Mini Cheesecakes!

I love cheesecake! They are fairly tricky to bake because they tend to crack, they are very rich and not something you make on a regular basis. But a few months ago I discovered this recipe for mini cheesecakes and I was really excited to try it out.

Cheesecake

Its super simple, so long as you can count to 2. :)

2 bricks of cream cheese (softened)
2/3 cup white sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla

Crust
This is my new favourite cheesecake crust recipe, courtesy of Bakerella.

3/4 cup Biscoff* cookie crumbs (or regular graham cracker crumbs)
3 tbsp melted butter

Topping
Your favourite fruit
Your favourite corresponding jam or syrup

* Biscoff cookies make an AMAZING cheesecake crust. But they are a little hard to find in Canada, although I've discovered that London Drugs stocks them but I haven't found anywhere else that does. If you can't find them, just use graham cracker crumbs or chocolate cookie crumbs, or whichever kind of cookie crumbs you like.

Prep: Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line prepare about 18 muffin cups.
Crust: Take your cookies and put them in a food processor. Run until the cookies have become fine cookie crumbs. Add melted butter. Stir until all the cookie crumbs are well coated. Press crumb mixture into bottom of muffin cups.
Cheesecake: Beat cream cheese on its own until it looks whipped. Add sugar, beat some more. Add eggs and vanilla beat, until smooth. Spoon batter into muffin cups until each cup is almost full. Bake for about 15-20 minutes.
Topping: When cheesecake has cooled microwave the jam just a little so that it is just a little more liquid-y. Then top each cheesecake with fruit and spoon jam over top.

I love, love, love this recipe. It makes the perfect size of cheesecakes for a dessert. Also, it looks really elegant, and if you serve them at a party or something people will think you spent a lot of time on them. :) In fact, they are so elegant, that a few weeks after I tried the recipe for the first time, I ended up making over 100 of them for a semi-formal Christmas banquet.Unfortunately, I was a little busy helping run the banquet, so I didn't manage to get a really good picture of all of the mini-cheesecakes. But it was pretty crazy. Also, note the cute little Christmas-y muffin cups, I really loved those.

One of the other reasons I love this recipe so much is because its so flexible. You can experiment with toppings (for the banquet, one of the toppings was pecans and caramel sauce, those ones disappeared pretty fast) or with crusts (like chocolate crumbs!) or you could even try playing with the filling, such as adding chocolate or raspberry sauce.

Homemade Turtles

Everyone loves Turtles... you know those chocolate-y caramel-y pecan-y treats that come in a flat box at Christmas. And you know what's better than the turtles from the store? Turtles made at home of course!

And it helps that they're not too hard to make!

So first you unwrap a whole ton of caramels and put them in a bowl with some milk.
Then you microwave them in 30s-1min intervals stirring in between until they are all melty
Then you throw in a few handfuls of pecans
Then spoon the pecan caramel goo onto a PARCHMENT PAPER lined cookie sheet (not waxed paper, I discovered that using wax paper was a very bad idea)
Then freeze the carmel blobs for an hour or more. While you're doing this microwave some chocolate according to package directions. Finally, take the caramels out of the fridge and drop them in the chocolate.
Cover them in chocolate. If they start to get too soft put the caramels back in the refrigerator. Drop the chocolate covered caramels onto another parchment paper covered cookie sheet and put them back in the freezer.
A few hours later you will have the most amazing homemade turtles, just be sure to let them thaw a bit before you bite in. :)

Colourful Sugar Cookies!

These photos are pretty old... as in from Halloween... which was three months ago-ish. But they are just so fun I had to post them!
We were having a chili dinner for 'All Hollow's Eve' with the church group on campus. So we were expecting a lot of people. And so we made a lot of cookies...
I really mean a lot of cookies. Mostly sugar cookies, and a few shortbread ones.
Then a bunch of friends and I decorated them...
It was a lot of fun and I wish I'd managed to take a picture of every decorated cookie because no two were the same!
It was great, and it gave me a chance to use some of the nearly three dozen cookie cutters I bought in Seattle in October. And it also made me not want to make rolled cookies again for a good long while...

Zambia, Paper Bag Princess and Mario Cakes

So I haven't posted in several months... oops. I was super busy this past semester with school and even when I got a chance to bake I didn't have time to write up a post, and half the time I forgot to even take pictures.

But I'm back at work now so I now have time to both bake and post!

I'm going to start with a few of the cakes I made over the past few months. No new recipes, just my usual standbys.

I made this one just last night, for some friends who are off to Zambia to do their final nursing practicums.

This was one of the ones where the reaction was the best part. I was already super happy with how it turned out and then when I saw how the girls reacted to it, it really made this one of my favourite cakes I've ever made.

This next one I can't take credit for really, my brother's girlfriend did pretty much all of the work on it but I just had to show it.
We made it for a girl who's favourite colour is grey and who was going as the paper bag princess for halloween. And, as an added bonus, inside was a rainbow cake!

And finally, I made this one for my cousin, and I know I have more photos of it but I can't figure out which camera they were on. So I'll probably write another post for it when I find them later.
I was using a new icing recipe which didn't turn out to be very good for piping and decorating, so I did a last minute grocery store run and improvised. Jelly Bellies are a little different to work with than icing, but I'm still happy with how it turned out.

Pinwheel Cookies

I've made these twice now and I'd have to say they are really not my favourite to make. There's a lot of rolling out and chilling and rolling out again. It takes a long time, too long in my opinion.

The recipe calls for them to be made into corners which is how I made them the first time. The second time, however they were for a fundraiser at my dad's work and so I dyed them the colours of the fundraising organization.

1 cup butter, softened
1 1/2 cups icing sugar
1 egg

3 cups flour
1/4 tsp salt

Optional:
1/3 cup Irish cream flavoured coffee whitener (I didn't add this)
1 tbsp cocoa

Beat butter and icing sugar. Stir in egg. Then add in 1 cup of flour and the salt. Mix well. Mix in the second cup of flour until is is completely incorporated, then add the final cup of flour. Mix in the rest of the flour well.

Divide dough into two or more sections. (I'm going to just use 2 for an example but extras are easy to add in) If desired, mix coffee whitener and/or cocoa into one portion. Mix until evenly coloured. Shape each portion into a log, wrap in plastic and chill for 2 hours or so. Roll out between two sheets of wax paper until it is about a 4x24 inch rectangle. Do this for each portion of dough. Then stack the sheets of dough on top of each other. Roll the stack of dough-sheets together. Roll the dough from the short end (if you're making corners, if making circles, roll from the long end) like a jelly roll. Wrap in wax paper or plastic wrap and chill for 6 more hours or overnight. Cut roll into 1/4 inch slices. Then, if you like, cut each slice into quarters. Bake at 350 for about 10 minutes.

If you wish you can make a chocolate coating to dip the quarters in.

Melt 1 cup milk chocolate chips in the microwave (or however you prefer). Toast some almonds and/or coconut. Dip the rounded edge of the cookies in the chocolate and then in the nut mixture.

Toy Story Cupcakes!

So, I saved the best for last this week. I made these cupcakes for a friend who was having a birthday over the weekend, you may remember the cakes I made for her last year. This summer I posted on Facebook asking for suggestions for what to make for my brother's cake and this particular friend suggested Toy Story characters. Those weren't exactly what I was thinking of for my brother but I made a note of her suggestion for when her birthday rolled around.


I'm still working on perfecting the art of buttercream transfers, so there are some issues with the eyes and also with the alien's ears and half of Woody's hat being missing, but overall I'm really happy with how these turned out. And I had so much fun making them on Sunday, it was great! Plus the look on my friend's face when she saw them was priceless. :)

A Long, Long Time Ago, in a Kitchen, Far Far Away...

So the second item I bought at the Williams Sonoma was a set of pancake molds. And not just any pancake molds, they were Star Wars Pancake molds! They are so much fun to make, even if it is a little time consuming.

Start with a Pancake recipe - this is my family's favourite:

3 cups flour
2 tbsp baking powder
2 tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt
3 eggs
3 cups milk
4 tbsp oil

Mix together flour, baking powder, sugar and salt. In another bowl (preferably one with a spout) beat together eggs, milk and oil. Add dry ingredients to liquid and whisk until almost smooth.
Pour onto grill 1/4 cup a a time. Cook until bubbles break through on the top side, flip and cook until the other side is brown.

Then, instead of using the regular grilling instructions, take your pancake molds and grease them. Then put them on your pancake grill and pour in enough batter so that it will spread to fill the mold (you may need to thin out the batter a bit with a tablespoon or so of extra milk) and use a knife to make sure batter gets into all the corners.

Then wait until the bubbles come through to the side you can see, remove the mold and flip the pancakes over. Wait until they brown, then serve them hot or put them in the oven (on warm) to keep them warm until everyone is ready to eat!

And enjoy biting off Yoda's ears!