Baking Times: Cheesecake Bulletin

Listening to: Hey, Soul Sister, Train.

I’m going to be honest: I haven’t actually done that much baking at all recently. Apart from baking a batch of brownies that I took to Paris for my sister’s French friends and taking another batch to my local pub quiz, as well as a casual cheesecake I might have baked, I haven’t really baked at all. Don’t worry; odd as it might sound, I reckon I’ll probably have more time to bake when I’m back at university…

Anyway, to tide you over, here’s ‘my’ cheesecake recipe. I say ‘my’, because it’s more the recipe I happen to use than my own recipe: I inherited most of it from my friend James, and I think he inherited it from Delia Smith, though in my experimentation I changed a couple of things. He actually swears by a different recipe now, so I’ve heard, but if I do say so myself, this one’s rather tasty, so I think it deserves to be shared. Plus, I’ve picked up a few handy tips from making it.

Cheesecake Recipe

For a 9 inch (~23cm) cheesecake tin; the cheesecake itself is around 1.5 inches (~4cm) tall. That’s about 95 square inches of cheesecake. In my experience, it’s good for serving around 16 slices, maybe more. Good for around 4 days maximum, if kept wrapped in the fridge.

Ingredients

For the base:

– 225g oat biscuits (I use Hobnobs)
– 75g unsalted butter (I find unsalted works better, but salted works fine too)

For the filling:

– 350g full-fat curd cheese (I use Philadelphia)
– 150g fromage frais
– 200g natural yoghurt
– 3 eggs
– 175g caster sugar
– 2 tsp (teaspoons) of vanilla extract or vanilla flavouring

For optional delight, blend some strawberries and halve some others, and serve with the cheesecake.

Equipment

– Large metal mixing bowl
– A pan to melt the butter in.
– Whisk
– Wooden spoon
– Sharp knife
– A plastic bag, or a food processor, to crush the biscuits.
– Baking paper

Method

– Crush the biscuits in the food processor or in the plastic bag. Pour into a metal bowl. The melt the butter in a pan, before adding this to the biscuits and mixing thoroughly. The mixture should feel like warm, wet and slightly greasy sand. Line ONLY the bottom of your tin with the baking paper, and press the mixture into an even base. Leave the base to set in the fridge while you make up the filling.

– Preheat your oven to 150 degrees Centigrade (Gas Mark 2, 300 degrees Fahrenheit).

– For the filling, add the cheese, the fromage frais, the yoghurt and the eggs. Whisk this mixture. As it starts to feel more liquid, whisk in the sugar. When the whole mixture is free of lumps, add two teaspoons of vanilla extract/flavouring, and mix them in.

– Remove the base from the fridge and pour the filling over it. Place the cake in the oven for 30 minutes, before leaving it to cool for about an hour in the oven (that tip’s definitely stolen from Delia). Move it to the fridge and leave to set overnight (this is because I tend to do late night baking – an hour is probably fine).

– For the optional sauce, simply cut the leaves from the strawberries, place them in the food processor and blend. I’ve never been one for getting rid of the seeds, but if you’d like to, use a sieve.

– Remove the cake from the tin using the baking paper and slide it off the baking paper. This should ensure that the base is intact when it reaches the plate, because I used to have problems removing the cake from the tin.

– Cut a slice and serve. A tip here is to use a hot knife, so that the base doesn’t stick to it and you end up with a neat slice.

Rather than this tweaked recipe I use for cheesecake, the next recipe I’m planning on putting up is very definitely my own; white chocolate blondies, a modification on the brownie recipe. Because apparently, brownies become blondies when you make them out of white chocolate.

Good times, and good baking.

Baking Times: Chocolate Brownies Recipe

Listening to: Only Love, Nina Nesbitt

I’m back, term is over, the year is done. And with that, comes time to reflect.

I picked up a new hobby this year. Baking. It was no surprise that one of the most popular poems I wrote in NaPoWriMo happened to be about brownies, since I’ve come to bake them a lot this year. And if I dare say so, they’re not that bad.

Which is why, after some requests, I’ve decided to put the recipe on here. But first, a bit of background.

It’s not my recipe… well, not solely my recipe. My mum got it from somewhere and modified it a bit. Then, when it came to making dinner for my flat in my third week of university, I needed a dessert, so I borrowed it. Then… a lot of modifications ensued, and now it’s where it is today. There’s a modification for white chocolate brownies (blondies, apparently), but I’ll save that for another time, since it’s not quite ‘done’ yet, due to some further tweaks to the sugar mixture.

So more about that another time. Here’s my recipe for Chocolate Brownies. Apologies if some of the steps seem obvious, but I was a complete novice to baking when I made these brownies, so they’re there to help.

Brownie Recipe

For 1 tray (32 pieces, 1×1.5 inches, or 16 large pieces). In my experience, 1 small piece is snack-sized, while a large piece with vanilla ice cream is a dessert-sized portion.

Ingredients

– 300g dark chocolate
– 154g milk chocolate (or 26 cubes of a bar of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk)
– 400g butter
– 150g self-raising flour (sieved)
– 150g cocoa powder (sieved)
– 2tsp (teaspoons) baking powder
– 7 digestive biscuits
– 500g brown sugar
– 6 beaten eggs

Equipment

– Large metal mixing bowl
– Saucepan (large enough that the mixing bowl can rest on top of it)
– Wooden spoon
– Sharp knife
– Additional mixing bowl (for the powder)
– Sieve
– A plastic bag, or a food processor, to crush the biscuits.

Method

– Grease a baking tray with butter (mine’s 31x25cm, or 12×9.5 inches). I’ve found that unsalted butter actually works better for this, but I use salted butter in the brownies and that works fine too.

– Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Centigrade (Gas Mark 4, 350 degrees Fahrenheit).

– Place a large metal mixing bowl over a saucepan of simmering water.
– Melt all of the butter and chocolate in this bowl. Chopping the butter into 50g chunks helps.
– Stir the butter/chocolate mixture gently, until all the butter and chocolate has melted.

– Into a second mixing bowl, sieve the flour, baking powder, and cocoa powder. Mix thoroughly.

– Crush the digestive biscuits, and add them to the bowl with the melted butter and chocolate.

– Add powder bowl to the melted chocolate bowl. Mix.
– Add all the brown sugar. Mix.
– Fold in the 6 beaten eggs, all at once.

– Pour the brown mixture you’ve got into the tray. It’s perfectly edible if you want to eat the remaining mix from the bowl.

– Place the tray in oven and leave to bake for 25 minutes.
– After that, remove the tray from the oven, and leave to cool. The brownies should be squishy to the touch.
– The brownies can be left to cool overnight, but are ready to cut after about an hour’s cooling.

– Eat. Or, preferably, share. I mean, that’s a lot of brownies for one person…

So, if you get around to making them, I’d be happy to see the results. Good luck, and bake well.

I’ll probably post some more recipes on here in due course, and, hopefully, more writing too.