Orange Cheesecake, Christmas Tree Cake Remake

 

For yet another hallway dinner (February 2nd), I made a very simple orange cheesecake. The crust is a simple crushed cookie and butter crust, topped with a cream cheese and orange juice mix. The hardest part was making the topping using supremed tangerines. The failed ones got chopped into small pieces and cooked with a bit of pectin to cover the rest of the surface. Then I just shaved some chocolate on top.

I made about 10 of these, and will make this recipe again when I'm in a pinch, as it is so very easy to make. The recipe called for less orange juice than I used, but I just added enough for the batter to reach a consistency I felt was normal for cheesecake, based on previous experiences. This cheesecake also does not need to be baked, simply chilled overnight.

---

I also made a 2nd Christmas Tree cake, with an improved interior. The exterior, however, wasn't as good due to my ganache not holding the way it was supposed to...

Prince (Apple-Cinnamon) Cheesecake

It all began with a journal posted by *claremanson on DeviantArt. She was hosting a baking contest! I thought it was awesome, and decided that I wanted to take part in it.

Because the theme was an Oreo cheesecake based on *claremanson's recipe, I had a bit of trouble visualizing what I would do. Why? Well, because there are no Oreos to be found in the vicinity of my normal shopping area. I wasn't too keen on going around different stores to try and find those cookies, or some knock-off brand, so I took the closest thing I could find at Colruyt: Mini Prince vanilla-filled cookies.

After finding these cookies at the store, I thought I would start with a couple of test runs to test the flavors I had in mind. Because this is a no-bake cheesecake, it is much easier to do a couple of tiny practice cheesecakes. The one on the left was a test of the cinnamon flavored cheesecake, and the one on the right has plain vanilla cheesecake. They are topped with applesauce, lightly roasted apple slices, and 1/4 of a cookie each.

I wanted to stay away from the heavy cream, so I also tested to see how well it would set with yogurt instead. Worked wonderfully.

Now that I had the flavors in mind, and a rough idea for the presentation, I did a couple of concept sketches (in Paper). I varied from the recipe on these points:

• No Oreos.
• Vanilla is boring, so I used a cinnamon flavor.
• Used yogurt instead of heavy cream.
• Made it fruity for the summer with apples, to match with cinnamon (we all know I love the apple and cinnamon combo).

Then got to work on the final product. I had issues with the sugar mix not wanting to become caramel, and the burning me after it did... I started by trying to make a small batch of this microwave caramel sauce recipe, which didn't caramelize (maybe because I didn't have corn syrup so tried it out with honey instead...). I ended up using this recipe (I made a quarter batch), which turned out deliciously addicting. It took me around a whole afternoon, plus the time to finish up the decoration to finish it all.

I borrowed my dad's professional Canon camera to take these sunny pictures, so that the shots would be better quality than if taken with my Canon Powershot. (Which caused a whole issue with the fact that my dad had lost his Compact Flash card reader, and I had to get the pictures through cord... and the camera not being recognized by Windows 7, etc...)

I also made a bunch of smaller ones (4 the size of the test runs, and 3 in larger coffee cups), but they were mostly used as rough drafts for the decoration components, and therefore not fit for photography.

The contest winners were announced today. I didn't win anything, but got an honorable mention ^^