Epic Portions

Tag: made up recipe

  • 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!

  • Smorecakes

    Remember Baconsmores?
    Yeah, I thought so.  Well, turns out, not everyone eats bacon.  (Seriously!)  So, I had to make something for the vegetarians in my group in enjoy, and, well, I love a theme.  Smorecakes it was!  These were tiny, delicious little graham-cracker cupcakes topped with homemade marshmallow and a gob of chocolate frosting plopped on top.  Not the star of the evening, sure, but a tasty treat!

    Smorecakes

    Smorecakes
    1/2 cup butter
    1 cup sugar
    3 egg yolks
    1 tspn vanilla
    2 cups graham cracker crumbs
    2 tspm baking powder
    3/4 tspn salt
    1 cup heavy cream
    3 egg whites (room temp)

    First, you need to turn your graham crackers into graham crumbs.  My preferred method is to place the crackers in a freezer bag, zip it up, and beat the living daylights out of them with a rolling pin.  If that’s not your style, though, I hear that a minichopper or a food processor would also work.

    Then: In a large bowl, cream together your butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the egg yolks and the vanilla. In a separate prep bowl, combine the graham crumbs, baking powder and salt. Slowly beat the dry mix into the eggysugar mix. In a different bowl, beat your room temperature egg whites into stiff peaks. Once they are peaky, fold them evenly into the other mixture, and pour into prepared (greased, lined, whatever your fancy) cupcake tins.  Bake 20 to 30 min at 375F.

    Cool on a wire rack until you can get them out of the pan, then continue to cool until they will not melt your marshmallow too much when you dob it on top, but not so cool that they are cold.  These are really, really yummy still slightly warm.

    For the topping: make marshmallow.

    Dob liberal and delicious amounts of marshmallow on top of each cupcake.  Top with another dollop of chocolate frosting:
    2 3/4 cup powder sugar
    6 tblspn unsweetened cocoa
    6 tblspn butter
    5 tblspn tinned evaporate milk
    1 tspn vanilla

    Sift together cocoa and sugar. In a separate bowl, cream butter until smooth. Beat in sugarcocoa and evaporated milk; add vanilla and beat until fluffy.

    Voila – bacon-free (and, you know, sometimes that’s OK,) and delicious!

  • Fancy Schmancy Carrot Cake with Mango-Cream Cheese Icing

    I must apologize for leaving you so long without a baking post, oh Epic Portions readers.  I know you need your sugar fix, but homework has been getting me down, the weather has been getting me outside, and rock shows galore have been getting me dancing… leaving little time for baking and even less for blogging.  I have been baking though, oh yes!  Expect three posts from me before the weekend is out – the first being this super awesome Fancy Schmancy Carrot Cake with Mango-Cream Cheese Icing!

    This is NOT your average carrot cake. Carrot cake? Yeah, I know – boring. Bland. Kind of weird, actually.  But this?  This is a moist, spicy, flavorful, fruit-filled concoction which you can add just about anything to and it only improves it. Seriously! Experiment with it. You will not be disappointed. Plus, you can make just about any kind of cream cheese icing to suit your flavor-and-color preferences, making it both beautiful and versatile. I chose mango because I made this cake on Easter and mangoes feel spring-like to me, but really: anything goes. Give it a try.

    (Note: this has a long ingredient list and if you don’t bake often it can be a pricey recipe, but if you do bake often you will probably have a lot of things on hand… and either way it is totally worth it. And, despite the long list, it’s a pretty easy recipe to actually make.)

    Fancy Schmancy Carrot Cake
    Makes a three-layer 8″ round cake. Or whatever comparable size you want to make.
    2.5 cups all-purpose flour
    2 tspn baking soda
    1 tsp baking powder
    5 tspn cinnamon (or to taste)
    3 tspn nutmeg (or to taste)
    3 tspn salt (or to taste)
    5 tspn ground ginger (or to taste)
    4 tspn ground cloves (you getting the idea here, yet?)
    4 eggs
    2 sticks (16 tblspn total) butter – SOFT
    3/4 cup white sugar
    3/4 cup light brown sugar
    5 oz crushed pineapple in juice
    5 oz mango – chopped, pureed, in really small pieces somehow
    2 tblspn vanilla
    4 cups shredded carrots
    4 to 5 oz copped nuts – I prefer hazelnuts, but walnuts are nice too
    3/4 dried cranberries, with liquor liquid of preference to macerate
    1/2 cup crystallized ginger, really finely chopped

    Let me start by saying: the mini chopper is your friend. Carrots? Chopped! Mango? Chopped! Seriously, I put almost everything in this recipe in there and it makes it so easy and so good. For this recipe to really work, it’s best to have everything in an even and fine consistency, and the mini chopper is your best answer. I skipped the OXO and got an electric one, and I have never looked back.

    Also, let me say: to bake effectively with dried cranberries, you need to macerate (er, soak) them for at least 4 hours, and 12 hours is really better. I prefer to soak cranberries in spiced rum, but this time I ran out of rum so I added dry red wine, and that was nice too.  It doesn’t, by any means, need to be liquor.  Just find something liquid and tasty, and give your cranberries a good long soak in an air-tight container before you bake ’em. Just make sure you drain them before adding to the recipe – you do NOT want to add your macerating liquid.  I recommend a sieve.

    Now.  In a small bowl, combine your flour, baking soda, baking powder, and spices: cinnamon, nutmeg, ground ginger, salt, cloves and whatever else you feel like.  In a separate, large bowl beat the eggs, butter and sugars until combined and soft.  Add the pineapple (with juice), mango, and vanilla.  Add the dry flourspice mix and beat on low to blend.  Add the carrots, and beat to combine.  Add the walnuts, cranberries, and crystallized ginger, and combine.  Pour into three well-greased 8″ round cake pans, and bake all three for 30-45 minutes at 350F.  The length of time to bake will depend on how much liquid you’ve added in the form of fruit and such; really juicy mango will take longer, for instance. Depend on the age-old toothpick trick and know that moist is better than burnt, and you’ll be fine.  Cool on a wire rack until room temp, remove from the pans, and refrigerate the cakes for an hour or so to get them assembly-ready.

    Mango Cream Cheese Frosting
    16 oz SOFT cream cheese
    10 tblspn SOFT butter
    4 tspn vanilla
    2 cups (ish) powder sugar
    Mango puree to taste and texture (I buy frozen mango, thaw, and mini-chop.)

    Beat cream cheese, butter, and vanilla until combined.  Gradually add sugar and mango until you reach a consistency, sweetness, and mango-ness that you enjoy.

    Assembly: Place bottom cake layer on a serving plate, and coat top with icing. Add second layer and coat top with icing. Add third layer, and generously coat top and sides with icing.  Smooth to make it pretty.  I finish mine off with edible ball bearings, because they are colorful and fun and add a little extra crunch, which I really like.

    Voila!  This has been the attendees’ second-favorite thing I’ve made, just after the Lumpy Bumpy cake. It’s a huge hit.  Enjoy!