No Bake Cheese Cake!

Was on leave yesterday and have made a cheese cake. The recipe requires no baking and will be suitable for those with no oven.

Cheese Cake
(recipe from a cookbook - did not take down the name)

Preparation time: 30 mins for the base crust
Chilling time: at least 2 hours
Serves: 12
Cost: about $8 for Kraft's philadelphia cream cheese, butter, marie biscuit and Nestle cream

Ingredients:
Base
1. 1 packet of marie biscuit
2. 125g butter

Cheese Cake
1. 200g sugar
2. 250g cream cheese
3. 100ml water
4. 2 tbsp gelatine
5. 1 tin Nestle cream
6. 1 punnet strawberries, halved (I skipped this)

Preparation:
1. Let butter and cream cheese sit at room temperature for about 30 mins
2. Crush marie biscuit & mix well with butter.
3. Spread the mixture on a 20cm diameter cake tin and press hard to form the base. Put the base in the fridge.
4. Mix sugar with cream cheese in a mixing bowl using a spoon.
5. Boil water, add gelatine and turn hear down. Keep stirring on low heat till gelatine dissolved.
6. When the mixture boils, add sugar and cream cheese mixture and stir over a low flame.
7. Add cream and keep stirring till mixture boils.
8. Pour mixture onto the chilled biscuit base.
9. Chill cheesecake until set and garnish with strawberries halves before serving.

Tip : To crush the biscuit, I put them into a ziploc bag and use a rolling pin to "run over" the biscuit. Also you need a springform cake tin to make this cake as it cannot be turned over when ready. A springform cake tin has a metal " buckle" by the round side and the base comes off separately when the "buckle" is released.

I found the above recipe too sweet and cannot really taste the cheese. Maybe need to reduce the sugar and add more cream cheese?

Moist Chocolate Cake!

It has been a long time since my last entry as I was busy with my year-end closing. Have tried to bake a chocolate cake last Sat using the mix from White Wings.

Moist Chocolate Cake
(recipe from White Wings)

Preparation time: 8 mins
Cooking time: 40-45 mins
Serves: 12
Oven temperature: 180C
Cost: about $3 for the mix and eggs

Ingredients:
1. 370g White Wings moist chocolate cake mix
2. 2 eggs
3. 20g soft butter
4. 250ml water

Preparation:
1. Preheat oven to 180C.
2. Grease a 6cm deep x 20cm round cake pan. Line the base with baking paper.
3. Empty the sachet into a mixing bowl. Add eggs, water and soft butter.
4. Beat on low speed for 30 sec to combine before increasing speed to medium and mix for 4 mins.
5. Spread mixture into prepared pan. Put some toppings that you like. In this case, I have added chocolate chips and almonds.
6. Bake for 40-45 mins.
7. Stand for 5 mins before transferring to a wire rack for cooling.

You may go http://www.whitewings.com.au/ for more creative ideas. Alternative suggestion is to use the mix to make chocolate orange cupcake which I may be trying out the next time. I found the above recipe too chocolaty and it will be some time before I try to bake something related to chocolate :-)

You can also see that the cake was cracked in the centre. My guess is my oven temperature was set too high (I set to 190C) and the oven was not preheated long enough. As a result, the heat was not evenly distributed and thus the centre was cooked first.

My First Entry - Happy 2008!!

Today is the first day of a new year and I have created my own blog. A good start!

Hmm.. What had happened in the past 1 year?
(1) Being nominated for the company "on time delivery" value award for the 2nd time
(2) Promotion in the 2nd half of 2007
(3) Bought a new oven and a new electric mixer and learning how to bake
(4) Still learning to be a good mummy to my 2 cute monsters and it is a long journey and think that I am beginning to like this process.......

In my blog, I shall post what I called the "accountant" way of baking, i.e. systematic, organised, showing details like the oven temperate, baking time and serving size at 1 glance.

Watch out for this space and enjoy your new year!!