Reunion Cheesecake

August 8, 2015

A week after my return from China and Hong Kong, I had a reunion with other alumni from my High School. Because we are spread all over the place, we had a mini European reunion for those of us based in Europe (and who could make it on that date).

We had a great barbecue, with skewers, corn, potatoes, salad, and more. Someone the week before had told me they missed the cheesecake our dorm mother used to make. Since I was hosting the event this time, and also since my recipe came from our dorm mom's recipe, I thought I would make cheesecake for our reunion dessert.

I made a shortcrust pastry for the crust, and the filling is lime flavored. Due to not having enough Greek yogurt, I thought I would try baking it a little less time, to keep the cake from being too dried. Apparently, it was a good choice, since my cousin who has eaten many of my cheesecakes said this was one of the best.

I topped it with a berry sauce made from blended frozen berries that I had let thaw, then reduced with some sugar to cut through the acidity. When I brought it out to the table (under the sunny sky), some others decided we should write DVA (the initials of our alumni association) on it. It wasn't very visible just carved out with a skewer, so I used some leftover almond powder I had to go over the letters.

Nutty Brownies

I was going to visit some family friends. When I go, I usually bring some baked goods. At a loss as to which recipe to use, my mom suggested that I bake brownies again, as those friends love chocolate. I wanted to be able to cut through the sweetness a bit more, though.

Instead of using water, I put in a couple of tablespoons of decaffeinated coffee (because I did not want to keep them awake at night from eating brownies), and topped them with nuts. I made a small bunch of cupcake-sized ones to give away, and made another batch into a large, round brownie to share with my family.

Although I had added some coffee flavor in, I had also reduced the amount of sugar, because the last time, I had deemed it a bit too sweet. My nut preference would have been walnuts, but since I did not have any on hand, almonds and cashews had to suffice. This time, I did refrigerate the cake, which gave it a more fudgy texture than when not refrigerated.

The recipe can be found HERE.

Almond Cookies with Berry "Jam"

I wanted to bake cookies for a friend, as well as for my professors. I settled for a basic almond butter cookie base, on top of which I spooned a "jam" made of frozen berries boiled down with some sugar.

The recipe and method is pretty much the same as the ones used in this recipe, except that in an effort to reduce the butter, I reduced butter content and brought the dough together with some water. My dough was still somewhat dry, hence the cracks in the cookies.

Almond Butter Cookies Topped With Blueberry Jam

I have been interning at a molecular biology lab for the past couple of weeks. The person I follow around the most is on vacation starting tomorrow, so I figured I should bring something for everyone today. Something homemade, of course.

I guess the urge also came from not baking for a long time.

I decided to make these almond butter cookies I have made a few times before, mostly from leftovers of cheesecake crust dough. As I mentioned in the first time, the recipe was originally for cookies. They are often well-liked by people who eat them, and don't require too much fuss to make.

Being at the lab full-time doesn't give me a lot of time, though. So I prepped the dough on Tuesday night, and baked it last night. Due to ingredient shortage, I ended up using salted butter instead of unsalted, and used less than the recipe called for... which explains the few cracks in the cookies, as they didn't hold together as well. I used more sugar, too, to balance out the salty flavor that came in from the butter.

I baked each tray of cookies (at 20 cookies a tray) for 5 minutes, then topped the indents I made with jam for the last 15 minutes of baking. This keeps the jam from becoming too candy-like.

I also made a little "card" with the ingredients list, in case someone at the lab was allergic to something. This gave me an opportunity to dive into my card-making materials box. I wrapped it up in some Saran wrap before putting it in the bag with the cookies, to keep it from becoming oily.

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RECIPE (with reduced butter and added sugar)

  Ingredients

• 400 g flour
• 200 g almond powder
• 330 g salted butter
• 150 g sugar
• blueberry jam, as desired

  Procedure

1. Take butter out of the fridge.
2. Preheat oven at 180°C.
3. In a large bowl, mix all the dry ingredients.
4. Add small pieces of butter and rub into the flour mixture until no butter remains on its own. Try to not work the dough too much.
5. Roll the dough into logs and refrigerate around 30 mins.
6. Cut the logs into desired, even pieces. (I had to reshape them because my logs were uneven.)
7. Using your thumb, make indents in the cookies.
8. Bake for 5 mins in the middle of the oven, then put jam into the indents. Bake for another 15 mins.
9. Let cool completely.

Mini Marbled Cheesecakes

I had some leftover cheesecake ingredients, and I thought it would be a good opportunity to experiment a bit =D

(All pictures were edited slightly due to bad lighting and photography conditions)

First, I made them mini sized~ I used two sizes of cupcake tins (silicone ones) to make these. 24 mini cheesecakes were made, and 6 small ones (2 of the mini ones didn't fit on the tray...) They all have an almond cookie crust as a base.

First up, we have the Green tea-Vanilla cheesecake!

I made a quarter-batch of vanilla flavored cheesecake, and a quarter-batch in which I mixed in some Matcha (green tea powder). I was really scared the green tea would be drowned by either the vanilla, or the cheesecake flavor. Then I was scared it would be too strong. It turned out fine, though. I attempted marbling cheesecake as well this time, and some of them are failures in that prospect. This one is topped with some sliced almonds.

Overall, the green tea experiment was pretty much a success!

Then, I made Rose-Raspberry cheesecake.

Same as the Green tea-Vanilla, I made quarter batches each of rose flavored cheesecake, and cheesecake in which I mixed raspberry jam. I topped this one with a dollop of raspberry jam, for additional color. When I made the first ones, this cheesecake looked a lot like smoothies =D

Here's more pictures:

These are the medium-sized cheesecakes.