Say, cheese!

To celebrate the beginning of Masterchef, our friends had us over for a meal and a couple of glasses of wine in front of the television. As we were planning to watch a show about cooking, I thought it was only fair that I contribute some baked goods. In this case, I tried a simple berry cheesecake. I’ve only ever made one other cheesecake in my life and it wasn’t exactly a cake. It was more of a sweet, white chocolate cheese sauce drowning a biscuit base. Delicious – in the same way that cookie dough and raw batter is delicious – but hardly a success. So, I was happy to have a suitable occasion to try out another cheesecake recipe.

The recipe was from Donna Hay and it seemed relatively easy to master. I set out all the necessary ingredients, greased the sides of my newly purchased springform cake tin and pulled out the food processor. Everything went, well, smoothly. I made the berry puree without creating a Jackson Pollock inspired masterpiece on my walls and whizzed up the biscuit base pretty quickly and easily. Even though the cream cheese I used didn’t really want to break down in the food processor, I eventually made a smooth cake batter with a little persistence and elbow grease.

The end result was a pretty little picture (even if I do say so myself).

It tasted pretty good as well – it wasn’t too sweet and had nice swirls of berry through it. The only thing I would change about the way I cooked it was to make sure I had extra baking paper over the base of the baking tin rather than cutting out a nice circle that fit within the base. It was hard to remove the cake from the tin and if I had a little bit of extra paper, I could have lifted it out nicely.

Also, I wouldn’t have baked it for so long. The end result was a golden top. While this is great on other cakes, it’s not so great on a cheesecake. I was just a little worried because the middle of the cake was wobbly when I first pulled it out of the oven. I shouldn’t have put it back in the oven because a night in the fridge set it nice and firm. That’s just a little tip from me to you. You live and learn!

On another note, I thought I would share with you the Boy’s puff pastry masterpiece that he made last night. It all started when we chatted about the time the Laotian Princess and I made a series of puff pastry desserts for the boys and he challenged the significance of our puff pastry dessert making abilities. So, naturally, we decided to test his abilities. It looks real pretty. Top marks for effort though, kid. You’ll never beat the Laotian Princess and me.

Advertisement