Making birthday cakes for Lucas and Dave are two of the highlights of my baking year.  It’s really important to me that everyone has just the right birthday cake, whether it’s a complete surprise or an begged for cake.  I remember Mum making the birthday cakes of our dreams every year, so I happily carry on that tradition with Lucas.

Last week Lucas turned three and as he is a dinosaur-obsessed little boy, he asked for a dinosaur cake.  A few days later he said that he wanted a bouncy dinosaur cake, sending me into hysterical visions of carving a cake out of jelly and buttercreaming the whole thing!  Thankfully he eventually settled on a non-bouncy Triceratops cake.

I carved two double-chocolate pound cakes (1kg loaf, 1.5kg loaf) into the requisite shape, leaving a ledge all around the base to add grass, giving the impression that Triceratops was walking along happily.  The bulk of the detail was in the face, so I spent quite a lot of time making sure everything was symmetrical.  Little sausages of fondant glued on with buttercream were really helpful for making the face more realistic—that’s how I made the ridge above the eyes and added a bit more shape to the face.  The horns were made from cream flowerpaste that I allowed to harden before attaching.  The frill was really important to get right so I measured around the neck and cut out a strip of fondant/flowerpaste (50/50 blend) and pinched it into the right shape. After it had dried for a while I glued it in place and propped it with some wadded up kitchen paper.  The finishing touch was to pipe some tufts of grass all the way around Triceratops and randomly across the board.

Judging from Lucas’s reaction, it was a total hit!  I added the baby T-rex from his favourite bedtime book “Say Hello to the Dinosaurs” to the board and made a dinosaur nest  to complete the Cretaceous Period look.  (I love to decorate the cake board to set off the cake, it makes such a difference.)

This cake was such fun to put together and much easier than I’d anticipated!  It’s by no means perfect but I’m improving all the time and Lucas loved it which is all that really matters.  Speaking of the birthday boy, here he is in his alter ego of Batman!

Happy birthday, wee man. Mummy loves you!

When Ivonne and Lis first asked me to host August’s Daring Bakers’ challenge, I was thrilled. Then intimidated.  And then the fun megalomania kicked in.   I could choose anything!  I could be as nice or as evil as I wanted to be!  Bwahahahaha!

Ahem.

I’ve always had a long list of things that I’ve wanted to bake.  Well, things I want to eat, really—so this seemed the perfect time to knock something off that list.  But choosing something that would be appropriate for the Daring Bakers turned out to be harder than I expected.  I was quite gung-ho about strudel, but then the next challenge turned out to be strudel!  And then I thought of making a Fraisier but that particular cake cannot be chilled because of the marzipan on top.  Same problem with the amazing Triumph of Gluttony from Sicily!   I was beginning to run out of ideas—crocquembouche? No, we’d already done eclairs and general fun with choux last year—when I came across a beautifully layered cake with stripes that a zebra would be proud of.  The Dobos Torta.

Whisper-thin layers of sponge, a decadent chocolate buttercream and crisp wedges of caramel on top… this was my kind of cake!  And best of all, it fit with all the very sensible criteria for a Daring Bakers recipe, as well as being daring and thoroughly challenging.

Once I’d settled on what I wanted to make, and quickly checked with Ivonne that no one else was planning to challenge us with it, I started thinking about a co-host.  Very little thought was needed before I asked the lovely Lorraine of Not Quite Nigella if she would like to join me.  Thankfully she said yes, and the rest is (now) history.

I have loved looking at all the wonderful Dobos Torta that the very Daring Bakers have created through August.  Looking at cake upon cake while dieting probably isn’t the best idea, but it’s just been so much fun to see so many different shapes, colours and designs.  I feel like a proud mama when I see another new work of culinary art appear on the DB Forum and I am so, so pleased that everyone has taken on this cake with such gusto.  I really think that The Daring Bakers have outdone themselves this month!  Bravo to you all!

The full recipe is below, and please check out all the amazing Dobos Torta via the Daring Bakers’ blogroll.

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You know how it is, I’m sure.  You resolve, hand on heart, to cut back on buying cookbooks.  (Not stop, because that would be utterly ridiculous.  Me, stop buying cookbooks?  Crazy talk!)  But yes… you resolve to cut back and then, along comes a review of a cookbook that sends you scurrying to Amazon faster than Usagni Bolt.

The review in question is Ivonne’s—of Cream Puffs In Venice fame—review of Giada’s Kitchen.  I resisted for a good 24 hours before placing the order.  I even checked the library catalogue in case they had it; I was all prepared to submit a request for the book, but I couldn’t see any option to do so (are you listening, South Glos libraries?)  So, I succumbed and ordered it.  And I’m really glad that I did.

In the UK, we’re slowly starting to get more North American food shows.  So far, no Rachel Ray or Paula Deene who I think we can live without, but we have been getting The Barefoot Contessa for a couple of years—is it me, or does almost every recipe begin with a stick of butter?—Ellie of A Healthy Appetite and last year we had the first season of Giada de Laurentis’s Everyday Italian which I really enjoyed.  Giada’s hallmark is light and fresh Italian cookery with big flavours. She doesn’t shy away from butter but this particular cookbook is her healthiest yet, something that always appeals to me.

When flicking through the book plenty of recipes caught my eye, but I absolutely had to try out her salmon recipe.  I am not a fan of fish soups or stews, but serving the salmon with a citrus broth looked absolutely perfect for the few days of summer we were experiencing.  With a little bit of tweaking—I used much less olive oil—this dish is perfect for Phase Two of the South Beach Diet, and it would be perfect for any time of the year when you need some freshness or a delicious taste of summer.

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Whoops, it’s been a while, hasn’t it?  All is fine, Chez Ang, I’ve just been lazing on the beach.  The South Beach Diet, that is.  Yup, after years of getting on (and falling off) the Weight Watchers wagon, I have defected to the sunny shores of the South Beach Diet.

It’s still early days, but I think this is the diet for me.  I think I need more ‘rules’ about eating and a definite absence of cakes and sugar as once I start eating cakes, I find it very hard to stop.  I’m still in Phase One of the plan (low-carbing) and  I must admit that I’m looking forward to a bowl of porridge as soon as Phase Two starts.  (I am also slightly fed up of eggs.  I fear I will be reincarnated as a chicken.)

Thankfully I can still eat some very familiar meals, and pre-SB, one of my new favourite easy dinners was from Bill Granger’s Every Day: seared steak with cannellini beans and tomatoes, all drizzled with some aged balsamic vinegar.  It’s an absolutely delicious meal and I’m so pleased that it fits in perfectly with the South Beach lifestyle. These days I do add extra tomatoes and some red pepper and also serve it with some steamed broccoli to up the veggies, but that just makes it even better. (Especially if the broccoli is stirfried with plenty of garlic.  Mmmm… garlic.)

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Well, here I am.  A day late, but hopefully not a dollar short.  I totally spaced on this month’s Daring Cooks challenge.  I managed to convince myself that the posting date was the 17th and it was only when I saw dumplings popping up on my Google Reader, like a bloom of jellyfish, that it dawned on me that I was late.

“I’m late, I’m late!  For a very important date!” said I, channelling the White Rabbit, and promptly scurried off to the supermarket for supplies.

This month’s Daring Cooks challenge was hosted by the lovely Jen from Use Real Butter and is Chinese dumplings.

Chinese dumplings can be boiled, steamed, or fried.  I am a big fan of frying them to create potstickers as you get the best of two worlds: a gorgeous golden crispy base and a softly steamed upper half.  Mmm… magical.

So after practically throwing Lucas into bed, I got into the kitchen and started chopping.  And chopping.  And chopping.  Half-way through the ingredients list for the pork filling I found myself coming up with bad puns about chopping sprees.  (According to Jen, you have to chop by hand as a food processor creates either mush or irregularly chopped pieces of vegetable.  My knife callus bears testament to my determination to have finely minced veggies in my filling.)

Making the dough was easy enough since I happily used the food procesor for that.  Rolling the dough into decently thin circles was the hardest part for me.  Try as I might, I just couldn’t turn out a perfect circle which then had a knock-on effect with my pleating.  And as we all know, the real art of Chinese dumplings comes from the pleats that give them their trademark crescent shape.  *sigh*  Still, the later ones looked much prettier than my first attempts, so at least I improved.

I actually finished making a batch of the dumplings last night, but managed to burn them all.  I don’t mean a few blackened speckles… I mean solid black bottoms.  I was so dispirited that I (a) didn’t want to take a photo of such tragic dumplings and (b) couldn’t be bothered rolling and filling the other half of the dough so I left that for this morning and attempted to make some with Lucas.  Suffice to say that my dreams of having a dumpling production line in my kitchen have been dashed.  He did have great fun squidging the pork filling and poking at the already shaped dumplings, though!

When I finally finished filling all the dumplings, I shoved two-thirds of them into the freezer for Dave and very, very carefully fried the rest for lunch.  Lucas loved the huge plume of steam that shot out of the pan when I poured in the cold water and couldn’t wait to try the potstickers.  Heck, neither could I.  They smelled so good!

As good as they smelled, the potstickers tasted even better!  I knew I was on to a winner when I flipped one over and it was gorgeously golden brown with an audibly crispy base.  Mmmm… crunchy.  The filling was smooth, fresh and very fragrant with beautifully chopped vegetables, even if I do say so myself!  The best thing is that Lucas loved them, and he’s been a little fussy in his eating habits lately, except where chocolate is concerned of course.  He’s not stupid!  At any rate, he demolished a plateful of potstickers with plenty of “dip-dip” and tried to steal some of mine!   I suspect that my near-future involves making lots of dumplings…

For the recipe and fabulous step-by-step photographs, see Jen’s post here.  Thanks for a great challenge, Jen!

Lucas loves to bake.  He has a little playhouse in our garden which started life as his pretend treehouse and has now turned into his bakery.  Whenever we’re outdoors playing he disappears in there to “bake”.  Oh, what delights we’ve had!  He made me some gingerbread men the other day, but what he likes pretend baking most of all are cupcakes.  Perhaps because he loves eating cupcakes the most?

So yesterday, when he was clamouring to make a cake, I thought that he wanted to play in the garden.  But no, it turned out that he wanted to bake a cake for Daddy.  Daddy neeeeeeeds cake! To be fair, Daddy probably did need lots of cake after a survival stag weekend in Wales.  (I was very relieved that he survived the zombie apocalypse and the torrential rain.  But completely missed the earthquake.)

And what sort of cake did Daddy need? Chocolate cake, of course!  So, knowing that (a) this would be messy no matter what, and (b) that Lucas gets bored very quickly, I opted for a one-bowl Devil’s Food cake.

I’d love to say that Lucas is some sort of genius toddler who can weigh our his own ingredients and tidy up after himself, but alas… Mummy played commis chef for the morning.  Anyone else find that their toddlers are tyrants in the kitchen?

Mummy! You did that wrong!
No, mummy! Put it there!
Lucas can do it! *grabs sieve*

So, Lucas climbed up on a chair and whisked.  Then he whisked some more and said it was very hard, so we finished that together.  Then he grabbed the sieve and sieved in the dry mixture, stirring it through the sieve which, joyfully, is far less messy than shaking the sieve!   Plus, it makes a funny noise so that was fun.  And then he whisked again and said, “oh! Where did the chocolate come from?” and looked at me so suspiciously that I laughed and laughed.  And then he looked so offended… and I laughed some more.

I wish I had more pictures but between trying not to cover the kitchen in batter, making sure he didn’t fall off the chair—he decided to have a dance on the chair half-way through—and just plain having fun, I only got a couple.

Unsurprisingly, Lucas vanished when it was time to clean up.  He did do a very good job of licking the bowl and spatula clean, which is surely the best part of making a cake!

After lots of wrangling about what sort of filling Daddy’s cake should have, he settled on chocolate buttercream.  (First of all he said that Daddy couldn’t have chocolate, then he wanted to put a lion inside, and then he wanted buttercream.  “What flavour,” I asked.  Tomato.)

One Real Chocolate buttercream later, Lucas was back on his chair, armed with a spatula and lots of enthusiasm.

For Instant Enthusiasm: Just Add Chocolate.

All I did was dollop the buttercream on and let him do the spreading out.  So, it doesn’t quite reach the edges but you do get a lovely thick mass of it in the middle which is lush.  The pretty topping is all Lucas, too.  He wanted sweeties on Daddy’s cake and since that was a much better idea than tomatoes, I was quite happy to open up some of his Easter sweeties (shhh!) and let him go to town!

So, there you have it.  Lucas baked a cake!  (And Mummy cleaned the kitchen.)

Daddy was very pleased with his “I missed you / welcome home / Lucas wanted chocolate cake” cake, so in a fit of bad parenting, we ate big slices of it for lunch.  And then we ate some more for second breakfast today (it’s a Hobbit thing), and there’s still plenty for afternoon tea, too!

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“Nun, meine Kinder,” Frau Mieders said, beaming on them, “today we make the puddings for Mittagessen. And for the puddings , they are Apfelstrudel.”

The girls beamed back at her upon hearing this. Apfelstrudel was a favourite pudding with everyone at school. *

I grew up on a steady diet of school stories, loving their sheer escapism and wishing that my school was more inclusive and accepting.  By far, my favourite was The Chalet School series by Elinor M. Brent-Dyer—now there’s a mouthful of a name for you!  The Chalet School was a wonderful place, full of titbits of knowledge about languages as the girls had to speak English, French and German on alternate days (with Sunday being a ’speak your own’ day), and there were always thrilling adventures around every corner!

One of the most memorable aspects of the Chalet School books was the food.  Oh, how wonderful the food always sounded!  Even the names of mealtimes were different: Frühstück , Mittagssen, Abenssen.  And there were always such vast quantities of food.  When Miss Ferrars joined the Chalet School her first meal consisted of creamy soup sprinkled with herbs, followed by veal in a picquant sauce and then a huge hollow bun stuffed with jam and cream…and that was just for lunch!  Breakfast by contrast was simple with rolls, honey and fruit, all washed down with milk or milky coffee.  I think the coffee was what sealed the deal for me… I wasn’t allowed to drink coffee as a little ‘un, and it seemed so grown-up!  And the girls always, always had afternoon tea or Kaffee und Kuchen (coffee and cakes) which always sounded luscious!

And so it was that the Chalet School was my first introduction to apple strudel, or apfelstrudel to give it its proper name.  Making my own strudel has always been something that I’ve wanted to do, so imagine my delight when I saw that this month’s Daring Bakers’ challenge was to be strudel! The May Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Linda of make life sweeter! and Courtney of Coco Cooks. They chose Apple Strudel from the recipe book Kaffeehaus: Exquisite Desserts from the Classic Cafés of Vienna, Budapest and Prague by Rick Rodgers.

The first thing to do when making strudel is to make your dough.  Frau Mieders, the plump and jolly Domestic Science mistress in the Chalet School books, always bade her pupils gather all the necessary ingredients before beginning work.  So, in a bid to be a good Chalet girl—something that was always the “ideal” to strive towards in the books—I followed her wisdom.

In Frau Mieders eyes I undoubtedly fell at the first hurdle by using my food processor to make the strudel dough. She says on a number of occasions that “cookery is not for idle girls”!  however, the food processor is a great way to make strudel dough as it encourages long strands of gluten to form in the dough which is exactly what you want for stretching it out to paper-thinness.

Hopefully I redeemed myself by kneading by hand until all traces of stickiness were gone and the dough was incredibly elastic.  I can highly recommend hurling the dough at the unfloured worktop at least a hundred times!  Not only is it fun, it also develops the gluten further and faster than just kneading alone.

With the dough resting, it was time to gather together the filling ingredients and set to work on that.

“Peel, core and slice the apples,” the mistress said.  “Peel thinly, please and also slice thinly.” [...] And then Frau Miediers caused consternation among them by announcing that she was coming round to see how thinly they were all peeling and slicing.

Frau Miediers would be horrified at my idea of peeling apples!  I absolutely loathe doing it, so I try to get it over and done with quickly and end up with very thick peelings.  Still, it was slightly less arduous than usual as I was so excited at the prospect of strudel!

I made a couple of small tweaks to the filling recipe, which I would probably roll back for next time.  I used challah for the breadcrumbs as I’d baked one a few days previously and the rich crumbs browned awfully fast when I fried them.  Plain white bread would definitely be best, I think.  I also tripled the cinnamon called for, which made the filling mixture awfully brown.  Oh, and as I don’t particularly like walnuts, I used flaked almonds which I adore.

The dough had to be uncovered and placed on the floured cloth and first rolled out and then stretched on the backs of their hands until it was almost wafer-thin and transparent and fitted the cloth exactly.  There must be no breaks in it and this made it worse.

I made a double-batch of the strudel pastry as I was pretty sure that I’d either poke a hole through it, or it would stick fast to the sheet, and I’m really glad I did.  It was still a little sticky when I tried to roll it onto the sheet and then when I resorted to just stretching it out, holes kept appearing until it looked like aged lace.  So I tossed it away and started again with the second half.  What really made a difference was brushing the top of the dough with melted butter and also buttering the rolling pin.  It stretched out like a dream and you could definitely read through it!

“And now,” said the mistress when the apples, sugar, raisins and currants had all been placed on the pastry.  “We roll him into a long, thin sausage—this way!”  And she took two corners of the cloth in each hand and deftly rolled it up.  “Now you try it.”

The less said about the shape of some of those sausages, the better!  Some were twice the size and more of Ruey’s.  Some were thick at one end and thin at the other. Primrose Trevoase cleverly rolled her cloth in with the filling and had to undo it, find a fresh cloth for herself and stand to one side, looking rather silly, while Frau Miediers transferred the remarkable result to the new cloth.

This was the part I was dreading.  Even though I had liberally covered the sheet with flour, I could totally see everything going wrong when I rolled up the strudel.  Interestingly enough, did you know that strudel means whirlpool in old German?  The name comes from the rolling or whirling action when you finally get brave enough to just do it.

And would you believe it? Nothing went wrong!  The pastry was so incredibly thin that you could see each slice of apple ghost-like underneath the layers.  Beautiful.

The last touch was to brush them over with melted butter.  After that, each sausage must be carefully bent in the middle and put on well-greased baking sheets before being slipped into the big ovens to bake till they were golden-brown.

I can’t say that I managed to bend the strudel into quite the right shape, but it all fitted on the baking sheet which was a relief.  My only problem came during baking the strudel…

I liberally daubed the strudel with melted butter, so much so that there were a few little puddles on the baking sheet, which then started to smoke in the oven.  I’d say I was about two minutes away from a flaming strudel.  Whoops!  So after whipping the strudel out of the oven and drying it and the parchment, I bunged it back in and hoped for the best.  Which explains why my strudel is a tad over-browned.

Still, once I stopped grousing about it and actually cut a slice, I felt redeemed.  (Well, I got the third slice.  Lucas was sitting at the dining table waiting for the first slice while I was photographing the whole thing, and then Dave came downstairs for his slice, and *sigh*)  The pastry was so incredibly light and its plainness provided the perfect foil for the gorgeously soft spiced apples.  I served the first few plates Chalet School style with “a positive featherbed of whipped cream” and the remainder was eaten with some vanilla ice-cream.

I’m so pleased that I have finally fulfilled a childhood dream and made my own strudel.  It was definitely worth all the work and I’ll be making plenty more strudels in the future.  (I’m thinking that a savoury one with roasted squash and dolcelatte cheese would be awesome in the autumn….

Thanks so much, Linda and Courtney for this wonderful challenge!

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New York, New York… are you there? Come in please. Over.

Is this thing on? *tap tap tap*

New York, I repeat. This is Bristol. Come in, please. Over.

Bristol, this is New York.  What is the problem? Over.

New York—what the hell is a bialy supposed to look like, over.

The usual problem with making something that you’ve only ever read about is, what on earth is the damn thing supposed to taste like?  In the case of the bialy, I knew that the crumb was supposed to be chewy like a bagel and I could easily imagine how delicious an onion and poppyseed filling would taste… but I kept reading all sorts of different descriptions of how they should look.  Google image search just confused me even more!  Still, I plunged on regardless.

Bialys have been on my to-bake list for what seems like forever.  They’re not something I’ve ever seen in the UK, and I was a proto-foodie when Dave and I visited New York years ago, so I couldn’t make the effort to track some down as I’d never heard of them!  If you haven’t heard of them, then let me (try to) enlighten you.  The bialy is the cousin of the bagel.  It’s the same dough, but instead of being shaped into a ring, boiled, then baked, the bialy is allowed to rise into a pillowy ball of dough and just before baking a hollow is made in the centre of the dough-ball, and filled with a teaspoon of either fried onions and poppy seeds or a caramelised onion mix.  Sounds good, right?

Believe me, they are every bit as delicious as they sound.  Why did I wait so long to make them??

Even better, bialys are really easy to make.  The dough, while a bit on the sticky side, is really straightforward to make.  If you have a Kitchen Aid (and haven’t lost your dough hook) then this is the perfect dough to make in it.  It is managable by hand—a dough scraper will help loads here—but if you hate sticky dough on your hands and automatically add flour, then toss it in the mixer and keep all that lovely moisture in the dough.

After the second rise, the dough is much easier to handle and it is really easy to create the dramatic crater that cradles the lovely onion and poppy seed filling.  I would really love to know whether the crater should have remained after baking or whether it is okay that it closed back up, trapping the filling.  This actually turned out to be quite handy when it came to toasting leftover bialys the next day.

I will definitely be making these beauties again.  After much dedicated munching, I have determined that I like them best lightly toasted and slathered with some good salted butter.  I think you would, too.

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Ever since Ivonne and Lis announced that they were forming a Daring Cooks’ group, I’ve been eagerly awaiting the first challenge recipe.  And I was not to be disappointed: the doyennes of The Daring Kitchen had chosen ricotta gnocchi from The Zuni Café Cookbook by Judy Rodgers.

Gnocchi are my Achilles heel.  I love them to bits, but whenever I’ve tried making them, it has been somewhat disastrous.  I remember trying to make butternut squash gnocchi when I was pregnant, only for my nice neat gnocchi to completely disintegrate when they went into the simmering water.  I kid you not.  It looked like I’d made soup and all I could do was stand there and cry big fat tears into the pan.

My next fearful foray into gnocchi was making potato gnocchi to go with a beef goulash from a Gary Rhodes recipe.  Everything would have been fine, I’m sure, if I had cooked them immediately after shaping, but I was trying to do everything in advance as it was for a Hogmany dinner. *sigh* They didn’t disintegrate but were rather gluey.  Okay, very gluey.

So, when I set out to make the challenge recipe, I made damn sure that I’d read the recipe at least three times and watched every YouTube video I could find on the subject of ricotta gnocchi.  Oh, yeah… I’d never eaten ricotta gnocchi before, either, so had no idea what the texture should be like.  Still, many years of enthusiastic eating have qualified me to say what is tasty and what is not!

I decided to go the whole hog and make my own ricotta for a couple of reasons.  Firstly, the supermarket ricotta I buy is very, very wet and I didn’t think it would drain enough and secondly, I had everything I needed to make the ricotta and thought it would be fun!  And it was both fun and really, really easy.  I would totally do it again as it’s much cheaper than buying a tub of ricotta, plus it tasted better.

When I (very nervously) came to make my gnocchi it turned out that I had nothing to worry about.  My ricotta was bone dry and it easily whipped up into a thick, but fluffy batter.  The only thing that went wrong—because something always has to go wrong when I do gnocchi, right?—was that my beloved microplane grater somehow snapped in half when I was grating the Parmesan and I grated a little bit of myself in the ensuing panic.  Am I the only person to have ever broken a microplane like that?  I thought those things were indestructible!

I made rough quenelles of the batter and dropped them into a shallow bowl of flour to shape them.  After the first couple, I got brave and just quickly patted little spoonfuls of batter between my floured hands to shape the gnocchi.  This was far less sticky than previous efforts.  Yay!

The recipe calls for making and cooking a test gnocchi which is such an awesome idea!  I wish I’d thought of that years ago and saved myself many a tear.  Interestingly, the little lumps and bumps of each gnocchi smooth out during the cooking process and each gnocchi almost doubles in size which makes this a great recipe for greedy people like me.  I was also quite fascinated to note how each gnocchi rose from the bottom of the pan in the exact order they’d been dropped into the simmering water.  It was like a scene from Fantasia!

As I’d never tasted ricotta gnocchi before, I decided to keep things very simple and just make a thick tomato sauce to go with them.  I wanted to be able to taste the unadulturated flavour of the gnocchi before dipping into a familiar and comforting sauce.

I’m very pleased to say that this first Daring Cooks’ challenge managed to exorcise the ghosts of gnocchi past.  My gnocchi cooked up into pillowy clouds of ricotta goodness and both Dave and I loved them.  Lucas was less keen, but I didn’t care as that meant there was more for me!  Hooray!

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It’s that time of the month again… Daring Bakers time!

The April 2009 challenge is hosted by Jenny from Jenny Bakes. She has chosen Abbey’s Infamous Cheesecake as the challenge.

As much as I love seeing what all the hundreds of Daring Bakers can do with exactly the same recipe, I have a real soft spot for our more creative challenges… where we can pretty much do what we like.  They have an exciting, last day of term feel to them.

I make cheesecake quite frequently, so I wanted to try and do something different with the decoration.  (I should probably confess that my idea of decorating a cheesecake is piling a few truffles in the centre!)  Jenny mentioned in her challenge announcement that we should “make it unique, make a showstopper of a dessert” so that’s what I tried to do.

Originally I wanted to wrap a vanilla-bean laced cheesecake with some white chocolate plastic and piling the centre high with fresh and chocolate-dipped strawberries.  But… it isn’t strawberry season yet, and the few berries I’ve pinched from Lucas have been a bit watery, so I just couldn’t.

So, it was time for Plan B, for which we need a little background.

I am a real coffee-lover.  So much so that I have to ration myself.  Case in point: the last time I bought a bag of coffee, I disappeared into a week-long high and drank jugfuls upon jugfuls of cold-filtered coffee.  (If you have slightly more self-control than me, then you can find the method over at Smitten Kitchen.)

But all good things must come to an end, and now our coffee machine sits on top of the larder (no space on the worktops) and apart from that week when I buzzed around like a hummingbird on crack, the only coffee in the house has been the Visitors’ Jar of instant coffee.

Deciding to make a cappuccino cheesecake was therefore a risky move, but if it tasted as wonderful as I expected it to, then it would be totally worth it.  Plus, bouncing off the walls was bound to burn off all the calories from the cheesecake!

To make the cheesecake look even more special, I decided to wrap the cheesecake in chocolate plastic.  This… did not go well.  Maybe I didn’t manage to scrape all the liquid glucose into the melted chocolate, or perhaps I cooked the chocolate too much, but the but instead of ending up with a pliable and slightly sticky ball of chocolate, I got chocolate crumbs.  No matter what I did, I just couldn’t rescue matters, so I wound up wrapping the cheesecake in some chocolate sugarpaste that I had lying around.  It didn’t turn out as whisper-thin as I’d hoped, but it still looked and tasted pretty damn good.

Since I was playing dress-up with the cheesecake, I added some little gold buttons and some seam details before completing the cappuccino effect with a dusting of cocoa powder.  Oh, and because I couldn’t resist gilding the lily, I made some fanciful sugarpaste flowers,

In case you couldn’t tell, I was really pleased with the cheesecake and it tasted almost as good as it looked.  The coffee flavour of the actual cheeesecake was great, and the whipped cream really made the frothy, extravagant cappuccino effect work.  I’ve got to say, this isn’t my favourite cheesecake recipe ever.  I know that lots of Daring Bakers loved it, but I just liked it.  I found myself missing the distinct tang of cream cheese; it felt like the double cream smoothed out the texture and the flavour.  More tang, please!  However, this didn’t stop me from hoovering it down with Dave.  Poor Lucas didn’t get a look in at all; probably a good thing, really.  He bounces off the walls enough already, thanks!!

I think a big thank-you is in order for Jenny, for making me be creative and have fun at the same time!

Don’t forget to check out the other amazing Daring Bakers creations via the blogroll.

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