baking – assorted sweet

Andalusian spiced oxtail casserole & Catalan lemon tart

Spanish lunch

Hola! Welcome, welcome! Come in, take a seat, and get comfy. I would feed you all if I could, but unfortunately because technology hasn’t quite progressed to that point, you’ll just have to read all about the following lunch, and wish you had been there!

The theme for Week 35’s Cookbook Challenge is Spanish, and last Sunday a few bloggers came over for a Spanish themed potluck lunch. At first I really struggled with the Spanish theme and wasn’t sure what to make. I don’t own any Spanish cookbooks, and couldn’t find anything in any of my other cookbooks that wasn’t paella. I didn’t want to make paella, and interesting no one else made it either – we really needed Kat to come and cook it for us!

After a whinge on twitter, I received some good suggestions from @gastromaniac, which helped me decide on one dish – salted wrinkled potatoes with mojo verde. The following day, I went to the library and while I couldn’t find any Spanish cookbooks, I borrowed Saffron and Sunshine which contained assorted recipes from around the Mediterranean. When I flicked through it, I realised it was a goldmine and I came away with four additional recipes I wanted to make. So um, that would be five recipes altogether. Uh oh. I did consider culling my number of recipes but I really wanted to make them all.

So I did! (more…)

Blueberry and pistachio muesli slice

Fail slice

Cookbook Challenge: Week 29
Theme: Blue
Recipe: Blueberry and pistachio muesli slice
From: Australian Women’s Weekly “Bake”

For the Cookbook Challenge this week, the theme is “blue”. And for the Challenge, I present “FAIL SLICE”. What is fail slice? It’s when you forget a vital ingredient when baking. Yes, major fail.

But let me tell you what it’s supposed to be. I baked a slice for this week’s theme – a blueberry and pistachio muesli slice. Sounds okay, right? The original recipe used cranberries, which I substituted with dried blueberries to fit with this week’s theme.

It all started out fine. It’s the easiest recipe to put together. Basically, it just involves melting sugar, butter and honey in a saucepan, and then adding the berries, oats, pistachios and self-raising flour. Oh yeah, unless you’re me, and you just leave out the flour. Because why would a slice need flour?

Funnily enough, when I mixed it all together, I thought to myself, “I wonder if this is supposed to have flour in it?” Did that make me reread the recipe? Nope! I told myself it didn’t, and put it in the oven!

In fact, I didn’t realise my error until after the slice had been in the oven for almost 15 minutes and I realised it didn’t quite look right…. and it was kind of burnt around the edges… and oh. Wait, what was that about flour again?

I am not sure what it tastes like. I’m sure if it’s made properly, it’ll taste great! Someone try it and let me know!

Cookie monster cupcakes

And since it’s blue week, I’ll leave you with a picture of Cookie Monster cupcakes. They didn’t quite turn out the way I imagined them in my head – I certainly didn’t imagine them looking so demented (and these are the good ones, seriously). The cupcakes are these vanilla cupcakes with the addition of crushed oreos in the batter and the face is made from fondant, with a mini chocolate chip cookie shoved in the mouth. Cookie, cookie, cookie!

See previous Cookbook Challenge posts here.

Update: see the round up for this week at My Food Trail.

Fail slice

Blueberry and pistachio muesli slice

Adapted from Australian Women’s Weekly “Bake”

125g butter, chopped coarsely
1/3 cup (75g) firmly packed brown sugar
2 tablespoons honey
1& 1/2 cups (135g) rolled oats
1/2 cup (75g) self-raising flour
1 cup (130g) dried cranberries
1 cup (140g) roasted pistachios, chopped coarsely

Preheat oven to 180C and grease a 20cm x 30cm slice pan. Line the base of the pan with baking paper, extending it a couple of cms over the side.

In a medium saucepan, heat the butter, sugar and honey over medium heat until the sugar has dissolved. Stir in the remaining ingredients. Tip the mixture into the prepared slice pan and press firmly into it.

Bake for about 20 minutes and cool in the pan before cutting.

Lemon cheesecake

Lemon cheesecake

Mhmmmm cheesecake. I love cheesecake but it’s not something I have often because it’s so decadent. But any food consumed during Christmas has no calories (right??) so I took this cheesecake along on the day. There was tons of food already, so we only ate half of it, and the other half went home with me. I was super happy – because it meant I was able to plate up a piece to take photos. That’s right, I didn’t care about eating the leftovers, I just wanted to photograph it!

I have made baked cheesecakes tons of times before (see here or here), but have never made a gelatine based cheesecake. It’s actually much easier to make than a baked one, although I really do like a baked cheesecake.

Lemon cheesecake

If you’re like me, and don’t like your desserts sickly sweet, this cheesecake is perfect. I think I added double the amount of rind specified (I grated the rind of two lemons and just decided to add it all in) so it was tangy, but not too much so. The biscuit base did seem quite soft, although perhaps that was due to sitting in the fridge for a day. Next time I make it, I’m going to try baking the biscuit base in the oven to firm it up more.

I do still prefer a baked cheesecake over unbaked, but this is a good version and I’ll make it again. What about you – do you have a cheesecake preference? Do baked cheesecakes or unbaked cheesecakes have your heart?

Lemon cheesecake

Lemon cheesecake

From The Australian Women’s Weekly Food We Love

Serves 8

250g packet plain sweet biscuits
125g butter, melted
250g cream cheese, softened
395g sweetened condensed milk
2 teaspoons finely grated lemon rind
1/3 cup lemon juice
1 teaspoon gelatine
1 tablespoon water

In a food processor, pulse the biscuits until they resemble fine breadcrumbs. Add the melted butter and process until combined. In a 20cm springform tin, press the biscuit mixture evenly over the base and side, and refridgerate for about 30 minutes or until the biscuit mixture is firm.

Beat the cream cheese with an electric mixer until it is smooth. Add the condensed milk, rind and lemon jice and beat until smooth.

In a small heatproof bowl, sprinkle the gelatine over the water, and stand the bowl in a small pot of simmering water. Whisk until the gelatine dissolves and let it cool for 5 minutes.

Stir the gelatine mixture into the cream cheese mixture. Pour it into the biscuit crumb crust, cover and refrigerate for about 3 hours or overnight until set.

Rice and lemon souffle

Rice and lemon souffle

Cookbook Challenge: Week 1
Theme: Citrus
Recipe: Rice and lemon souffle
From Made in Italy by Giorgio Locatelli

Hooray! It’s my first Cookbook Challenge recipe. The theme for the first Challenge is citrus and I decided to make a rice and lemon souffle.

This is not a quick recipe to make and it uses rather a few bowls. I started with the lemons – large lemons are halved and hollowed out, before being brushed with a juice, sugar and butter syrup. The lemon “ramekins” are popped into the fridge while the rice is cooked in two parts. One part becomes like a “rice milk” and the second batch is to just cook the grains until they are al dente. After this, you’re supposed to drain and discard the milk the rice was cooked in. I missed this step, but it didn’t seem to affect the end result.

After the cooked grains have cooled, the rice milk and the grains are combined with cornflour and gelatine. Next, meringue is whipped up, and combined with the rice, before being spooned into the lemon halves and baked until they (hopefully!) rise and become golden.

I didn’t have any issues with making the souffles – mine rose well and they looked very pretty in the lemons. It did take me a while to get everything together though. And as soon as the souffles were out of the oven, the race was on to photograph them before they deflated!

Rice and lemon souffle

But most importantly, how did they taste? Well, actually, I thought they were rather bland. The rice was only cooked with milk, so I didn’t think the souffle was sweet enough. Not only that, but cooking the souffle in the lemons only imparted a TINY amount of lemon flavour. It smelt fantastic while it was in the oven, but once out you could barely taste any lemon. It didn’t seem worth the fuss of making the lemon ramekins.

I think this would be better if these were cooked in normal ramekins, with a layer of rice pudding on the bottom, then some lemon curd, and finally the meringue on top. So it’s probably not something I would make again, at least, not without significant variations.

Finally, I halved the recipe below, but I had a ton of rice/meringue mixture left over. I filled 3 lemons, and still had enough for four LARGE ramekins. The souffle in the ramekins rose really well though – check it out below!

Update: for a round up of all Cookbook Challenge posts for week 1, see My Food Trail for details. Thanks Rilsta!

Rice and lemon souffle

Rice and lemon souffle

From Made in Italy by Giorgio Locatelli

Serves 6 (I reckon more like 10, but whatever)

200g carnaroli rice
2 litres milk
1/2 vanilla pod, split lengthways
25g orange juice
50g caster sugar
50g unsalted butter
3 big similar sized lemons or oranges
65g cornflour
3 gelatine leaves, soaked in water and squeezed (the book doesn’t specific what strength gelatine leaves, I substituted with 3/4 tablespoon gelatine powder)

For the meringue:
250g egg whites
190g caster sugar

Place a tray into the fridge so that it gets cold. Preheat the oven to 200°C.

Prepare the lemons or oranges by trimming each end (so that it sits flat). Cut each fruit in half width ways and scoop out all the flesh with a spoon. Discard the flesh. Place the fruit “ramekins” into the fridge for 30-60 minutes.

In a small pan, place 80g of the rice with half of the milk. Bring it to the boil, then turn to a simmer and let it cook until the rice is really soft. Blend the rice and milk with a hand/stick blender until smooth and then put the mixture through a fine sieve. Set aside.

Scrap the seeds out of the vanilla pod, and place with the rest of the milk into a pan. Add the vanilla pod and bring the milk to the boil. Add the rest of the rice, turn down to a simmer, and cook until the rice is al dente. Drain through a fine sieve, remove the vanilla pod and spread the rice out on the tray that you placed in the fridge. Set it aside to cool (but not in the fridge).

In a separate pan, warm the orange juice and sugar. When the sugar has dissolved, take if off the heat, and whisk in the butter until incorporated. Brush the inside and rims of your prepared fruit with the orange juice mixture. Make sure each bit is completely covered, this seals and smooths the insides so that the souffle doesn’t catch as it rises.

Lay the fruit upside down on a tray and place it back into the fridge for about 5 minutes to drain off any excess syrup.

With a knife, chop through the cooled rice grains to produce finer pieces. Place into a bowl.

Put the reserved rice “milk” back on the heat, keeping back 4 tablespoons. Add the cornflour to this milk.

When the rice milk comes up to the boil, add the cornflour mixture, stirring all the time. Cook for about a minute.

Remove from the heat and add the gelatine. When it has dissolved, pour the mixture over the ice grains, stirring all the time as it will be very thick.

Next, make the meringue. Whisk the egg whites in a mixer until soft peaks form. Add the sugar slowly, until the whites form stiff peaks.

Fold a third of the meringue into the rice mixture. Add the rest of the meringue to the rice mixture and fold in lightly. Don’t overwork it.

Spoon the mixture into your prepared fruit, to about 1/2cm below the rim. Bake them in the oven for about 8 minutes, or until puffed up and golden.

Fig, berry and pistachio burnt-butter tart

Fig, berry and pistachio burnt-butter tart

Oh, fig season! It never seems to last long enough. Last year I bookmarked a recipe in Gourmet Traveller for this fig, berry and pistachio burnt-butter tart but didn’t get around to making it before fig season ended. Well, I was determined to make it this year and finally had the opportunity to do so recently.

One of the important aspects of the recipe is the burnt butter. There was a nice tip in the magazine about listening to the butter as it cooks. As the butter becomes darker, the pitch of the bubbling becomes deeper, until it becomes almost silent. I was a bit dubious, but lo and behold, when the butter became dark nut brown it was almost completely quiet! Amazing.

The rest of the recipe was pretty easy – whisking eggwhites until firm and then folding in icing sugar, flour, ground pistachios, lemon rind and finally the burnt-butter.

Fig, berry and pistachio burnt-butter tart

Upon tasting the tart, I felt that it was just ho hum. Perhaps that was my fault though – I didn’t have any raspberries, so I substituted with blueberries. The tartness and colour of raspberries would most likely have worked better. I also didn’t feel that the figs had any presence in the tart, almost as if they could’ve been left out with no noticeable difference. Apart from those criticisms there wasn’t anything really wrong with it – it just didn’t live up to expectations after waiting a whole year to make it. Perhaps it could be improved with some tweaks, but I certainly don’t have the patience – it will most likely go into the “will probably never make again” pile! (Perhaps someone out there has more patience than me?)

It did look pretty though!

Fig, berry and pistachio burnt-butter tart


Fig, raspberry and pistachio burnt-butter tart


From Gourmet Traveller magazine – February 2008


Serves 6-8

120 grams cold butter, coarsely chopped
1 vanilla bean, spilt and seeds scraped
3 eggwhites
225 grams pure icing sugar, sieved
70grams plain flour
60grams pistachio kernels, ground
plus whole kernels to garnish
1 & 1/2 tablespoons finely grated lemon rind
125 grams raspberries (I used blueberries)
6 figs, quartered
165grams caster sugar
80ml dessert wine
Thick cream to serve

Cook butter and vanilla bean and seeds over a medium-high heat until dark nut brown (around 5 minutes). Cool and remove vanilla bean.

Preheat oven to 160°C. Whisk eggwhites and a pinch of salt until firm peaks form. Fold in icing sugar, them flour, pistachio and rind.

Fold in burnt butter and spoon into a greased base-lined and floured 11.5cm x 35cm fluted loose-bottomed tart pan. Scatter a quarter of the raspberries over, top with overlapping figs and bake for 30 minutes or until golden and firm to the touch. Stand in pan on a wire rack for 10 minutes, then remove from pan and cool completely on a wire rack.

Meanwhile, combine caster sugar and 50ml of water over medium heat and stir until the sugar dissolves. Bring to the boil and cook, brunching down sides of the pan with a wet pastry brush, for 4-5 minutes or until caramel in colour, remove from heat and add wine, swirling to combine (be careful as mixture will spit). Add the remaining raspberries and stir to combine, then cool.

To serve, drizzle raspberry-caramel over tart, scatter over pistachios and raspberries and serve warm or at room temperature with extra raspberry-caramel and thick cream.

Christmas baking: almond crescents, gingerbread cookies and cherry tarts

Almond Crescents

Happy 2009! I hope that everyone had a fun, safe and hangover free New Years. I would love to say that there were no hangovers in this house but that would be a lie….. a big fat lie, as someone spent the first day of the year SEVERELY ill – and it wasn’t me!

But back to Xmas – for our festivities with the KKC, I prepared some baked goods so we would have some sweet stuff to munch on during the day.

One of the items I made were cookies that Sarah posted a recipe for recently. They were simple to make, and delicious. It was impossible to eat only one of these things – good thing the recipe made quite a few otherwise there wouldn’t have been any left for Xmas.

Gingerbread cookies Gingerbread cookies
Gingerbread cookies Gingerbread cookies

I also made gingerbread biscuits – teddy bears, gingerbread people, xmas trees and stars. And a special lamedeer (bottom left) for Bro. It was late when I decorated them, and my icing skills need a lot of work, as evidenced by some of the crazed expressions on my gingerbread people!

The gingerbread biscuits were okay, although I preferred the mixture before it was baked. I reckon there should’ve been more ginger. I will have to hunt for a better recipe for next year!

Cherry tarts

I also tried out a cherry tart recipe but rather than a large tart, I made smaller ones. The dough made a very crumbly, almost biscuit-type pastry – they were very enjoyable. And you know, it’s not summer or Xmas without cherries!

Cherry tarts


Cherry Tart


From Bill Granger’s Holiday

Serves 8-10

Pastry

125g unsalted butter, melted and cooled
90g caster sugar
175g plain flour
A pinch of salt
2 tablespoons almond meal

Filling

170ml cream
2 eggs, lightly beaten
2 teaspons vanilla extract
3 tablespoons caster sugar
2 tablespoons plain flour
550g cherries, halved and pitted (fresh are best)

Preheat the oven to 180°C and grease a 24cm round loose-bottomed tart tin.

Make the pastry by stirring together the butter and sugar in a large mixing bowl. Add the flour and salt and stir to make a soft dough. Transfer the dough to the tin and press evenly into the base and side of the tin with your fingertips. Put the tin on a baking tray and bake for 12-15 minutes. Remove from the oven and sprinkle the almond meal over the base.

Meanwhile, to make the filling, whisk together the cream, eggs, vanilla and sugar. Add the flour and whisk until well mixed. Arrange the cherries, slightly overlapping, over the pastry base and pour the cream filling evenly over the cherries.

Return the tart to the oven for a further 40-50 minutes until the filling is firm. Leave to cool and serve with cream or ice cream.

Apple pie with custard

Apple pie

This apple pie recipe is from an issue of Delicious and is supposedly Ben O’Donoghue’s Grandma’s recipe. Now, far be it for me to question a recipe that belongs to someone’s gran (respect for your elders and all that), but it did raise a couple of queries. Normally when I make pastry, I add some water to bring the dough together. With this recipe, the pastry was supposed to come together with just the egg yolks (i.e. no water). I was dubious, but was willing to try it. Well, after trying it out, there was no way my dough was going to come together, so I had to add a little bit of iced water. Once I had passed that hurdle, I then found that I had a ton of dough! I had enough dough for two pies. I used half and stashed half in my freezer.

These little pies are from my second batch. They didn’t turn out very attractive – the pastry shrunk A LOT in the oven – but at least they tasted good! The pastry was crumbly and buttery, and somehow slightly flakey at the bottom of my pies. Maybe gran does know best after all.

Apple pie


Ben’s Gran’s apple pie with custard


From Delicious magazine August 2008

Serves 6

1 kg Granny Smith apples
1 cup (220g) caster sugar, plus extra to sprinkle
Juice of 1/2 lemon
3 cloves
1 star anise

Pastry

3 cups (450g) plain flour
1/3 cup (40g) custard powder
1 cup (150g) caster sugar
350g chilled unsalted butter, chopped
3 egg yolks, plus 1 lightly beaten egg to brush

Custard

300ml each milk and pure (thin) cream
1 vanilla bean, split, seeds scraped
8 egg yolks
1/2 cup (110g) caster sugar

For pastry, place flour, custard powder, sugar and a pinch of salt in a food processor. Add butter and process until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Add yolks and process until pastry comes together into a smooth ball. (Add a couple of tablespoons of iced water if the pastry doesn’t come together.) Divide into 2, then knead each into flat discs. Enclose in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 1 hour.

Meanwhile, peel and core apples. Place in a pan over medium heat with sugar, juice and spices. Cook fo 10 minutes or until fruit is tender but still holds its shape. Cool, then discard spices.

For custard, place milk, cream, vanilla pod and seeds in a pan over medium heat. Bring to just below boiling point then set aside for 15 minutes to infuse. Meanwhile, whisk yolks and sugar in a bowl until thick and pale, then gradually whisk in warm cream mixture to combine (discard the vanilla pod). REturn mixture to pan over low heat. Stir with a wooden spoon for approx 6 minutes or until thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. Strain through a sieve. Cool, then cover surface with plastic wrap to prevent a skin from forming. Chill until needed.

Preheat oven to 180°C. Divide one of the pastry discs in half, and roll each half to 3mm thick, 28mm circles (the other pastry disc can be frozen for later use). Place 1 circle on a lined baking tray. Pile the apple mixture into the centre, leaving a 3cm border, then brush border with egg. Top with remaining pastry, press down border, then trim edges into a neat circle. Pinch edges with your fingers to seal. Brush top with beaten egg, then bake for 30 minutes. Remove, sprinkle with caster sugar, then bake for a further 10 minutes until golden. Serve with the custard.

Apple, dried cherry/cranberry and almond loaf

A couple of weeks ago, the Good Food and Wine Show was here in Melbourne. Like we do most years, Bro and I went along. This year seemed quite good, and there were some new products/stalls that I hadn’t seen before. Previously there were lots of stalls with cheese and yoghurt – and there were hardly any this year. I’m not sure what that means, but I found it interesting.

I had a good time, and came home with some souvenirs, which included heavy show bags and 13 blocks of Lindt chocolate! My lovely Bro helped carry the heavy bags home without complaint <----- that is a lie! He complained the WHOLE TIME! But I better be careful or he won't carry them next year... love you, Bro! ;)

One of my souvenirs was a Bill Granger DVD that had a few snippets from his cooking show. Alastair and I watched it last week while we had breakfast (crumpets with butter and honey if you’re interested). The first recipe was for an apple, dried cherry and almond loaf.

Apple, dried cranberry and almond loaf

The loaf he made looked pretty good, so I decided to turn on the oven and do some baking. Dried cherries aren’t a pantry staple of mine, but I had a pack of dried cranberries that I used instead. Apart from the cranberry substitution, I basically followed the recipe outlined here on lifestyle food.

I read recently that if you’re measuring honey, you should oil the measuring cup/spoon. (Clever bakers may know this already.) The recipe calls for 3 tablespoons of honey so I got to try it out – and whatdoyouknow! The honey slid straight out!

After the loaf had baked I was sooooooo patient and waited until it had cooled completely before slicing and tasting it. It was good – not too sweet, but with bits of tangy fruit and nuttiness from the almonds and oats.

Apple, dried cranberry and almond loaf

It’s not a very moist loaf though, and the next day it seemed to have dried out. In the DVD, Bill suggested toasting it and eating it with ricotta. I tried toasting a slice and found that it helped revive it (plus it smelt amazing). Worth a try if you’re after something for morning/afternoon tea. Or maybe even breakfast!

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.

Mini cheesecakes

Mini cheesecake

I made these little cheesecakes for a gathering at a friend’s place. They taste quite light, despite the ingredients, and they’re not too sweet and rich. The fruit on the top helps give a bit of tartness. They were very popular. I don’t think they would have been as impressed if they had known how easy they were to make.

The recipe came from a book that I bought at a book fair for $2. It’s a recipe book put out by Kraft with recipes for cooking with Philadelphia cream cheese. This is the only recipe I’ve made from it so far, probably because we rarely have cream cheese in the fridge. Now that I’ve had another look through it, there seems to be some interesting savoury recipes. I might have to stock up on cream cheese more often and try some out.

Mini cheesecake

Mini cheesecakes

Adapted from Heavenly Moments: cooking with Philadelphia Cream Cheese

Makes 24 mini cakes, or 12 larger ones

2 x 250 g block of cream cheese, softened
1 cup (225g) caster sugar
2 eggs
150g almondmeal
1/2 cup (125ml) sour cream
2 tablespoons custard powder
Fresh fruit (I used strawberries and blueberries)
2 tablespoons maple syrup

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C.
Line the bases of a muffin pan.
Beat the cream cheese and sugar in a medium bowl until just combined. Add the eggs, ground almonds, sour cream and custard powder, beating until smooth. Spoon in the the prepared pan. Top the mixture with fruit and drizzle with maple syrup.
Bake for 20-25 minutes or until set and golden (if you’re making small cakes, it may take less time).