Chocolate Cheesecake Mark II

I made a chocolate cheesecake a couple of weeks ago. Some say it is the best chocolate cheesecake that they have ever eaten. (Imagine that Clarkson is saying it)

Happily, I made the right choice by going with the first recipe that google turned-up (link).

Tonight as the follow-up I decided to, pardoning the pun, build on the recipe... instead of outsourcing the cheesecake base, I went ahead and baked one using the strawberry scookie recipe featured in an earlier blog post (link!).

Take make sure that the base looked suitably dark, I used only brown sugar only in the dough.

Brown sugar and strawberry cookie dough!

 [not pictured]

Baked cookie base

While that was baking, I put together the rest of it the same as described in the original link for the cheesecake recipe. 

Filling! (could have done with more chocolate, me thinks :/)

Finished (well, just has to go in the fridge now)

There it is, just quick post. It's nice having a camera again.. (not a great one, by any means)

Peace out.

Bread recipe

Dry:

• 1 kg wholemeal flour (or plain flour or mixes thereof, whatever you like)
• 4 teaspoons baking soda
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 100 g raisins
• 25 g cinnamon

Wet:

• ~1/2 litre of apple juice
• 4 teaspoons of vinegar.

1. Mix the solids together.
2. Preheat oven to 200°C.
3. Add the vinegar to the apple juice.
4. Roll in juice gradually until all of the flour mix is wetted, but not slimy looking sludge. 
5. Throw a quarter of the mix onto a section of baking paper. 
6. Roll the baking paper up so that it's a crude looking cylinder.
7. Place it on the tray in a way that it wont unroll while the dough bakes.  

For me, this is enough for 4 loaves of bread.

I use a fork and bowel to mix it all together - it spares me losing the sticky dough on my hands.

Now, what is nice about the baking paper is that it helps lock in the carbon dioxide that is going to be generated while it bakes. Which is critical for maximum fluffiness. You end up with two rough looking ends because they are exposed, and a smooth curved surface, where the baking paper touches the dough.

Cooking time:
Until it is visibly steaming (when you open the oven door and steam rolls out and it smells deliciously edible). Essentially, the perfect time is when most of the water has been boiled off, that the loaf is almost dry. Something like 20-30 minutes.

You can keep the dry mix for a couple of days, but once you add the liquid and mix it up, the dough has to go into the oven quickly (<5mins). Otherwise more of the carbon dioxide will be released during baking.

Alternative options:

Instead of baking soda/vinegar: try 8 teaspoons of baking powder; 4 teaspoons of baking soda with 4 teaspoons of cream of tartar; use buttermilk instead of the vinegar and apple juice (roughly 1/2 litre until the dough is damp), any other juice, lemon juice in water (say half a lemon to 1/2 litre of water), use normal milk with the vinegar (either add immediately or let it stand for an hour [as an engineer I would prefer to stir it in this time just to have a consistent and faster souring] while to make your own buttermilk).

Add in about 80 g of finely diced fresh ginger - the raisins and the tart ginger provide a fantastic flavour where they complement each other - I haven't used powdered ginger yet.

Dry some fruits yourself. 4-5 apples cut into small chips (wet size ~1-2 x 1-2 cm) are enough for this amount of dough (150 g or so when dry). Dry in the oven at 140°C with the door open a crack and, if possible a fan blowing across it. Dry until crispy, but not burned, . The apples lose a serious amount of moisture in the drying process (about 60-66% of their wet mass). In my oven it takes about 3 hours for this, but keep going until they are crispy and don't smell burnt or taste like carbon. I generally peel them beforehand. I am partial to pink ladies for this. I haven't used cooking apples yet, and I'm not inclined to.

Add some oatmeal, nuts, shredded All Bran and/or a bit of sugar if you like (you could drop large sugar crystals on the baking paper before you throw the dough on it and roll it up.

Much like my cookie recipe, beyond the bare bones recipe (flour, source of carbon dioxide [baking soda/vinegar, etc.], and a source of water to dampen the dough), you can do what ever you like with it.

Experiment  and see what works best for you.

As a parting thought:
Is carbon dioxide generation critical, or just the simplest/most convenient one to do?

As long as the by-products aren't toxic and are tasty, any reaction that produces a gas could do the job. Although... something heavy like carbon dioxide is probably best because it has a lower diffusivity than something like nitrogen. So it is more likely to stay in the dough.

I wonder what would happen if you had an oxygen or hydrogen producing reaction in there...

Some Halloween flavour

Pumpkin cupcakes

Foreword

From: The Simpsons, Homer vs Patty and Selma

At Moe's Tavern, Lenny, Carl, Barney, and a couple of other regulars all puff on cigars being handed out by Homer.
Moe: [sniffing a cigar] Ah, this place is going to smell classy all week.
Barney: To Homer, the Wall Street genius!
[everyone claps as Homer bows]
[Homer lights a cigar with a $1, then puts out the flame and puts it back in his wallet
Lenny: Hey, Homer! How come you've got money to burn? Or singe, anyway?
Carl: Yeah, Homer, what's your secret investment?
Homer: Take a guess.
Barney: Uh, pumpkins?
Homer: [pause] Yeah, that's right, Barney. This year, I invested in pumpkins. They've been going up the whole month of October and I got a feeling they're going to peak right around January. Then, bang! That's when I'll cash in.

Ingredients

266.7 g Pumpkin puree
266.7 g Sugar
187.5 g Flour
85 g Butter
83 g Milk
2 Eggs
1/2 Cup of walnuts
1/3 Cup of raisins
1 teaspoon Salt
1 teaspoon Ground ginger
1 ½ teaspoon Ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon Ground nutmeg
½ teaspoon Vanilla
¼ teaspoon Ground cloves

Preheat oven to 180°C

In one bowel, mix together dry ingredients in one bowel:

Flour, ginger, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves

Mix milk and vanilla together in a cup or jug

In a large bowel:

1. beat butter until creamy.
2. Gradually add and mix sugar
3. Beat in eggs one at a time
4. Gradually add pumpkin puree until well mixed
5. Add a third of the dry mixture
6. Add half of the milk and vanilla
7. Add 2nd third of the dry mixture
8. Add 2nd half of the milk and vanilla
9. Add 3rd third of the dry mixture
10. Mix until the batter is smooth
11. Fold in 1/2 cup coarsely chopped walnuts or pecans
12. Fold in 1/3 cup raisins or chopped dates.

Pour mix into a cupcake die and put in the oven.

A cupcake is ready when you put a knife into its centres and it comes out bloody¹ clean (I think about 15-20 mins, but your ultimate measure is the aforementioned condition because let's face it: no two ovens are quite alike.)

Let them cool for about 5 minutes and take out of the cupcake die.²
*****
¹Happy belated Halloween one and all.
²I am divided over the naming convention for a cupcake thing. It's not flat, so tray doesn't make sense to me, but it doesn't make sense to call it a tin - since that it is reserved for cakes/breads.

---- Thanks to Becky for the recipe!

Super Happy Family Nutella Meringue Wish Cake! (Part 1: the Journey begins... with the longest title ever)

I have developed a terrible, terrible, terrible vice since I moved to Belgium. I have become a Nutella fiend. It was pretty bad near the beginning. I would buy a 350g jar, spread it on crispy bread roll thingies (I have never seen them anywhere else, like really small bread rolls (5 cm long rolls that are cut in half and are... crispy), or crackers.. and eventually, once I ran out of the things to spread it on... I- I- I would... use a spoon [breaks down crying].

I learned to cope with my affliction. The key was not buying it when I went to the shop. As long as I followed this simple one-step program, things were fine.

But, of course, some days were harder than others... On those days I, well, I generally sobbed myself to sleep, cradling myself in Nutella smeared hands.

I decided, that when prevention failed, perhaps I could "manage" it.

Since I am wont to throw whatever I have handy into a cookies mix, I decided I would make some Nutella cookies. I did a Google and found this fantastic baking blog. I followed the recipe and it worked out well. Although, I suspect that the tastiest parts of the Nutella spread - the quintessence of Nutella, the true Nutellaness/Nutella-ality - were volatile organic molecules because the cookies don't have the same kick at all.

Next, I dumped Nutella into a cake mix. I used that standard base that I previously cited... huh, it appears, I've never listed it before:

125g sugar
125g butter
2 eggs
200g self-raising flour
a bit of milk¹

So I spooned lots (um... 5 tblsp?) of Nutella into the mix, and then I threw in some Maltesers. I had really hoped that the Maltesers wouldn't dissolve (just think of it! Maltesers in a cake!).

Unfortunately, the maltesers dissolved and were barely palatable in the end product.

So there I was, faced with a challenge - could I keep the Maltesers intact?

Stay tuned for my next post!
 ----

¹I usually melt the butter, add the sugar and eggs (letting the butter cool a bit in case it is hot enough to partially cook the eggs). Then sieve in the flour bit by bit a-mixing all the way. Then 50mLs of milk or there abouts. Preheat oven to 180°C, and leave it until it smells edible/a toothpick through the centre of it comes out without any batter stuck to it. I'm loath to use just this.

Generally, I'll throw in some cocoa powder to colour/put some flavour in.

Sometimes I'll go for a marbled effect, split the batter in two, one half cocoa, the other plain.

You can throw in some fruit (strawberries, peaches, raisins, apples, mango... but never grapes. Never.). What worked out nicely, was putting in sliced apples that I had rolled in cocoa before hand.

Something that just occurred to me was using nutmeg and/or cinnamon with plain mix and some raisins.

Necessity is the mother of orange cake

My oven and I have come to an understanding over the last three months. I can't say that I have figured it out, because I haven't consciously changed what I am doing.¹ The cookies have just started to set/bake better.

As it is, baking cookies is labour intensive... 2 hours non-stop, mixing dough, putting lumps on the tray, waiting a few minutes, taking them off the tray, putting on fresh dough. As a consequence, cake baking has become much more appealing to me; mix the ingredients, decant into a vessel of some form and leave in oven until it smells edible and is reasonably solid - watch TV, stretch, and/or read in the mean time...

My most recent foray into baking is carrot cake.

My Dutch teacher asked if I could make it (worteltaart - in het Nederlands), and I am not one to walk away when the gauntlet is thrown down.

After I emailed my mother for her recipe, I announced my latest experiment on Facebook:

My mother, everyone... Regardless of her declamations, she did give me a recipe.³

In principle, it worked out very well. Unfortunately, while I was checking it at half-time, I fumbled the dish and spilled a bit. Thereafter, the cake, she was a bit lopsided :(

I shared it around at salsa and it was well-received. And there was much rejoicing.

I decided to make another batch for my trip to Ireland...

I mixed most of the ingredients together... and I would have gotten away with it too if it weren't for those damn kids not having any carrots.⁴

...

23:00hrs and my usual [carrot] dealer wasn't at his stoop⁵ and I'd be darned if I was going to throw away a potentially good mix. I did a mental inventory of what I had in the apartment; The only reasonable substitutes were oranges. I figured because they were so juicy and had a stronger flavour (I don't have any data to support that, just a gut feeling) that I'd use 150 g oranges and an extra 77 g of self-raising flour to soak up the juice.

Naturally, it worked out perfectly.

I shared it around in Ireland and it was well-received. And there was much rejoicing.

****

¹Cognitive bias fail (or a win?).
²OK... not quite rocking.
³Cake:
175g soft brown sugar
175mL sunflower oil
3 large eggs
150g self raising wholemeal  flour (Orange cake: 227 g flour)
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
225g grated carrot  (Orange cake: 150 g diced oranges)

"Mix sugar and oil, add eggs and mix well, sift in dry ingredients beat everything til everything is well combined. Add grated carrots and stir well through. bake in 180 degree oven till cooked."ⁱ

Frosting:
225g philadelphia cream cheese
225g butter
454g icing sugar
Zest of orange


⁴"Classic Máirtín"
⁵Or maybe he was there and I couldn't see him because I don't have enough carrots in my diet to see well in the dark.ⁱⁱ

----

ⁱWord of God:"Máirtín, I gave up making actual cakes and use this recipe for muffins now, they're baked in 15 mins."
ⁱⁱThat's a joke, by the way. (link)

It really tied the room together

There it is - a Venn Diagram of part of my world view or more specifically {Things ∉ My World View}...

Four years of Chemical Engineering followed by another four doing a PhD [, which I have successfully defended; I will be graduating at the soonest convenience]²... I wasn't ready for this.

In the week leading up to "Mission In Furnishing," I kept having the exchange between Walter and the Dude go through my head. Well, that and the montage of Edward Norton's nameless character furnishing his apartment in Fight Club.

Thanks a bunch pop-culture.

Linen, towels, beds, shelves, tables and ladders and chairs [oh my].¹ It's a f**kin' mystery to me. The whole week I was thinking through what I needed, and a triage on the order to get them in.

It took three visits to Ikea to get the essentials [plus dealies I simply had to have]. The first time was tough going. Halfway through my Ikean trek, I was done, mentally. It was purgatory. Chairs, followed by bins, followed by shelves, followed by office desks, followed by office chairs, follwed by stools, followed by dining tables, followed by beds, followed by light bulbs... I just wanted it to be over. I strongly advice using the website to decide what to get beforehand and just go straight for the chosen items. Otherwise, you'll feel like this, but without the laugh track.

To cap it off, my poor choice in timing - stepping out of Ikea on a Friday at 1700 - meant that my taxi was "25 minutes away" for about 2 hours. The next two visits went far more smoothly, except for waiting over 30 minutes at the warehouse for oversized items.

So, Ikea, a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't live there.

At the beginning of my furnishing travails, I balked often at the cost of things, particularly in Ikea, since I was expecting "rock bottom" prices. Being the neophyte that I was,³ I had no point of reference for the costs. But when I took the time to think about it: compared to the amount I am prepared to pay for shoes, clothes and PC parts; the cost of having things to sit on, sleep in, eat off, hide under, etc. daily for years is very reasonable.

My favourite discovery has been Hema. It's just a few minutes from my apartment and it's got a sh*tload of housing stuff, almost everything a man about town could want.

Almost.

Up until yesterday I had not been able to find baking trays. What the hell, Antwerp? How hard is it to provide a planar piece of heat-conductive metal for the purpose of baking? There was no end to bread-, tart-tins and cupcake trays, but the most geometrically trivial of baking vessels... I never had this trouble in Ireland. Luckily, I found an Arnotts-like department store that has them, understandably a tad more expensive than Tesco.

Up until now, I wrapped my oven shelves in tinfoil.  My oven is going to take a while to get used to; The fan is weak so the forced convection isn't great, and the baking times are longer than I'm used to.  The first batch of cookies were OK, but a bit harder/crunchier than I'd like. The second batch worked out a lot better. Plus, the Nestlé cocoa powder I got in the supermarket is like a party in my nose where everyone is invited,^3.5 and yields a richer flavoured cookie than the Cadbury's cocoa in Ireland.

There isn't much to report in work. On my first day we had quite a time finding a lab coat that fit me because of my apeish armspan; I now sport the largest labcoat size we could find in the building. Sure, the sleeves go to my wrist, but it's like some kind of monk robe the way it is cinched across in front and goes down to my knees.

Much like Walter White⁴ I will sometimes need to have a full-face mask with a filter for my work with powders. During my safety training, the instructor, in broken English and gesturing with his hands, told me that I have a small face, which may be a problem [for getting a seal on the mask]. It turns out that it was not a problem, but I can't help feeling insulted by being told I have a small face. :-(    :-(

[Edit: it has since been pointed out to me that trays are available in Ikea:
http://www.ikea.com/be/nl/catalog/products/10196662
http://www.ikea.com/be/nl/catalog/products/00133043

This only serves to annoy me further... Ikeeeeeaaaaaaaa!]

-----------

¹Mick Foley's classic quoteⁱ from when he was the general manager in WWE, no youtube or soundbite of it... but trust me, it happened. Also, the ladder was "poetic license", i.e. "a lie" because I don't need one.

²"I didn't go to evil freakin' Chemical Engineering School for four years to be called Mr McNamara."

³I'm a paleophyte now. Whatever.
^3.5Don't do drugs kids.
⁴Breaking Bad shout out! What! I'm getting a buzz just recalling the season gone by.

------

ⁱItself a corruption of "Lions and tigers and bears. Oh my!" from Wizard of Oz

Scookies SOP

Why?

Off to Limerick this weekend for a birthday party at Joanne's. I decided to make some scookies and cookies...

The difference between my standard cookies and scookies, is that the larger amount of flour compared to butter leads to more lumpish things, where as the higher butter concentrations in the standard cookies lead to flat-dishlike things

Materials

• 24 oz sugar (any type will do)
• 12 oz butter (I believe it is salted, however I am not certain and making cookies in America confused me...)
• 36 oz flour
• 2 eggs
• Braeburn apple
• Strawberries
• Blackberries
• Cocoa powder
• Milk chocolate

Basic Method

1. Melted butter, added to eggs and sugar
2. Mixed until homogeneous
3. Added flour
4. Mixed until homogeneous

Optional Modifications

• I quartered the basic dough and bagged off the parts because I planned to make 4 different flavours.

• I cut the fruits very finely and placed them into separate bags. For the amounts I listed above, half an apple works perfectly, half a punnet of strawberries, half a punnet of blackberries.
• The fruits are kneaded into their doughs until the fruit is dispersed evenly in the mass

The basic recipe is ideal when mixing in cocoa powder or chocloate chips, etc. However when adding healthy, delicious and juicey fruit the mixture is too sticky and will not cook properly.

• Knead in flour into the lumps until the gunk no longer sticks to your fingers when it is given a good squeeze (I have no idea of the amounts, it was all by touch [baby])
• Figure to the right shows the resulting cookie doughs: top right is cocoa powder (add cocoa to the basic recipe until it is as dark as you like); bottom right is braeburn apple; bottom left is strawberry; top left is blackberry
• Take a tea spoon and scoop out enough dough to fill it
• Preheat the oven to 170-180 degree Celsius (443.15-453.15K)

• Place the cookie dough scoops out on baking trays (I used 3 in rotation as the heating rates with-in the oven were not even. I placed two in a shelf each. When one of them was done, I moved the un-done one to its shelf and placed a fresh one in the vacant spot)

• Take out the cookies when they smell like they should be eaten (or if that does not make sense to you, 7-8 minutes)
• If the cookies are not set reasonably hard after a minute of cooling, put them pack in the oven for a bit longer

• Finally, if you like, melt some chocolate (whatever type you please) and dip the cookies in them, if I had more preparation I would have tried to procure Liquid Nitrogen from somewhere or other to get really fast cooling of the chocolate to generate small chocolate crystals, in the hopes that it would produce tastier stuff - I'll edit this later to include some references. Leave the chocolate covered cookies in the fridge to cool.