Archive for September, 2006
This isn’t the first time I’ve worked with this recipe. I’ve made lemon and orange pudding cakes before, and limes falling off the tree from over-ripeness seemed like the perfect excuse to trot out one of my favorite easy recipes again. I usually make one large pudding, but this time I decided to divide it up and make individual puddings.
The method is exactly the same: wet ingredients plus dry ingredients, then fold in egg whites. At this point, it is divided into five greased ramekins. Since the pudding does not really rise, but separates to create a pudding and a cake, it is not necessary to coat the ramekins with sugar or flour, as you might with a souffle.
You could divide this in to six ramekins, rather than just filling five all the way to the top, but the puddings don’t really puff up, so it isn’t necessary. And I don’t know about you, but I’d rather have a slightly larger dessert.
If you find that you only need four desserts, you can either have seconds or keep one overnight for breakfast. They’re best hot, but good the next day, too.
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Even though there are many kinds of cheesecake in the world – ricotta cheesecake, vegan cheesecake, marbled cheesecake – the one that springs to mind at the first mention of the word is not the light, airy version that is a delight on a hot summer day, but the velvety, ultra-indulgent, creamy cheesecake. This would be that kind of cheesecake.
The recipe comes from one of the cookbooks of a favorite food blogger of mine, David Lebovitz‘s Ripe for Dessert. The book is all about fruit and fruit desserts, with recipes from the fairly basic, like Apple and Quince Tarte Tatin, to the more unusual, such as Mango Napoleons with Lime Custard and Coconut Flatties. Of course, the cheesecake itself has no fruit in it. David meant for it to be served with mixed berrries, which I omitted out of sheer laziness. By all means, feel free to slice up some berries of your choice for serving.
The cheesecake has a secret ingredient that contributes to its texture: mascarpone. The use of mascarpone makes the cheecake a little lighter and a little silkier than one you would get if you used all cream cheese. The technique used to bake the cake is a little unusual, as well. It is cooked in a water bath and then, after the appropriate amount of time, the oven is turned off and the cheesecake continues to “cook” for another 30 minutes. This slow cooking means that the cheesecake stays smoother than most and seems just barely done when it comes out of the oven. It sets up more as it cools.
I decided that a thicker crust than originall called for would complement the creamy cake best, so I doubled the small amount David called for. You can halve the crust recipe below, but since I love crust, I can’t really imagine that you would want any less. Use the best graham crackers or cookies you can find. Gingersnaps would work well here, but cookies with too much cinnamon might be overpowering.
This is really a fantastic cheesecake, especially if you like your cheesecakes to be rich. It has a fairly mild flavor and a slightly yellow color due to the number of eggs used. This cheesecake must be served cold or it might just melt itself right off your fork. It does seem a bit lighter once it has warmed up, however, so the very best option might be to slice the cake cold and let the individual slices warm up for a few minutes before serving.
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Praline is a Southern candy made with brown sugar and pecans. The confection has the unusual property that it melts in your mouth almost instantly after you bite into it. The icing on these cupcakes has the same flavor as praline. I didn’t include any nuts, but the icing really does melt in your mouth.
I first used this recipe, which comes from Cooking Light, a few weeks ago to make a layer cake and I enjoyed it so much that I decided to make it again. This time, however, I made cupcakes. The cake is delicious – moist and fluffy, with a lovely taste of vanilla and buttermilk. It is best with frosting and rather plain without it but it would probably be quite tasty with fruits if you are inclined to experiment a bit.
It is the icing that really makes this cake work, though. I added a smidge more salt than the original recipe called for, so it is incredibly addictive, with just enough salt to take the edge off the sweetness. It is a wonderful icing and, when paired with the cake, the combination is sure to please anyone eating it. I think it went particularly well with a cup of coffee, which helped to blend the flavors even more and cleanse the palate of excess sugar. I know that I will be using this recipe often in the future.
Oh, and try not to eat too much of the icing before you get all your cupcakes frosted. If you have some left over, I highly recommend dipping pretzels or potato chips in it.
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I find that if I am looking for a recipe with nothing already in mind, one of two things happens: everything sounds good, or nothing sounds good. Because of this, I don’t often stumble upon recipes competely by accident and I almost always have something in mind before I start to look for a recipe, let alone start to cook or bake.
This lime cake was not a recipe I was searching for, but once I saw it, I knew I had to try it. Perhaps it was meant to be, since I happened to have a lime just asking to be used on my counter….
The cake was incredibly easy to put together and I only made a few changes to it to boost the flavors. I added a little bit of salt, along with some vanilla extract and the zest of one lime, in addition to the juice. Once it was baked and cooled, the cake had a slight lime scent and a wonderful lime flavor, which was mellowed by the vanilla extract from being too sharp. It had a texture that was similar to pound cake, so it was slightly dense, but tender and not heavy at all.
The finished cake was a small loaf, but provided slices just the right size for serving with a cup of coffee or tea. In fact, it makes a lovely cake to serve with berries at breakfast, but it could also work with a scoop of ice cream for dessert.
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While the title of this post has a bit of a macabre sound to it, there is nothing ominous about the Foodblogger’s Guide to the Globe. FBGttG* is a meme (short for “internet phenomenon”) that was started by The Traveler’s Lunchbox and is traveling around the world via various food blogs. I was tagged to come up with my own list of five things to eat before you die by my friends Helen, of Grab Your Fork, and Kalyn, of Kalyn’s Kitchen. The rules are that the five things you select have to be things that you have eaten. The problem with this is that I have eaten far more than five things, making it difficult to narrow down the list.
1. Kona coffee in Kona, Hawaii – You’ll have to ferret out a place that brews good coffee yourself, but you won’t get many closer to the source and Kona coffee is some of the best in the world. Roasting green beans is an amazing experience, too, but you have to be a dedicated coffee drinker to go that far.
2. Breakfast at bills in Sydney, Australia – I recommend the ricotta hotcakes, scrambled eggs and the wonderful coconut bread, but everything is fantastic. Dinner at bills2 is excellent, as well.
3. Dinner at the French Laundry – This is probably the best restaurant experience you’ll ever have.
4. Pizza at the Cheeseboard in Berkeley, California – The Cheeseboard only makes one type of pizza each day and is open for lunch and dinner. The pizza is always vegetarian and it is always exceptional. The bread, pastries and cheeses at the Cheeseboard are worth a trip, too.
5. Dutch Crunch Bread – While there is a lot of good bread to be had in the San Francisco Bay area, it seems to be the only place in the world where Dutch Crunch Bread is sold. The bread is a type of white bread with a very unusual and crispy crust made with yeast, rice flour and a bit of vegetable oil. It makes fantastic sandwich rolls and I have a recipe for it, so you can give it a try at home and cross it off the list.
*I decided to abbreviate the name in the same way I abbreviate the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, HHGttG.
