After a couple of savory challenges, we are finally back to sweets for the Daring Bakers group! Now that’s what I’m talkin bout!

I dressed mine up with tinted coconut grass and a fondant bunny looking for his carrots. It was one of the desserts for our family Easter dinner.

It was tasty, but not the best cheesecake I have ever had. It was very creamy and mild in flavor. I like my cheesecake to have bit more twang to it. My piece was also very soft from sitting out for for a few hours. I think it would have been better cold from the fridge.

Abbey’s Infamous Cheesecake:

Crust:

2 cups / 180 g graham cracker crumbs

1 stick / 4 oz butter, melted

2 tbsp. / 24 g sugar

1 tsp. vanilla extract

Cheesecake:

3 sticks of cream cheese, 8 oz each (total of 24 oz) room temperature

1 cup / 210 g sugar

3 large eggs

1 cup / 8 oz heavy cream

1 tbsp. lemon juice

1 tbsp. vanilla extract (or the innards of a vanilla bean)

1 tbsp liqueur, optional, but choose what will work well with your cheesecake

DIRECTIONS:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (Gas Mark 4 = 180C = Moderate heat). Begin to boil a large pot of water for the water bath.

2. Mix together the crust ingredients and press into your preferred pan. You can press the crust just into the bottom, or up the sides of the pan too – baker’s choice. Set crust aside.

3. Combine cream cheese and sugar in the bowl of a stand-mixer (or in a large bowl if using a hand-mixer) and cream together until smooth. Add eggs, one at a time, fully incorporating each before adding the next. Make sure to scrape down the bowl in between each egg. Add heavy cream, vanilla, lemon juice, and alcohol and blend until smooth and creamy.

4. Pour batter into prepared crust and tap the pan on the counter a few times to bring all air bubbles to the surface. Place pan into a larger pan and pour boiling water into the larger pan until halfway up the side of the cheesecake pan. If cheesecake pan is not airtight, cover bottom securely with foil before adding water.

5. Bake 45 to 55 minutes, until it is almost done – this can be hard to judge, but you’re looking for the cake to hold together, but still have a lot of jiggle to it in the center. You don’t want it to be completely firm at this stage. Close the oven door, turn the heat off, and let rest in the cooling oven for one hour. This lets the cake finish cooking and cool down gently enough so that it won’t crack on the top. After one hour, remove cheesecake from oven and lift carefully out of water bath. Let it finish cooling on the counter, and then cover and put in the fridge to chill. Once fully chilled, it is ready to serve.

Pan note: The creator of this recipe used to use a spring form pan, but no matter how well she wrapped the thing in tin foil, water would always seep in and make the crust soggy. Now she uses one of those 1-use foil “casserole” shaped pans from the grocery store. They’re 8 or 9 inches wide and really deep, and best of all, water-tight. When it comes time to serve, just cut the foil away.

Prep notes: While the actual making of this cheesecake is a minimal time commitment, it does need to bake for almost an hour, cool in the oven for an hour, and chill overnight before it is served. Please plan accordingly!

Some variations from the recipe creator:

** Lavender-scented cheesecake w/ blueberries – heat the cup of heavy cream in the microwave or a saucepan until hot but not boiling. Add 2 tbsp of lavender flowers and stir. Let lavender steep in the cream for about 10-15 minutes, then strain the flowers out. Add strained cream to cheesecake batter as normal. Top with fresh blueberries, or make a quick stove top blueberry sauce (splash of orange juice, blueberries, a little bit of sugar, and a dash of cinnamon – cook until berries burst, then cool)

** Cafe au lait cheesecake with caramel – take 1/4 cup of the heavy cream and heat it in the microwave for a short amount of time until very hot. Add 1-2 tbsp. instant espresso or instant coffee; stir to dissolve. Add this to the remainder of cream and use as normal. Top cheesecake with homemade caramel sauce (I usually find one on the food network website – just make sure it has heavy cream in it. You can use store-bought in a pinch, but the flavor is just not the same since its usually just sugar and corn syrup with no dairy).

** Tropical – add about a half cup of chopped macadamias to the crust, then top the cake with a mango-raspberry-mandarin orange puree.

** Mexican Turtle – add a bar of melted dark chocolate (between 3 and 5 oz., to taste) to the batter, along with a teaspoon of cinnamon and a dash of cayenne pepper (about 1/8 tsp.). Top it with pecan halves and a homemade caramel sauce.

** Honey-cinnamon with port-pomegranate poached pears – replace 1/2 cup of the sugar with 1/2 cup of honey, add about a teaspoon or more (to taste) of cinnamon. Take 2 pears (any variety you like or whatever is in season), peeled and cored, and poach them in a boiling poaching liquid of port wine, pomegranate juice/seeds, a couple of “coins” of fresh ginger, a cinnamon stick, and about a 1/4 cup of sugar. Poach them until tender, then let cool. Strain the poaching liquid and simmer until reduced to a syrupy-glaze consistency, then cool. Thinly slice the cooled pears and fan them out atop the cooled cheesecake. Pour the cooled poaching syrup over the pears, then sprinkle the top with chopped walnuts and fresh pomegranate seeds.

Some variations from Jenny (from JennyBakes):

**Key lime – add zest from one lime to sugar before mixing with cream cheese. Substitute lemon juice, alcohol, and vanilla with key lime juice.

**Cheesecakelets – put in muffin tins, ramekins, or custard cups. Try baking 20-35 minutes, or until still a little jiggly, and cool as before.

Overall it was a very good and easy recipe and I would like to try some of the other variations in the future. If you make it, let me know how you like it. And check out the Daring Bakers’ blog roll to see what creations other members have come up with.

Happy baking!

Sharon
http://www.sugaredproductions.com/

The post Daring Bakers: Cheescake appeared first on Sugared Productions Blog.

And to add insult to injury they want me to make lasagna? Do they not know I am married to a 100% pure blooded Sicilian who will eat no other Italian food besides his mamma’s? Did I do something to piss off the Daring Bakers?

Well, being the stubborn me that I am, I did not let these obstacles deter me from my challenge. I expected to either throw it away cuz it would totally suck, or end up eating it myself for a whole week until it was all gone.

The March 2009 challenge was hosted by Mary of Beans and Caviar, Melinda of Melbourne Larder and Enza of Io Da Grande. They have chosen Lasagne of Emilia-Romagna from The Splendid Table by Lynne Rossetto Kasper as the challenge. If you want the recipes, click on the hosts’ sites above.

For this challenge we had to make our own homemade spinach pasta, and use a recipe for bechamel sauce and a meat ragu. Alrighty then! The only thing I have used my pasta machine for is fondant and gumpaste. But make the pasta I did. I totally screwed up the recipe and had to add about 3 more eggs to make it kneadable and non brick-like. I knew this was gunna be bad from the get go.

I made mine as rolls, rather than the traditional layered casserole because, well, that’s how I roll. HAHA. I crack myself up sometimes.

J saw the green pasta and asked what the heck was that? I told him I was making lasagna (which he does like) and that it was broccoli pasta and he would love it. I told him it was broccoli because he loves broccoli and if he knew it was spinach he might not even try it.

Well, later that evening as the lasagna is baking he comes into my office and says,

J: Mom, that stuff has spinach in it?
Me: Getting nervous and pretending I did not lie earlier: Yeah, it does.
J: You said it was broccoli. I saw a package in the garbage can that said spinach.
Me: (Busted!) I did? Oh, I just said the wrong thing. It tastes just like broccoli. You won’t even taste it in the lasagna. Trust me, you will like it.
J: Yeah, whatever.

OK, so I know for sure he’s gunna hate it.

And hubby hates all things white sauce and not made by his mom Gina. But, I must forge on as any true Daring Baker would do. I will get my photo shots for the blog, get credit for the challenge, and move on with my miserable lie filled life.

OK. At least he agreed to try it. He looks miserable. But he does that a lot when I take pictures.

What do you think J-Man? He gave it a thumbs up, but in a cool teenager kinda way. (See the one little thumb up?)

He likes it! Hey Mikey!

The post Daring Bakers: Lasagna! appeared first on Sugared Productions Blog.

 
It is extremely dense and rich, soft on the inside, and basically tastes like ganache. I served mine on a pool of raspberry coulis. OK, we all know I did not make coulis from scratch. I used sleeved raspberry pastry filling and blended it with water and some granulated sugar in my food processor. Worked and tasted great!

Hubby, who is a very picky dessert eater, liked this one very much.

The post Valentine Flourless Chocolate Cake appeared first on Sugared Productions Blog.

Traditionally, tuiles are thin, crisp almond cookies that are gently molded over a rolling pin or arched form while they are still warm. Once set, their shape resembles the curved French roofing tiles for which they’re named.

J said the cookies looked like the flowers in Bikini Bottom on Sponge Bob. He is right! They are a delightfully thin, light , not too sweet cookie. Perfect with mouse, pudding, sorbet ice cream or a spot o tea. Easy and fast too, and fun to shape while they are warm. Give them a try!

____________________________________

J had a close encounter with the hair dryer. He is such a goofball. Gawd I love that kid.

Happy Cooky-ing,
Sharon
http://www.sugaredproductions.com/

The post Daring Bakers: Tuiles appeared first on Sugared Productions Blog.

I have to admit that I was a tad disappointed when I read that my first challenge would be a savory recipe of pizza dough. I am not a cook by any stretch of the imagination. I am into sweets. Period. End of discussion. But, we love pizza in this house, so I embraced the challenge and gave it my all. In the end, I had a ball with the pizza variations and the photo taking. You would have thought the Food Network was in my kitchen with all the light stands and tripods set up in there. Of course I had no clue what I was doing, but it was fun anyway.

This month’s challenge was hosted by Rosa of Rosa’s Yummy Yums. You can find the dough recipe on her blog. The rules stated that we had to try to toss the pizza dough; which I did and failed miserably; hence no photos of that. But I took a couple of hundred shots of everything else! (Don’t get nervous; I am not going to post them all.) But almost all, tee hee.

I made one long rectangular pizza for hubby and I to share. His section was pepperoni, black forest ham, green and black olives with red sauce and mozzarella. My side was Canadian bacon, black olives and pineapple.

I baked it on the back of a cookie sheet at 500 degrees as the recipe stated, but found that temperature to be too high. The top was cooking too fast and drying out, while the center of the dough was not fully cooked. It could have used a few more minutes in the oven.

That being said, it was still really delicious, and a very easy dough to make. You do have to make it the day before so it can ferment, but it took no time at all to do. My pizza was just as yummy reheated in the oven the next day.

Little chef hands at work.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ta daaaaaa!

 

 

 

His was cheesy and oozy and gorgeous.

 

 

 

His baked up beautifully and while I did not taste his, he enjoyed it a lot.

 

 

 

 

Then I also saved 2 portions of dough to make dessert pizzas with. J wanted chocolate chip like they serve at Sicily’s Pizza. Do you guys have Sicily’s? If not, too bad cuz it’s yummy. I made a crumble for the top out of flour, sugar and butter

.

 

 

 

 

This time I baked the dessert pizzas at 350 and let them go a while longer, and the crust and top baked up better that way. It was good, although personally I would have preferred a thin layer of peanut butter under the chocolate chips. J dusted the top with powdered sugar and went to town on it, so I think it was a thumbs up.

 

 

Here are two of my artsy foody photographer wanna be pics:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For hubby I made a blueberry crumble pizza:

 

 

 

I use canned blueberry pie filling (gasp!) and made a crumble topping from flour, oatmeal, cinnamon, brown sugar and butter.

 

 

I overcompensated for the undercooked dough in the savory pizza by keeping this one in the oven a tad too long. But it really only affected the very outer crust, so all was fine.

 

 

 

This was really yummy, I think my favorite of all the pizzas.

 

 

 

 

 

More artsy shots. How am I doing?

 

 

 

So, all in all I would say my first Daring Baker’s Challenge was a success. And really a lot of fun. My friend Heather has joined also, and I am trying to convince my sister to join too. (Come on Barb, you know you want to.) I am looking forward to next month already. If you would like to see what other Bakers did this month, check out the blogroll.

Happy Baking Everyone!

 

Sharon

http://www.sugaredproductions.com/

 

The post Pizza! Pizza! Daring Bakers Challenge appeared first on Sugared Productions Blog.