Beach bum in training

Ah, to live at the beach…  God is good.  His blessings never cease.

Daring Bakers :: Cheesecake

Oh.  My.

This was heavenly.  I love being a Daring Baker.  Let me get the technical stuff out of the way and then we can ogle this cheesecake some more… The April 2009 challenge is hosted by Jenny from Jenny Bakes.  She has chosen Abbey’s Infamous Cheesecake as the challenge.

Really, I can’t say much more about the cheesecake than the pictures do.  I tried the recipe creator’s lavender version – just infuse the cream with lavender flowers before adding it to the recipe and, voila!  Perfume-y romance on your palette.

This is the perfect spring time cheesecake, everything you’d want and hope for – creamy, rich, smooth – but light and aromatic.   To  expound on the dainty quality of the lavender, I wanted a tea-time feel and opted to employ my mini-muffin tin.   Or maybe it was so I could rationalize eating 5 or 6 at a time…

Abbey’s Infamous Cheesecake:

crust:
2 cups / 180 g graham cracker crumbs
1 stick / 4 oz butter, melted
2 tbsp. / 24 g sugar
1 tsp. vanilla extract

cheesecake:
3 sticks of cream cheese, 8 oz each (total of 24 oz) room temperature
1 cup / 210 g sugar
3 large eggs
1 cup / 8 oz heavy cream
1 tbsp. lemon juice
1 tbsp. vanilla extract (or the innards of a vanilla bean)
1 tbsp liqueur, optional, but choose what will work well with your cheesecake

DIRECTIONS:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (Gas Mark 4 = 180C = Moderate heat). Begin to boil a large pot of water for the water bath.

2. Mix together the crust ingredients and press into your preferred pan. You can press the crust just into the bottom, or up the sides of the pan too – baker’s choice. Set crust aside.

3. Combine cream cheese and sugar in the bowl of a stand-mixer (or in a large bowl if using a hand-mixer) and cream together until smooth. Add eggs, one at a time, fully incorporating each before adding the next. Make sure to scrape down the bowl in between each egg. Add heavy cream, vanilla, lemon juice, and alcohol and blend until smooth and creamy.

4. Pour batter into prepared crust and tap the pan on the counter a few times to bring all air bubbles to the surface. Place pan into a larger pan and pour boiling water into the larger pan until halfway up the side of the cheesecake pan. If cheesecake pan is not airtight, cover bottom securely with foil before adding water.

5. Bake 45 to 55 minutes, until it is almost done – this can be hard to judge, but you’re looking for the cake to hold together, but still have a lot of jiggle to it in the center. You don’t want it to be completely firm at this stage. Close the oven door, turn the heat off, and let rest in the cooling oven for one hour. This lets the cake finish cooking and cool down gently enough so that it won’t crack on the top. After one hour, remove cheesecake from oven and lift carefully out of water bath. Let it finish cooling on the counter, and then cover and put in the fridge to chill. Once fully chilled, it is ready to serve.

Pan note: The creator of this recipe used to use a springform pan, but no matter how well she wrapped the thing in tin foil, water would always seep in and make the crust soggy. Now she uses one of those 1-use foil “casserole” shaped pans from the grocery store. They’re 8 or 9 inches wide and really deep, and best of all, water-tight. When it comes time to serve, just cut the foil away.

Prep notes: While the actual making of this cheesecake is a minimal time commitment, it does need to bake for almost an hour, cool in the oven for an hour, and chill overnight before it is served. Please plan accordingly!

Sweet potatoes, sweet baby

Roasted garlic and asparagus with orzo pasta

orzo pasta, cooked (enough to feed whoever you are feeding)

one bunch asparagus, cut into 1 1/2 inch pieces

10 garlic cloves, unpeeled

extra virgin olive oil

juice of 1/2 lemon*

salt and freshly ground black pepper

12-ish sundried tomatoes packed in olive oil, thinly sliced and wiped of most of the oil

1/3 C chopped flat-leaf parsley

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

Line a baking sheet with foil.  Toss the asparagus and garlic cloves with the olive oil and lemon juice on the lined baking sheet.  Season with salt and pepper.  Roast for 10-15 minutes, keeping a close eye on it so the vegetables don’t char.

Remove from oven and push roasted cloves out of their skins.  Discard skins.  Toss asparagus, garlic, and the juices  from the baking sheet with the orzo.  Mix in sun-dried tomatoes and parsley.  Season to taste.

*I didn’t, but next time, I will include the zest of the 1/2 lemon when I toss in the tomatoes and parsley.  I think it would have given the dish more pop.

On the crafty front…

Well, the dresses didn’t get done in time for Easter Sunday, but they’re on their way to becoming matching Mama-daughter spring dresses.  I did make some Easter shoes for our love bug, though, a la Stardust Shoes.

Our dresses are made from the same two fabrics – a Robert Kaufman grape-y pink print and a solid Kona cotton brown to coordinate.  I’ll be sure to post once they’re finished.

I started knitting a baby blanket last summer, but I couldn’t get myself to like the pattern enough.  It just didn’t knit up as pretty as I thought it would.  Since Baby S has her Mama-made blankie (She’s swaddled up in it, dreaming sweet dreams as I type.), I decided to frog it and knit something else for my girl.

I picked the Child’s Glamour Dress, a free Lion Brand pattern.  The great thing about this pattern is that it knits up as a dress for an infant and turns into a toddler-sized tank top later on.  *Yay* – because knitting takes so much longer than sewing… for me, anyhow.  I like the idea that she’ll wear it for a while.

I love this yarn. It’s Debbie Bliss Cotton Cashmere in the best shade of pink ever – almost tropical. (It’s color number 15024, I don’t know the name.)

And that Fan and Feather pattern, ah! I can definitely see it used for some hand towels – just look at how it scallops at the edges.

And that’s what’s on the needles and under the presser foot right now…

Aaah.

Making things rocks.

Whisk Wednesdays :: Mouclade

Mussels with Wine and Cream sauce.  Now this, I quite liked.  The cream added the quintessential richness, yet it was dainty – it didn’t smother that saltwater freshness mussels hold so well.  The parsley-thyme combination was perfect, very French.  The method was relatively simple, a few different reductions for the sauce but well worth the resulting concentration of flavor.  Shallots were an ingredient in the sauce’s base – I adore shallots.  So caramelly and sweet.  In fact, I need to cook with them more often, really.

Judging by the recipes on the internet and from the emails our group was passing around, curry powder is commonly used in Mouclade.  Oh, I was so tempted to replace the cream with coconut milk and make a curried version.  But I was good, stayed on track and I’m glad I did.  This sauce was really great.    Since mussels are relatively inexpensive and so easy to prepare I’m definitely making this a go-to recipe that I plan to experiment with – a coconut curry version, maybe even a saffron paella-inspired version…

Unfortunately, my sweet husband is out of town, so he didn’t get to try this Whisk Wednesdays dish.  Yep, I finished it all by myself – it was the easiest thing I did all day.

Whisk Wednesdays :: Bouchees aux Crevettes

Last week’s (Yes, I’m late again.) Puff Pastry Shells filled with Shrimp and Mushrooms left a little to be desired, for me at least.  First off, it turned out unintentionally and disappointingly vegetarian when I opened my pound of cooked, peeled shrimp and found them raw, shells still on.  (Thank you, hasty Publix seafood man who didn’t listen to me very closely.)  It called for cooked shrimp and the preparation style demands a snappy pace – all ingredients have to be ready to go and flash sauteed.

Oh well.  The mushrooms were tasty all by themselves.  I suppose I’m just not inclined to that heavy of a dish.  I loved the method, it all comes together so quickly; but puff pastry and cream sauce are a pretty hefty duo.  It just lacked a little pop on the palette.

I also did not make my own puff pastry.    With an almost-7-month old, the best laid plans can be easily rerouted.  I did have fun slicing and shaping my little triangle-shaped shells, though.  I will make good on my commitment – I plan to make some from scratch for a dessert recipe of mine I’ve been wanting to perfect.

I found it!

My reason to learn to knit sleeves, that is. A daunting task I’ve been putting off, but I will gladly give it my most valiant effort if it promises to add this amazingly versatile and sweetly feminine wrap sweater scarf thingy to my fall, winter, and spring wardrobes. And! It’s a free pattern – gracias a Berroco. Does it get any sweeter? Ready, Ivy Mae? Yes, you. You know you’ll be holding my hand through this.