dessert

Bloomin’ easy vanilla cheesecake + Easter, a birthday, & anniversary

, , ,

Easter this year was pretty special. I always love having four days off, but this year Easter coincided with Alastair’s birthday (on Saturday) and our first year wedding anniversary (on Monday).

We celebrated Alastair’s birthday at home with Birthday Lasagne. Every year, I ask him what he would like for dinner on his birthday. I offer to make him anything. And every year he asks for lasagne! I’m often rather critical of my cooking, but even I thought that his Birthday Lasagne this year was frickin’ awesome! The meat sauce was flavoursome and rich, having simmered for a couple of hours, and there was oodles of cheese.

Apart from Birthday Lasagne, Alastair also had Birthday Pancakes and Birthday Cheesecake. He was rather spoilt.

Cheesecake

The recipe for the cheesecake was from Jamie Oliver’s “Cook with Jamie” (the recipe is at the end of this post). In the book, he calls it the Bloomin’ Easy Vanilla Cheesecake. Was it easy? Well, it would’ve been much easier if I hadn’t been trying to juggle making lasagne at the same time! I broke my food processor pulsing the crumbs for the base – the tabs locking the bowl in place snapped. Then the cream cheese wasn’t quite soft enough when I started beating the filling, and I got cream cheese on my face, on the bench, on other appliances, basically everywhere!

The other thing to note about this cheesecake is that it’s HUGE. It has almost a kilo of cream cheese in and although the book says it serves 8-10 people, I reckon 12 people is a more accurate number. If I had realised just how big it was going to be, I would’ve scaled it down. It’s pretty rich and filling, so it’s not the kind of dessert where you’ll have seconds. We had a piece of it after our anniversary dinner the next day, and I thought it tasted better after sitting in the fridge for a day.

Seafood

We also celebrated our anniversary in the weekend, again at home. We popped a bottle of champagne that had been a wedding present (thanks Scott!) and I prepared some garlic and chilli tiger prawns, steamed mussels, pan-fried salmon and tuna sashimi.

Seafood

It was a wonderful way to celebrate our anniversary. And we had such a lovely weekend that it was hard to go back to work on Tuesday!

Cheesecake slice

Bloomin’ easy vanilla cheesecake

From Jamie Oliver’s Cook with Jamie
Serves 8-10 (serves 12 in my opinion)

150g /5 & 1/2 oz unsalted butter, melted, plus extra for greasing
250g /9oz digestive biscuits, crushed
115g/4oz caster sugar
3 tablespoons cornflour
900g/2lb full fat cream cheese, at room temperature
2 large free-range eggs
115ml/4 fl oz double cream
1 vanilla pod, scored lengthways and seeds removed, or 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
zest of 1 lemon
zest of 1 orange

for the cherry compote
400g/14oz stoned cherries (I used a punnet of raspberries)
3 heaped tablespoons caster sugar
options: a swig of port or whisky
icing sugar, for dusting

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C/350 degrees F, and grease and line the bottom and sides of a 24cm/9 & 1/2 inch springform cake tin. Mix the biscuits and butter in a bowl, press into the base of hte prepared tin and cook for 10 minutes. Then remove from the oven and allow to cool.

Turn the oven up to 200 degrees C/400 degrees F. Combine the sugar and cornflour in a bowl. Add the cream cheese and beat, ideally with an electric whisk, until creamy. Add the eggs and beat well. Gradually add the cream, beating until smooth, then beat in the vanilla seeds or extract and lemon and orange zest.

Scrape the mixture on to the biscuit base, and gently shake it to level out the surface. Put the cheesecake in the centre of the oven and bake for 40 to 45 minjutes until the top is golden brown and the filling has set around the edges. (A piece of foil over the top will stop it browning too much.) Let it cool at room temperature and serve after 2 or 3 hours. Or, for a slightly firmer texture, put it in the fridge until it’s nice and cold.

Before serving, put the cherries in a pan, sprinkle over the sugar and add a splash of water. Put on a low to medium heat and simmer gently for 10 minutes. If you’ve got some port or whisky handy, feel free to add some. When the compote has reduced down it may be a little dry, so add a splash of water to loosen it. Remove from the heat and let it cool down, then serve spooned over the cheesecake with a dusting of icing sugar.

Banoffee Pie

, ,

Bannoffe pie

The last time that I had banoffee pie was in Wellington. Alastair and I had one way tickets to the other side of the world, and didn’t know when we would be back. Just before we left, Alastair, Pat and I went out to a restaurant and ate ourselves silly. We were greedy little piglets and ordered dessert too, which was banoffee pie. Even though we were stuffed, we ate every last crumb and enjoyed it immensely. A few days later, Alastair and I got on a plane, and we didn’t see my Bro again for a year.

Four and a half years have gone by since that banoffee pie and life has changed a lot. Alastair and I travelled, moved countries, settled down, got married and imported my brother into Australia. Life may have changed but we still talk about that night in Welly and reminisce about that pie.

Banoffee pie was apparently invented in 1972 by the Hungry Monk restaurant in East Sussex, UK. It’s a dessert with a pastry base, covered with layers of dulce de leche, bananas and cream. Once you’ve prepared the base and the dulce de leche, assembling the pie is very easy.

I’ve been wanting to make a banoffee pie for ages, but with the high banana prices over the past couple of years it never happened. Until the other weekend where I found an occasion for it – an Out of Africa barbeque! (Basically catching up with friends after our return.) The shortcrust pastry recipe came from Donna Hay’s Modern Classics 2 and is extremely easy and has never failed on me yet. I love making desserts using shortcrust pastry because people are always impressed – and yet it’s the easiest thing in the world. The rest of the recipe I took from Jamie Oliver’s Jamie’s Kitchen. I cheated on the dulce de leche due to lack of time (and fear of exploding cans) and bought ready made caramel topping from the supermarket. The canned caramel topping was acceptable, but I have no doubt that boiling my own cans would’ve been better.

By the way, do try the almonds in Jamie’s recipe. They were wonderful on top of the pie, giving a bit of crunch.

Sweet Shortcrust pastry
From Donna Hay Modern Classics 2

2 cups plain (all-purpose) flour
3 tablespoons caster (superfine) sugar
150g (5 oz) cold butter, chopped
2-3 tablespoons iced water

Process the flour, sugar and butter in a food processor until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. While the mother is running, add enough iced water to form a smooth dough and process until just combined. Knead the dough lightly, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Roll out the pastry on a lightly floured surface or between sheets of non-stick baking paper until 2-3mm (1/8 in) thick, or whatever thickness is required, and line the tart tin. (This recipe makes about 350g (12 oz) pastry, which is sufficient to line up to a 26cm (10 in) pie dish or tart tin.)

Preheat the oven to 180 degree C (350 degree F). Place a piece of non-stick baking paper over the pastry and fill with baking weights or uncooked rice or beans. Bake for 10 minutes, remove the weights and bake for a further 10 minutes or until the pastry is golden.

Banoffee Pie
From Jamie Oliver’s Jamie’s Kitchen

200g/7oz blanched, whole almonds
280g/10oz icing sugar
2 x 397g/14oz tins of condensed milk, boiled
6 bananas
565ml/1 pint double cream
1 tablespoon Camp coffee
seeds from 1 vanilla pod

Preheat the oven to 180 degree C (350 degree F). Give the almonds a rinse in water, drain them a little and mix them quickly with the icing sugar in a bowl until they are really sticky. Place on a baking tray and toast for 15 minutes in the oven until they are golden and crispy, turning them every couple of minutes. Don’t let them turn black or they will taste bitter. Remove from the oven and allow to cool.

Make and bake the pastry (as above), remove from the oven and let it cool.

Spread the toffee as thick as you like across the base of the pastry. Slice the bananas and place on top of the toffee, then whip the cream. Add the Camp coffee – add a little less if you’d like a more subtle coffee flavour – and the vanilla seeds.
Then dollop the cream on top of the bananas, as high and as rough as you like.

Sprinkle the almonds over the top of the banoffe pie and serve immediately.

1 2 3