Daring Bakers: Cheesecakes

I love how the camera can be so deceiving. While not a Cheesecake Factory size slice, you might think that this is slightly bigger than it really is.

In general, I'm not a cheesecake fan. When I was in high school, however, there was this cheesecake/antique shop that did have a great cake -- it was light and fluffy and even eggy, rather than dense and thick.

I had fun with this challenge, trying to create a small size cheese cake that my family might even be willing to sample. I halved the recipe for both crust and filling. For the crust, I swapped the graham crackers for chocolate wafers and reduced the sugar a bit.

For the filling, I used RF cream cheese, followed the recipe. When it was time to add the cream, I heated part of the cream with some instant espresso powder, and combined it with 2/3 of the batter. I took another few tbsp of cream and melted 1 oz bittersweet chocolate in it. After filling the crust with the coffee batter, I swirled in the chocolate.

My batter resulted in one 6" cheesecake and 3 cheese cake "muffins".

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

TWD: Chocolate Bread Pudding

I steered clear of bread pudding for a long, long time. I lumped it together with rice pudding (which I made for the first time only recently), and grits. Perhaps it was the "Greystone bite" of grits that I endured almost daily through three stints at sleep away camp. Maybe the dreaded association came from lunch line in Wetherell, where on occasion, the menu contained not only bread pudding for the masses, but also "On-Yon" soup, and after alumni weekend, "muscles."

Then one night, A and I were having a celebratory dinner at Harvest. For the life of me, I can't recall what we were celebrating, but I know, given our restaurant budget of "only if someone else is paying" that we were surely celebrating. Early in the meal, our server asked if we wanted the bread pudding, noting that it was baked to order. Given the winter weather outside, A jumped at the bread pudding, and it was surprisingly good -- studded with with good chunks, and drizzled with a creme anglaise.

I'll have to try this one again, as I think that my ratios of pudding to bread were simply off. It was a bit dry. Although I'm kidding myself if I think I can recreate the magic of a Harvest celebration in my own kitchen.

TWD: Banana Cream Pie

Banana Cream Pie....

...is best when every bite contains banana.