color, like pluots. And then I wanted something salty and creamy, there goes the feta.
A light drizzle of blood orange olive oil later…
Beets with pluot and feta cheese
…an excited first bite was superseded by great disappointment. That’ll be number 1 and 7.
However, all is not lost as I discovered that pluots and feta party together. I mean, Hi, let’s go on another date tomorrow! I’m feeling creamy feta-pluot in my next 24-hour future. What it would end up as, I’m not sure, but I’m getting them a room already. Hopefully it works out.
Have you put together something that seemed brilliant in your head and ended up in a pile of disappointment, beside newly delivered pizza? Or maybe, you have recipe testing fails to share? Do tell!
If you have other pluot-feta recipes, I’m yours. Oh, just remember I have 1/8 cup of butter left. That’s all I can use for now.It’s ghastly to have less than 4 sticks of butter available. That’s just not right.
Did you find our blog through Saveur.com? Welcome, welcome! We are honored to be featured on The Daily Fare and hope you find this recipe useful. You can download the PDF recipe for it further down this post. We also have a mocha-flavored sponge cake that is a delicious knockoff of the Philippines’ Goldilocks version. You might also want to check other cakes and baked goods. Quick links to recipe categories are available on the main page. To subscribe to our RSS feed, just go here Thanks for dropping by and please come again!
Before I start talking about food, let me just assure you that you are on the right website. We just got a face lift. I’ve been wanting to have a new design for ever but never found the time until now. You know how the full moon makes you do crazy things? This was mine. Part of the reason I couldn’t blog, aside from training for my first 5K (perhaps I’ll tell you about that some other time) and working too much, I just couldn’t stand the old layout. Let’s just say I could breathe easier now.
We’d love to get some feedback. If you don’t like something, please let me know what and why. If something’s not readable, definitely stop me in my tracks here, via email or on Twitter!
The sideblog of links has been revamped. We now have an FAQs page, which also addresses the missing-in-action monthly newsletter. There’s a link to our OpenSky shop, and I promise we’ll add more to the store after the busy IFBC weekend. What? Yes, you heard me!
Woohoo? WOOHOO!
Can you see me jumping in excitement?
I’m absolutely looking forward to seeing old friends, meeting new ones, and learning from them this weekend. We will be eating well, too. So much fun! See you there in a wink!
* * * * * * *
Now that’s out of the way, I’d like you to meet my brother’s Mamon with Coconut Lemon Buttercream birthday cake:
“Mamon” (pronounced as ma-mon’ as if saying c’mon) is a common snack or dessert in the Philippines. It is a soft and moist sponge cake that’s lightly sweetened. They are commonly sold as small cakes, with fluted sides similar to brioche, and come in flavors such as mocha, ube, and pandan. Instead of making small cakes, I created one big cake for my brother’s birthday.
This sponge cake is not as airy as its smaller counterpart; but delicate without falling apart. The toasted coconut adds a taste of the tropics and complements the texture of the silky frosting. It’s light enough to pair with a piña colada or white wine on a hot summer day, or a warm cup of floral tea or dark coffee.
I’ll tell you what else this cake partied with in my belly: I ate it with Caramilk Liqueur. {ducks} {giggles}
It’s no secret that I enjoy putting a Filipino/Asian twist to my cooking and baking, and this one’s no different. This cake tastes like Hawaii meets California on a hot summer day. Surf’s up and let’s eat!
Sorry guys, it’s just been such a hectic month for me, catching up with work and with friends, getting ready for one of my closest friend’s wedding last weekend, and Dan’s visit. Things are settling down after almost two months of craziness.
I found time this week to make this lemon curd tart. It’s summer and I need my blast of citrus-y goodness. We had such a good week of sun, but now it’s drizzling outside and a cool breeze is coming through the back patio windows. I have a cup of hot tea and a slice of lemon curd tart topped with sugared berries…I’ll say this Sunday is going well.
I’ve been meaning to make something from the Ottolenghi: The Cookbook since I bought it in May (in May!!!). It arrived a couple of days before my vacation and it just wasn’t going to happen then. Woe.
Deeba introduced me to this lovely cookbook when she gave me the recipe for these successful macarons and after that, I just kept thinking about getting it. It’s easy to get obsessed about these things, and Amazon.com is surely making a nice profit out of my compulsive Amazon Prime buying fingers. Ha!
The second recipe I’m testing from the book is for lemon curd. I used to think that making curd is tedious. It conjures up memories of my grandmother making “ube halaya” (purple yam jam dessert in the Philippines) that requires continuously standing/stirring in front of the stove for a good hour or so. I wouldn’t dream of it in the summer, especially with the 2nd floor of the house (where the kitchen is) feeling like a greenhouse. Nope, there’s no A/C here.
When I browsed Ottolenhi’s recipe for lemon curd, it seemed easier than the key lime curd recipe I used for my key lime meringue pie. After all, it didn’t need a double boiler setup, plus almost all the ingredients are already mixed together before heating. I thought I just had a free pass to a quick vacation!
Summer Quick Tip #1: Choose recipes that require less oven face time. Look for mix-all-in-one-go types.
When it comes to the crust, I like a good crust, but there was no way I was turning on the oven. I sought out my go-to graham cracker crust recipe (minus the lemon zest) to replace a sweet pastry crust.
Summer Quick Tip #2: Try a no-bake crust.
I couldn’t be happier with the results: less work for me, but the lemon curd tart still turned out irresistibly zesty and the graham crust was amazing with it. Those who don’t like it sour tarts beware, the lemon-y goodness could knock you out. :) Kind of. When you add whipping cream on top, it will be fine. For me, sugared blackberries complement it perfectly.
The first bite is god-awful. I wouldn’t want to share it with anyone! :-)
I’m kidding of course. It’s pretty damn good!
The lemon curd requires 6 hours at the very least to firm up, but it won’t stand up well until you leave it in the fridge overnight. If you want to serve it as fast as you could, do this little trick I do for anything that needs a quick setting:
Summer Quick Tip #3: Add gelatin to curd (or no-bake cheesecake) to serve it in under 30 minutes, instead of waiting for a long chilling time.
It might not be the most elegant solution, but it does work and will satisfy most dessert-loving guests. It will also keep the hostess (who forgot to prepare her tart the previous night) stress-free. If you have family like me who simply cannot wait for dessert to be served, gelatin is a godsend.
And with that, I bid you a good summer week! It’s going to be rainy here, but I’m welcoming this break from the heat. Yeah, yeah, welcome to the weather up here. :)
I’m not the type to post about Easter ‘food’. It’s not that I don’t celebrate it, it’s just…wow, I can’t even explain why there hasn’t been an Easter post in all of the 2+ year history of this website. I think things just get got too busy. However, things took a different turn. I got so inspired by Megan’s post yesterday that I postponed sleep for another day just to make, and post about, these:
Somewhere in one of my bins in the garage lies my Disney World of Kinder Surprise Toy collection.
….
….
Happy April Fool’s!
Who am I kidding? That toy collection does exist and I amassed them in my ’20s. I can’t believe I just told you that.
For a period in my life I dreamed of being a Kinder Suprise Toy designer. What? No, I wasn’t on something, I promise. I wasn’t kidding when I said I have so many of the toys. Love ‘em. And the chocolate? Milk chocolate and white chocolate egg “shells” get gobbled up in seconds. So when I saw that Megan made Kinder-esque eggs, there was absolutely no way that I can wait to try my hand at that. Even for one night. So I did what any food-crazy person would do: Labor. Until. Four. In the morning. So that I could somehow be a step closer to that dream (kind of).
I always seem to want to make things at hours past midnight, so I had no choice but to use whatever chocolate I had because of the time. I had dark, milk and white Callebaut bars, and decided to go with dark and white so the shell won’t be too sweet. SO, SO YUMMY.
The Road to Pink and Green
It felt like the joke was on me last night. I was trying to formulate a way to make Martha and Not Martha‘s methods (I love saying both in one sentence) easier.
Do you know why there aren’t any plastic eggs chocolate egg tutorial? Because they don’t work. Imaginary varicose veins popped up after standing up to wash, wipe, and grease a dozen plastic eggs of different sizes, and then coat and cool four sets of them with chocolate, only to find out that the only way I was going to get them out is to scrape them. That kind of defeats the purpose of having the mold, doesn’t it? Boy, oh boy.
Eight of the plastic eggs (which were purchased ever so dutifully by my dear brother, who will go to stores if he isn’t busy doting on his two boys) came in plastic egg cartons. Even if I did say, Why the heck did you have to buy all those? I am grateful for that plastic tray. It was a lifesaver for the next “plan”.
So I got to Plan B, which wasn’t really part of the plan because I was trying to find the easy button, remember? After midnight, when you decide to take on a project like this: DON’T be like me! I didn’t have the gadget to semi-cleanly cut the egg’s butt (I call it that, no foolin’ around). I did what any self-respecting crafter would do: improvise.
To illustrate how I do it the rudimentary way, which I think is my punishment for looking for a way out of the well-known path, here is a little video for you:
It’s the best way to separate the whites from the yellows.
I’m. just. kidding.
After emptying out the raw egg, you wash the egg shells and boil them in water for about 10 minutes. I added about a teaspoon of vinegar. Make sure each shell is submerged by putting water inside it. To fish them out of the water after boiling, use a slatted spoon to carefully empty out the water from each, and rinse with warm water. At this point, you might want to (ok, stay with me here, don’t get grossed out) stick your pinkie finger in the egg and scratch off the white membrane that lines the egg shell. It takes some patience. Let the shells dry or put back in the pan with fresh water with food color, a little vinegar, and then boil. I attempted to use beets to color it, but it didn’t work for me. Maybe if I just painted it with the beet juice it would have been better, I am not sure. Suggestions, eggsperts? [Hah, corny.]
I dried out the egg shells, hole side down and propped on chopsticks held in a standing glass. Once dried, I put about 2 tablespoons of melted Callebaut dark chocolate into each egg shell, and turned it around to coat the insides. I drained the extra liquid chocolate back into my bowl of melted chocolate, and immediately placed the coated egg in the freezer. After coating and cooling chocolate, I proceeded for the 2nd coating of white chocolate. Same procedure as with the dark, but you may experience some dark chocolate melting. it’s ok.
** Before you proceed, I should warn you now that the photos you are about to see are awful. I used my point and shoot camera, without flash and hand-held to quickly shoot stuff as I go. Oh…and my method? It’s not neat at all. I need to find another solution next time.
Melting the chocolate.I went for easy: I chopped the chocolate, placed half a cup in a small bowl and heated that in the microwave for 30 seconds before stirring. Place back for another 20 seconds. And then added another half a cup of chocolate to melt in the bowl. I made cup-batches at a time because it gets thick. Megan used another kind of chocolate and used thinners as well (which I have never heard of until I read her post (learn something new!)). Use what your preferred chocolate method is.
As soon as I finished dumping the excess chocolate, I put each egg shell again in the freezer. While the chocolate solidifies, I added green food coloring to white chocolate. Green = grass. To imitate the texture of grass, I placed parchment paper in the plastic egg holder and poured chocolate. I put it in the freezer for about 5 minutes to let it harden a little, but still soft enough to manipulate.
Basically, the concept is to use this molded “grass” to seal the holes at the bottom of the shells, glued by more green white chocolate:
Easter egg toupee
Then cap off with the chocolate “grass”. You can carefully sculpt it if you like. You can also add more melted green chocolate for some artistic effect. To clean up messes, use a clean damp cloth or paper towel.
Place the eggs again in the freezer, and once solid, place at room temperature to “dry”. The egg shells might be initially moist due to the temperature change and humidity.
In the end, after all that hard work, it really is so pretty to look at them!
These eggs were hard to crack! I don’t think it’s that suitable for kids. It’s more for adults.I was initially going to put wine candies inside but I accidentally burned the batch I made last night. Whoopsie. Next time!
Until then… Hope you all have a fun (extended/long/Easter) weekend!
Can you have a good cheesecake with just little sugar and no eggs? Can it be smooth and creamy, and melts in your mouth and before you could even think, you’ve already reached for your next bite? Why, yes and yes! Say hello to our family’s lifelong addiction: the no-bake cheesecake. This is also perfect for those who don’t like the heaviness of regular cheesecake. Perhaps you could even say it’s a tad better for indulgences, too. Maybe…I like to think that. -Joy
This is a personal invitation to try another favorite of our family. Signed, sealed, posted, it's yours to enjoy.
No-bake cheesecake and our family goes way, way back in the 80′s. My mother would spend Friday or Saturday nights on the dining table after dinner with her bowls, wooden spoons, stand mixer and springform pan to make cheesecake. The truth is, for the longest time I thought cheesecake was only made using my mom’s no-bake method. Hahaha.! Unfortunately, my mom doesn’t have the recipe anymore. I think everyone in our family will agree –that was gut-wrenchingly sad.
Uh, what are we going to do now?!
Sometime between my teenage years and our move to Canada, there was a cheesecake void in our household, we all got busy and us kids moved cities away for high school and university.
It wasn’t until 2002 or 2003 that I discovered (and had the inclination to make) a no-bake cheesecake recipe online. It didn’t quite taste like my mom’s but the methodology was close. I tweaked the ingredients until we were all satisfied with the taste. Then, at some point–GASP!–I lost the recipe. Gone. Not in my computer. Not in my mom’s. Our family friend, Tita Thess (go check her out, she makes gorgeous bead jewelry) even asked for the recipe many moons ago, but it turns out I never sent it to her. In between moving and traveling, and not being in the kitchen much, the recipe was gone. There was no trace of it.
….
For the longest time, I’ve put off creating a recipe from scratch to replicate my mom’s no-bake cheesecake because a) it’s so time-consuming to get the combination; and b) I almost had it and then I lost it! Exasperating to say the least. However, these are the things in life you just have to be grown up about and deal with–so I did. These were the only things I remembered it had and outlines my starting point:
2 8-ounce packages of cream cheese
some amount of sour cream
some amount of Knox unflavoured gelatin
graham crackers
sugar
butter
lemon zest (god…that lemon zest that I would forever associate with cheesecake!)
It’s rather vague to say the least. I’m looking at my notes on my calendar (yes, I know) and it was still back in the beginning of February. And let’s just say that my weight is pretty much indicative of the amount of cheesecake I’ve consumed to reach until March to get the recipe right. I just can be so dedicated to finding a “solution” to my problem that I will not stop until everything is resolved — in this case, until the taste, texture and consistency is correct.
How hard could it be to come up with our “holy grail” recipe?
I got the recipe for the crust right the 1st try, but the cake was lumpy because of the difference in temperature between the dissolved gelatin and the cream cheese mixture. It tasted good (not the best–too sweet), but one never should have to associate cheesecake with the word lumpy (= lame).
It doesn't look like much right out of the pan, but for our family this elicits groans with, "Put the topping already!"
On the second try, the cheesecake tasted better (still not perfect), but the texture was smoother. However, the cheesecake held up so well it almost looked fake, like when you buy cheesecake at a cheap establishment and it’s almost like buying white Jell-O. Not good.
You can make it party-ready by using the smooth edge of a table knife to scrape and smooth the cheesecake. Works like a charm.
And then the third: melts-in-your-mouth no-bake cheesecake. And I made it again and again. And it’s done.
Melting the chocolate. I went for easy: I chopped the chocolate, placed half a cup in a small bowl and heated that in the microwave for 30 seconds before stirring. Place back for another 20 seconds. And then added another half a cup of chocolate to melt in the bowl. I made cup-batches at a time because it gets thick. Megan used another kind of chocolate and used thinners as well (which I have never heard of until I read her post (learn something new!)). Use what your preferred chocolate method is.
