Happy Thanksgiving!!! After running and running so many miles (back to Mexico) since my last post (lol) I'm back and ready to crack the whip on healthy dining. Just so that you all know these diets and foods work, I've lost 14lbs and it's still coming off...and with that I share with you a Thanksgiving Treat which may or may not be on the diet (but all within reason and portions, right??)...this is a spin off of regular cheesecake. DO try this at home!
Ingredients:
For the crust:
2 Ready Made Crusts
For the Cream Cheese Filling
1.5 bars of Philadelphia Cream Cheese
3 eggs
1/2 cup heavy cream
1 tablespoon vanilla
1 cup of sugar
For the Peanut Butter mixture
1/2 cup creamy peanut butter
2/3 cup powdered sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
I had to do a little substitution here because I didn't have powdered sugar. But for all you novices out there...just take the granulated sugar and put it in the blender. And there you've got powdered sugar. Also, regular sugar works instead of brown sugar. So, the recipe is rather easy.
Procedure:
Pre-heat your oven to 350 degrees.
Put all the ingredients of the Cream Cheese Filling into a blender (YES, a blender). Mix well. Set that aside.
Combine the two different sugars for the peanut butter mixture.
With a fork, measure out the peanut butter and put it into the sugar mixture. Begin to cover it with sugar and mush it around.
After a few minutes, you'll start to see that little balls are created from the mixture. That's what you want!
Grab your Ready Bake Crusts.
Take the Peanut Butter Mixture and pour all but about two teaspoons into the crusts. Set the extra aside for now.
Get your cream cheese filling and gently pour it into the crusts. You'll see the peanut butter mixture mixing with the cream cheese.
Put your crusts into the oven. Bake for 35 mins and cool for 3 hours.
Sprinkle the extra Peanut Butter mixture on top. It will melt right into the cake, but also be a little garnish.
Then SERVE!
The cooling time is what helps it congeal, so don't be too nervous about the consistency as it comes out of the oven - it's okay. Just let it do its cooling thing and it should definitely smell and taste awesome. Now just remember, we did put TONS of sugar in here, so portions are what REALLY matter to the Workout Queen. Taste it, enjoy it. Just don't gorge! Eat your heart out!
So I have been making these individual cheesecakes since I was a kid. It's a recipe my mom got from a friend years ago, and I've been responsible for making it for family holidays for the last decade or so. Over the years I've done many things for the crust, but the cheesecake has stayed the same. This particular time, I went with a basic crust recipe from the back of a graham cracker box.
Ingredients:
2 1/2 cups of graham cracker crumbs
2/3 cup margarine, melted
4 (8 oz) packages of cream cheese (can be a mix of either regular, low-fat, or fat free but don't use all fat-free cream cheese because the consistency will be off)
1 1/2 cups sugar
6 large eggs
Foil muffin cups (about 50-60)
Directions: 1. Preheat oven to 350 2. mix graham cracker crumbs, 1/2 cup sugar, and margarine together in a bowl and set aside (mixture should be slightly dough-like) 3. blend cream cheese, remainder of sugar, and eggs in a large bowl (should be a batter-like consistency and mixture will not be fully smooth) 4. Take a spoonful of crust mixture and place at the bottom of muffin cups 5. Pour batter in cups until they are 2/3 full 6. Place cups in oven for about 15-20 minutes (or until cheesecake is firm and toothpick comes out clean when placed in the center of cup) 7. Remove from oven, let cool, and enjoy!
Note: I make this recipe for a lot of people, but the recipe can be halved to make about 20 cheesecakes if you are making it for a smaller party. You can substitute vanilla wafers at the bottom of cups for individual crusts if you want to make it easier. Be aware that the paper muffin cups do not work well with the homemade crust because they stick to the cup and are difficult to get out. You can also buy any type of pie filling to put on top of cheesecakes after they have cooled.
We wanted to test this recipe for super-secret professional reasons, and also because it sounds delicious.
Baking lore attests that cheesecakes are too difficult a dessert to make, so most people don’t attempt them. We scoff at baking lore. Continuing with our festive shake & bake endeavors, we tackled this autumnal cheesecake without reservations. It’s surprisingly simple and the crust is made with ginger snaps, which is the biggest draw with this cheesecake. In fact, when we told people what we were baking a Sweet Potato Cheesecake we were met with approving nods, as soon as we explained the crust the response turned to envious moans.
In the interest of time we opted for store-bought ginger snaps, which work perfectly, though if we were making this for a party we would probably make our own cookies. Then again, we could say we made our own and no one would really know; they’re all smashed and smothered in butter anyway.
Sweet Potato Cheesecake
ingredients
Crust:
1 ½ cups crushed gingersnaps
¼ cup sugar
1/3 cup unsalted butter, melted
Cake:
3 8-oz. packages cream cheese
1 cup sugar
¼ cup light brown sugar
1 ¾ cups sweet potatoes, cooked and mashed (approx. one large potato)
2 eggs
2/3 cup evaporated milk
1 tbsp cornstarch
pinch of freshly ground nutmeg
Topping:
2 cups regular sour cream
1/3 cup sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1. Crust: Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Combine crumbled cookies, sugar, and butter and press into the bottom of a 9-inch springform pan. Press onto the bottom and 1 inch up the sides. Bake at 350 degrees for 7. (Be sure to put the springform pan into a larger baking dish, because if it leaks you’ll set off the smoke alarm.)
2. Filling: combine the cream cheese and the sugars in a large bowl, then whisk in the sweet potato, eggs, and milk. Then add cornstarch and nutmeg. (We used an electric handmixer to make this all consistently mixed.) Pour the filling into the crust. Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour, or until the edge is set.
3. Topping: Combine the sour cream, sugar, and vanilla. Spread over the warm cheesecake. The topping will begin to melt once you put it on the hot cake, so you’ll want to be speedy about this. Return to the oven, still at 350 degrees, for 5 minutes.
On chilling and impatience: Cool on a rack, then refrigerate for several hours or overnight. Cake will continue to cook and set while chilling.
If you’re like us, you want to eat cheesecake right now, and you regret that you began making this after 7:30 pm. You will do each step simultaneously and with lightning speed, at no cost to the texture or flavor of the dessert. This makes for a food coma-inducing midnight snack, and so we chilled for about 2 ½ hours.
Remove sides of pan and serve.
As for the drinks, we decided to stick with the Fall theme. It’s not cold enough for hot toddies or mulled wine yet, though, so we thought about trying a beer-cocktail. “Do those exist?” You ask. “No,” we answer, after a fruitless search. The full spectrum of beer cocktails involves dumping a shot of some liquor into a glass of beer. The outliers are the Black Velvet (Guinness and champagne) and the Shandy (beer and lemon soda) but those aren’t exactly challenging.So instead, we decided to try some cider cocktails. This time our investigation bore fruit (ba-dum-dum). So we selected a few ciders from the local gourmet beer store Bierkraft to test out these drinks.
cider of Aspall, but the one is large enough that we realized we’d be “bobbing for apples” if we tried to drink this one as well as the others. Harpoon Cider: Very sweet, with a strong apple flavor. Original Sin Cider: Drier and more tart, like beer.
Magners Irish Cider: Tastes like a milder, perhaps watered-down version of the previous two. That may be why Magner’s never gets us drunk.
On to the drinks!
DEVON GIN
This recipe comes from The Ultimate Book of Cocktails, a large-format book that came as a Christmas gift. (Less info here on Amazon). Though it doesn’t exactly possess the authority of the New York Bartender’s Guide, it is written by Stuart Walton author of Out of It, a Cultural History of Intoxication and, less promisingly, A Natural History of Human Emotions.
The measurements are unusual in this, because the recipe calls for measuring spoons instead of jiggers. We haven’t measured gin in a teaspoon since we babysat.
In rocks glass:
3 parts 4 ½ tbsp sweet cider (we used Harpoon)
¾ part 3 tsp gin
¼ part 1 tsp Cointreau
With ice in glass, stir in cider and gin. Float Cointreau atop.
This recipe ends up being much smaller than expected, so we doubled it to make a reasonable cocktail. No matter how sweet the Harpoon is, this is really just a gin drink with a bit of fruity carbonation. Bake has never really liked gin (whereas Shake likes the promise than gin will remind you that you drank it the next morning) and this drink didn’t exactly convert her.
But don’t worry, there are plenty of variations. There is actually a drink on the online Cocktail Database called the Devonia Cocktail, served without ice, with more gin and substituting orange bitters for Cointreau. This may not qualify as a variation -- neither source references the other -- but it’s awfully similar in name and ingredients.
If you have orange bitters on hand it’s probably worth experimenting. To make orange bitters, see here. This is actually a very simple recipe compared to others online. We’ve made it and the bitters are delicious. Bitter is a misnomer, really. Add a few cloves to this recipe if you have them.
Another similar mix to the Devon and Devonia, also from the online Cocktail Database, is the Palisades Cocktail. It's the same as the Devonia but replaces Orange bitters with aromatic – Angostura, usually – bitters. If you have Angostura, then go ahead and try it. But if you make orange bitters you will never want to bother with plain old Angostura again. Why eat chicken when you can have steak?
No matter what you add, whether Cointreau, orange bitters, or Angostura, gin owns this drink. We ended up adding a bit more cider to the Devon to cut the gin taste and keep us sober enough to enough on to embark on our next cocktail:
Stir into a glass of ice (put ice in after you dissolve the sugar in the lemon juice –ice will prevent dissolving). Fill rest with cider. Original Sin is a good choice for this, because with the sugar and lemon it doesn’t need any more sweetness (when we drank a second round with Magner's you almost couldn't taste the rest of the drink).
Our attempt at a Fall cocktail become more of a refreshing Summer drink, just like a rickey or a julep.
And now, in honor of “cider drinks”, a song that reminds us of the good times:
