Epic Portions

Tag: cheesecake

  • Long Time, No Bake (Or: I’m surprised John hasn’t taken away my login info.)

    Hello, faithful food lovers – I have an apology, a cheesecake, and some news for you. The apology is thus: Sorry I haven’t been around to talk about sugar highs and fresh baked delights for a really, really long time. My life has been a little topsy-turvy lately, and things kind of got away from me.  Which brings me to the news: I’m actually not gonna be around much, for awhile.  I have officially moved to San Francisco to pursue my masters degree, and between being a full-time grad student, working two part-time jobs (it’s expensive out here, yo) and living in such an incredible and amazing city, I don’t forsee a whole lot of free time for baking in my near future.  I knew this was coming when I signed on here, and I have to say it’s bittersweet. Baking and writing for EP has been a whole lot of fun and I hope to come back to it regularly when things calm down a little here. (So, John: please don’t take away my login! In the words of my esteemed governor, I’ll be back.)

    And now, for what you’re here for: a farewell cheesecake!  For most of August it was really, really hot in Urbana, so I didn’t much feel like baking in the traditional, oven-on sense. I DID feel like having my friends over for one last cake party, though.  So when I found a no-bake cheesecake with a lovely and unusual twist in the August Martha Stewart Living, I went for it.  I give you, with very few modifications (but some, because that’s just how I am):

    No-Bake Goat Cheese and Mascarpone Cheesecake with Balsamic Cherries

    Crust:
    Butter (for your pan)
    1.5 cups graham crackers, beaten or food-processed to a pulp
    3 tblspn melted butter
    2 tblspn sugar
    Cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg to taste

    Butter a 9″ springform pan liberally.  Mix together your ingredients and press them into the pan, and refrigerate (or freeze) while you make the cake.

    Cake filling:
    4oz cream cheese at room temperature
    4oz mascarpone cheese at room temperature
    2oz soft goat cheese at room temperature
    1 cup of sour cream
    2/3 cup sugar, divided into 1/3s
    1 tblspn vanilla
    1 tbslpn lemon juice
    1 cup heavy cream

    Beat the three cheeses, the sour cream, 1/3cup of the sugar, the vanilla and the lemon juice in a large bowl until very smooth.   Try it with your finger or a spoon and marvel at how you never really though goat cheese would be good in a cheesecake, but totally is.  Don’t eat it all with the spoon.  In a separate bowl, beat the heavy cream and the other 1/3cup sugar on high until medium to stiff peaks form (or until soft peaks form and you’re really tired of standing there, but medium to stiff peaks are preferable.)  Fold the whipped cream into the cheese mixture and spread into your chilled crust.  Freeze for at least 2 hours, or however long you can stand to leave it in there and not eat it.  There’s no way I left it for two hours, probably more like 45 minutes, and it was squishy but delicious.  The longer you freeze it, the less squishy it will be, although I do not think it will in any way affect its deliciousness.

    Topping:
    1/2 lb sweet cherries, pitted and halved (frozen is OK if, like me, you don’t feel like pitting half a pound of cherries, but fresh is probably better.)
    1/4cup sugar
    balsamic vinegar to taste (don’t skimp, the balsamicity is half the fun.)
    1 tblspn cornstarch
    1 tblspn water
    cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and freshly ground pepper

    Bring about half of your cherries, the sugar, the vinegar, and your spices to a simmer in a saucepan.  Cook, stirring, until squishy.  (This is a very squishy recipe.)  I mean really squishy, kind of jam-like.  Whisk together your cornstarch and your water, and add the mixture to the saucepan.  Simmer for another minute or so, then remove from heat and stir in the remaining cherries.  Squish it a bit if you like, but part of the appeal is having some of the cherries still have their shape while the others are all syrupy.  Refrigerate until ready to serve.

    Once you are ready to serve it, just plate the cheesecake, drizzle a bit more balsamic vinegar on top in a pretty pattern, and top with some freshly ground pepper.  You can add your cherries to the top to serve, or let people add them as they like to their individual slices – up to you.  And please note that most of the ingredients you are using (goat cheese, mascarpone, etc.) traditionally come in containers twice as big as you are using.  This is good.  Once you make one of these things, you will totally want to make another one right away to have all to yourself.  In fact, perhaps you should anticipate this and make twice the cherry mixture to start with.  Mmmmm, it was really good.

    And that’s all for now.  It’s been really fun, guys, and I hope to be back again soon.  If you are in San Francisco, look me up and we’ll go eat some cupcakes.

    – Megan

  • Chocolate-Strawberry Cheesecake

    I’d been trying to get one of my co-workers, Chris, to come to a cake party ever since I started writing here. I couldn’t tell if he didn’t come because he just wasn’t that enthused about sweets or because he thought my friends were weird, but when he told me his favorite dessert was cheesecake, I took it as a challenge!

    Of course, this being Epic Portions, I wanted it to be more than just cheesecake.  Chris, who sits next to me at work, got a first-hand taste of why cake party came to be in the first place, when over my lunch break I was trolling recipes for ideas and said repeatedly, “what do you think would happen if I used ___ instead of ___? (His response? “I just like cheesecake! Plain old cheesecake!” Silly boy.)

    The result was chocolate- strawberry cheesecake. It was heavenly. I think I ate my weight in batter from the bowl alone. Mine was a little under-done… my oven tends to run hot and I wanted to keep it low to be on the safe side, but ended up keeping it a little TOO low… but even so, it was great.  I took two Martha Stewart recipes and used elements from both, along with some sage advice from my own mum and a serious personal aversion to corn syrup (love of marshmallow aside, if I don’t have to use it, I don’t use it), and the proof is in the pudding (er, the cheesecake) that you really can trust Martha. Her recipes may be complicated and difficult, but they sure are tasty.

    I should note, this recipe really isn’t very hard at all, but it’s bloody time consuming. You have to roast the berries for an hour an a half, bake the cheesecake for an hour or more, let it slowly cool in a turned-off, unopened oven for another hour, and chill it for at least four hours. It’s a lot of “down-time,” but you can’t really go run errands while your oven is on, so plan on staying home and babysitting this one for a significant amount of time.

    Chocolate- Strawberry Cheesecake
    1 lb fresh strawberries
    2 cups white sugar
    1 cup water

    9 oz chocolate graham crackers
    one stick (8 tblspn) unsalted butter
    32 oz (4 pckgs) cream cheese
    1.5 cups white sugar
    1 tspn salt
    4 eggs
    1 cup sour cream
    11 oz good-quality baking chocolate, as dark as you like
    additional strawberries, washed, hulled and sliced, for garnish.

    Begin with your berries: With the 2 cups sugar and the 1 cup water, make simple syrup by bringing the mixture to boil in a saucepan until dissolved and combined. Hull and half the washed 1lb of berries, and toss in the simple syrup. Arrange on a lined baking sheet, and roast at 300F for an hour and a half. Try not to eat them straight from the oven. Cool in the fridge for about an hour, then puree them – I used my mini-chopper but a blender would probably actually work better.

    Meanwhile, raise your oven temp to 325F and monitor it for awhile to make sure it holds a steady temp.  Take your graham crackers, and turn them into graham crumbs (as I have previously mentioned, I like beating them into submission with a rolling pin, but a mini-chop or food processor also works.) Melt your butter over LOW heat in a saucepan, and mix it into the crumbs until just moistened.  Press the mixture into an even, condensed, crust-like layer in the bottom of a 9-in springform pan, and bake at 325F for about 10 min.  Remove from oven and set aside.

    In a large bowl, beat the cream cheese, 1.5 cup sugar, and salt until combined and smooth. (Martha calls for a food processor, but I don’t have one. Stand mixers are also popular, but I don’t have one of those either. I used a hand mixer, and in addition to it working fine, I also got a nice upper-arm workout.) Meanwhile, in a double boiler, melt your chocolate until smooth.  Beat eggs and sour cream into cream cheese mixture.  Beat in melted chocolate, and continue to beat until thoroughly mixed and smooth, scraping the sides of the bowl with a spatula to get all the stubborn bits.

    Pour the mixture onto the crust in the springform pan. With a spatula, or a spoon, or really whatever you think will make the prettiest designs and least mess, spiral the strawberry puree into the batter in the pan, making swirls and patterns and whatnot.

    Bake until just set, at 325F, without opening the door too much because that will make the cake crack on top, about 1 hour, maybe a little more.  Turn your oven off, and allow the cheesecake to slowly cool in the oven, without opening the door or messing with it, for another hour. Remove from oven and cool to room temp on a wire rack, then transfer to the fridge and chill for at least four hours.

    Top with hulled, washed, sliced fresh strawberries for a pretty and fruity touch.

    Enjoy!