First up: Monster Cookies.
Sometime before Christmas 2008 I had asked Emily for the monster cookie recipe we made at her house in Ohio during spring break of junior year (these things apparently stick with me). This recipe truly is monster. I took the time last year to quarter it, but never got around to actually making them until a few weeks ago. Quartered, this recipe made well over 50 good-sized cookies. Good thing I did not make a full recipe because I fit whatever I could into a gallon freezer bag. This took up the remaining room in our freezer at that time. And we still had more than 20 cookies sitting out for consumption. Oh...yum.
I couldn't resist making one true MONSTER cookie.
No more room! These are pretty delicious out of the freezer, FYI.******************************************
Second: Mini Chocolate Cheesecakes.
Cheesecake = love. Chocolate Cheesecake = true, forever love. I love, love, love chocolate cheesecake. Luckily, Brian likes it too because I made this as dessert for Valentine's, and it would be kind of selfish if it were purely for me. Despite my love-love relationship with cheesecake, I have a love-hate relationship with making cheesecake. Several times it has turned out just fine. A few times have been iffy. Once was doomed from the beginning when I straight up substituted Oreos for graham crackers for the crust and didn't take into account that the Oreo cream would do some of the binding action and not as much butter would be needed. We tried to salvage what we'd already done, but that crust was very stuck to the pan. And then the middle of that one was kind of soupy. And of course it was for an actual event. This seems like the appropriate place to mention that I do not like graham crusts very much, at least not for true, actual cheesecake. They are ok for the Jello-type cheesecakes and probably other things I can't recall right now. To me, a perfect cheesecake has an Oreo crust. Also, making the crust for the cheesecake is probably my least favorite part.
So there is all of that, and on top of it the fact that I don't have a spring form pan. Kind of necessary for making cheesecake. Then I was thinking about Oreos and how, really, they are already their own perfect crust...just for smaller cheesecakes. Seriously -- twist apart and scrape off the cream and what do you have? A mini crust. No sides, but who cares? Crust is not the best part of cheesecake. The less of it, the better.
I set off reading chocolate cheesecake recipes to find the one I wanted to make. I had decided that a recipe with two packages of cream cheese would be a good amount for the number of mini cheesecakes I wanted to end up with. No recipes fit this criterion, so I knew I would have to adapt. The egg to cream cheese ratios I was finding in recipes made this tricky. But then after realizing how each recipe had its own ratio, I decided I could do what I want and it would probably be fine. Here's the recipe I ended up with (oh, as I started typing it, I remembered how goofy it is given the adaptations...you may just want to skip it):
2 pkg. cream cheese
2/3 c + 1/4 c sugar
2/3 of 2 T flour ...see what I mean about goofy?
1/4 c + 2 T cocoa
2/3 t vanilla
2/3 of 1/4 c milk
2 eggs
Even though it's goofy, I certainly didn't measure those "2/3 of..." exactly, so it doesn't make it much more difficult than a regular recipe. If you don't want it to be chocolate, you can leave out the cocoa and the extra 1/4 c of sugar. And if you want sour cream in it, you can substitute it for the milk and maybe leave out some of the cream cheese. Whatever. I ended up deciding that the recipe couldn't really be screwed up, but I haven't exhaustively tested that theory.
Let's see. I got the cream cheese and sugar good and mixed. Carefully mixed in the flour and cocoa (if you don't know about cocoa, it takes it a bit to mix with liquid, so it stays powdery -- READ: messy -- for a while). Mixed in the vanilla and milk. Added the eggs one at a time, mixing gently/only just mixing until combined.
I lined muffin tins with foil cups. I want opinions: would paper cups work for this? I couldn't decide. But now I have tons of paper cups because I save all of the ones from between foil cups, which I've used for a number of recipes, plus I have paper cups I bought as paper cups, and I want to make this recipe again. Anyone? Anyone? I dropped in one half of an Oreo (cream scraped off). Then I used a 1/4 c scoop to put in the cheesecake mixture. I made about 18 total, but I think I would make only 12 with this recipe because it didn't expand all that much and you know I like a greater cheesecake to crust ratio. I might also next time try crushing the Oreos (cream and all) and dropping a little in the bottom of the cup instead of putting in a whole cookie. Just for variety and to see how it works. And to have a less thick crust.
I read several mini cheesecake recipes (none of them what I wanted for the recipe) to try to guess at baking temperature and time. One said 350* for 35 minutes and one said 375* for 16 minutes. I tried 350* for 30 minutes, but I think it should be less. I would check it at at least 20 minutes.
I have never cared if the top of my cheesecake cracks, so I've never tried to correct for that. All I care about is the flavor, and chocolate cheesecake is delicious.******************************************
And, finally, if you are still here: Sushi.
Family Housing has all kinds of clubs/activities. Most of them haven't interested me (scrapbooking club) or I don't have time for (book club), but I was so excited to see a poster for a new club go up: cooking club! Awesome + all of the ingredients provided for you? Perfect. The first meeting was this week, and we made sushi. This wasn't our first time making sushi, but it was our first time to be taught by a Japanese person. Fun! It was great and tasty. She showed us how to make rolls with the outsides being: nori (seaweed), avacado (shaped how a Dragon roll comes -- it looks so cool), and rice (and then rolled in sesame seeds). Of course, it was all very tasty too. I made mine at the beginning of the evening, and we split it there, so I have no pictures, but Brian brought his home, so I photographed it yesterday. Which also means it's not as fresh as right after it was made, but I still think it looks really good. So I'm very excited about cooking club. People can sign up to teach each month. I don't know for sure if I would want to, but what ideas would you guys have? We thought about cinnamon rolls or bohne berrogi (except neither of us has made it before/knows how to make it!) or flat pancakes or knepp...
No comments:
Post a Comment