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Caramel Chocolate Baked Cheesecake

For my birthday at work I had a few requests for the cheesecake I had made before for other birthdays. Yes I am blogging about my birthday oh almost a month after it. Oh it was so delightful.

Gone!
This is the photo of the wind. I had the photo all planned out in my head. My cake stand on an upturned vase covered by a scarf. It all looked so good through the lens and then as I pressed my finger on the shutter, the wind lifted up the scarf and the cake stand went over the balcony, the cake went onto the table and I just sighed. After nipping down stairs to pick up the broken cake stand, I took the photo again in a slightly more simple manner.

Birthday Cheese Cake

The recipe is almost exactly the same as the cheesecake recipe I have posted before but I added a tin of caramel (either Top’n’Fill or Caramel or a tin of condensed milk converted to caramel)

Caramel Chocolate Baked Cheesecake
Crumb Base
1 250g packet scotch fingers
bit of all spice
50g butter/marg
50g copha
2 tbsps or so of cocoa if desired

Melt the butter/marg and copha together.
Crumb scotch fingers till they resemble fine breadcrumbs. Stir through the all spice and cocoa if using. Stir in the melted fat mixture. The mixture of dairy and vegetable fat is used to give a better “crumb” and how it holds together. Press in to the bottom (and sides if desired) of a greased 20cm spring form pan (line the bottom with foil) and chill in the fridge whilst making the filling.

Filling
500g cream cheese
1 x 380g tin caramel
bit of lemon juice
bit of vanilla
4 eggs
2/3C sugar

Cream the cream cheese and caramel till smooth. Add in the vanilla and lemon juice. Beat in the sugar till smooth and then beat in eggs one at a time till mixture is smooth. Pour on top of the base and cook in 160deg oven for 40 mins or until cooked. Run knife round edge of spring form pan and cool overnight.

Topping
idea very loved from Smitten Kitchen
50g butter
100g+ chocolate – dark or Cadbury Energy or Lindt 70% etc – Mix it up with a few different chocolates, increase the flavour or use up those half used blocks…
2 tsp honey
You could also very easily add some flavours here such as peppermint extract, mmmm.

Melt all ingredients together in a bowl over a saucepan of barely simmering water. Pour over top of cooled cheesecake and place in fridge for 30mins to set the chocolate topping.

When cutting this cake (due to the chocolate topping) if you want a clean cut you must dip the knife in a glass of hot water after each and every cut.

Enjoy!

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Pasta with Broccoli and Silverbeet

A few weekends ago I went to a Pasta Master class as part of the Taste of the Gold Coast Festival at Beaudesert with Desley and Pietro Agnoletto.

Pasta Class

Whilst I didn’t learn anything in the making of pasta section, I have a reasonable understanding of that (though I would like to learn a lot more in terms of hand shaped pasta), I did pick up a few tasty and fast pasta dishes and this one is based on that.

Pasta with Broccoli and Silverbeet

Pasta with Broccoli and Silverbeet
Ingredients
Pasta
Broccoli (cut into fingertip size pieces)
Silverbeet (sliced into thin ribbons)
(this should be enough of each to serve the number of mouths you are feeding)
a few cloves sliced garlic
Olive Oil (a very generous amount – this is essentially an oil sauce)
a green herb to finish with eg. Parsley or Basil
Parmesan

Bring the pasta water to the boil, add pasta and broccoli. After a few minutes heat the oil in a pan and gently fry the garlic, then remove from the heat. Add the silverbeet to the pasta and continue to cook for a few more minutes till the pasta, broccoli and silverbeet are cooked. Drain, reserving a little bit of the water and pour in the garlic and oil mix.

Serve topped with some of the green herbs, parmesan and a little bit of salt sprinkled over the top.

So so so quick to make and damm so tasty, especially as broccoli is everywhere at the shops right now

That’s it. A few ingredients, a meal that takes as long to make as it does to cook the pasta and it is finger licking good!

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Birthday Eve

I had a bit of flex time up my sleeve so I had a Birthday Eve day off (also because I was taking cake to work for my birthday and I wanted cake on my birthday not on the day before or after). I slept in till 7am!!! I did some washing, took care of the 1.8kg hunk of Pancetta I picked up last week, replied to some emails and then I headed off into the city. First off I collected my ticket for the Brandenburg concert and then I went to GOMA and checked out the Picasso exhibit at last (it closes on Sunday), that was everything I thought it was going to be and more. It was a really well presented exhibit. Getting a chance to see the works of Matisse, Cézanne, Rousseau, Renoir and all the other pieces that Picasso had collected presented alongside his own work was really good. At the GOMA shop I picked up one of the spilt pain teacup sets, it looks so good (I will take a photo of it later)

GOMA

Then I headed into the city and made a stop at Lush to buy my birthday present to myself and had a wander round the shops and I made the best discovery in Mountain Designs. Keen now makes/sells bags! Oh they had some cool bags. So cool!

After a bit more of a wander and a visit to Blue Cats for some chocolate goodies, I headed out of the city and home and then onto my parents home. On the way I stopped at the flower market and picked up some flowers.

Birthday Flowers Birthday Flowers

Pabbi cooked skonsur for dinner which was quite enjoyable, it has been sooo sooo long since I have had skonsur. I got to the kitchen table at dinner and there was a package waiting at my place. I was not expecting any presents at all as the deal is after you turn 21 you don’t get birthday presents any more. I opened the package after tea and it was pack of hankies 😀 Nice lady hankies. I had commented to Mum a couple of weeks ago that I hadn’t been able to find nice hankies. Now I have some 🙂 After that I cooked my birthday cake (pretty much this recipe, photo coming soon) for work today as the oven at their place is just a little bit better than the oven we have at the flat.

Then it was home time to watch The Hollowmen(man oh man I love that show) and then bed 😀 so I would be ready for a busy as usual day at work today 😀

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Lamb Casserole

Lamb Casserole

I rarely make a meal which just gives me one meal, I like to get at least three meals out of whatever I am cooking. This lamb casserole/tagine I made last week gave me six meals as there were six chops in the pot 😀 and I had the last one today for lunch at work

I mixed together a spice paste of turmeric, ginger, coriander, cinnamon and cumin with a little bit of oil and fresh garlic. I melted some ghee in my pot and fried off the spice paste a little, then it was in with the chops to brown them. Then a little while later the onions and fennel went in and were covered with water and a bit of tomato passata, then some apricots, dates, raisins, rose water, almonds and green lentils. Left to simmer for a long time I ended up with with the most delightful meal, the lamb was falling off the bone, the lentils were perfect and the sauce was just the right thickness. Served on a bed of cous cous with yoghurt and chives on top I had a a perfect meal to say goodbye to winter with 😀

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Sunday Cooking

Le Creuset Love

On Sunday after spending the last 36 odd hours in bed resting to avoid the beginnings of a cold get any worse I made Chicken soup. It started off with the roasting of chook and some carcasses I had in the freezer. Once the chicken had roasted I stripped it, saving the meat to go into the soup later on and the bones for the stock. I sweated some onions, carrots and leeks in the pot, then I added the chicken bones/skin, water and some sage and let it simmer gently for an hour or two. Then I strained it and strained it again through cheesecloth. Then I let it cool and cracked an egg white into it and brought it back up to heat to clarify it. I read about using the egg white to clarify it in Michael Ruhlman’s book The Elements of Cooking which I am reading with much joy at the moment. I ended up with the most glorious stock, just this delightful chicken flavour. I froze half of the stock to use at a later date and left the other half in the pot and added an assortment of diced vegetables, macaroni and the chicken and let it all simmer again.

When it was all cooked I had this pot of the most delightful soup I have ever made with enough for about 7 meals 😀 I like it when I have lots of leftovers 😀

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Leftovers Quiche

Leftovers Quiche

This is a quiche I made the other week has a handy way to use up assorted deli goods, vegetables and pastry in the fridge. The quiche was filled with sautéed onions, garlic, capsicum and shallots, sun dried tomatoes, Camembert, ricotta, lots and lots of thyme, the yummiest smoked olives and of course some egg, cream and seasoning to bind it all together. It was so so so so so good and such a nice treat for lunch at work, where I would give it a burst in the microwave before placing it on the sandwich grill to crisp it all up. Just a quick and easy way to use up some leftovers in the fridge.