I find most cheesecakes very easy to make except for the part where you must have patience and leave it to chill down overnight. This is no exception and the combination of white chocolate and raspberries is heavenly.

Like any baked cheesecake this must be made the day before you want to eat it.

ease:  4/5
mess factor:  3.5/5 – few bowls to clean up
cooking time:  1 hour
total:  11 hours

taste: 4.5/5

Ingredients
1 x 250g packet of biscuits
100g ground almonds or hazelnuts
150g melted butter

750g cream cheese (3 x 250g packs)
140g (2/3c) caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla bean paste or extract
3 eggs
200g good white chocolate chopped into chunks
200g frozen raspberries

Grease a 20cm springform pan. Place biscuits, ground nuts and butter in the bowl of a food processor and process until finely crushed and well combined. Transfer mixture to prepared pan. Use a straight-sided glass to spread and press mixture firmly over base and side of pan (Try to get it all the way up the sides – I was using the wrong size pan). Cover with plastic wrap and place in the fridge for 30 mins.

Preheat oven to 160°C. Use an electric beater or mixer to beat together cream cheese, sugar and vanilla until smooth. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Use a spatula to gently fold in chocolate and raspberries.

Pour mixture into the biscuit base. Bake in preheated oven for 1 hour until just set in the centre (Gently shake the pan, the middle should still wobble a little). Turn oven off. Leave cheesecake in the oven, with the door open a crack, for 2 hours or until cooled completely (this *should*prevent cake from cracking). Cover with plastic wrap and place in the fridge overnight to chill.

He is the most alert little guy ever. He came out with his eyes wide open and looking around, no crying or anything like that, just breathing well and taking everything in his stride. This photo was taken right after he was born and before he had even been cleaned up! So fresh and new to the world. The first photo was about an hour after he was born and on the bed he was born on!

I’ve stuck my birth story after the jump if you want to have a read. It’s pretty long and involved and sort of TMI but there you go…

I woke up at 6.30am on the 19th of May having what I thought may have been Braxton Hicks. I never had any during my entire pregnancy so I wasn’t sure exactly what was going on. I was getting 30 seconds of intense period-pain feelings low down across my bump. I tried to go back to bed but lying down made them unbearably painful so I got up and wandered around our apartment and went on the internet. I started timing them on my husband phone and they were around 6-7mins apart. I kind of felt like something might be happening but I didn’t want to be too dramatic and breathing through them was totally fine.

My husband woke up and I told him I thought we might be having the baby today. He asked me whether I wanted him to stay home from work but I didn’t see the point of losing a days wages when I wasn’t even sure what was going on. He left with strict instructions to check his phone often and we were confident he would be able to get home from work in time if something did happen.

I spent the rest of the morning with my parents who were obviously quite excited and Mum started timing my contractions. They were still every 6-7 minutes apart. I knew to call my midwife when they reached 5 minutes apart. They were definitely getting stronger though and I tried not to let on to my parents by continuing conversation with them etc when I had one. They had been planning on going shopping at lunch time and I eventually managed to convince them that I was fine and they should still go. They left and I tidied the house and put a waterproof sheet on our bed on top of a set of sheets so the bed would be ready to sleep in after the baby was born. I cut up a cheap shower curtain to fit down the hallway to the bathroom. I wandered downstairs and saw a few older women and they said it was going to get a lot more painful than this! We had a bit of a laugh and I went back upstairs. I decided climbing stairs was a bad idea and to be avoided at all costs from now on as it made the contractions a lot harder to deal with. The pains were starting to last longer and I was thankful I had my midwife appointment at 2pm.

My parents arrived back home and I had some grapes for lunch (bad move, in future I will eat much more food at this stage!) and we took off for my appointment. I should mention at this point that my midwife and I have differing opinions over a lot of things and I was feeling nervous that she would make me have an internal examination when before I was certain I didn’t want any and would refuse them. My first blood pressure reading was sky high and I started feeling nervous knowing this would make them very wary of birthing at home. Anyway my midwife said she was going to give me an internal and a sweep. I didn’t refuse at this point because I was feeling curious to know how far along I was (slightly angry at myself for giving into this now) and because I didn’t want to have a fight with my midwife in front of my mum who was still in the room. Anyway just as she started she said “Your waters have gone!” I said “What!!” and felt them gush out everywhere, I was very angry because having my waters broken was one of the major things I had definitely NOT wanted. She reassured me she hadn’t actually done anything but I felt rather annoyed at myself for allowing an internal and the coincidental timing of the whole thing I still feel funny about… I’m sure had I not had the examination my waters would have gone a lot later allowing me to have a more natural labour. Anyway she gave me an internal and announced I was only 2cm and that the baby was coming tonight. I was slightly dismayed at only being 2cm but expressed my thoughts at how painful the internal was to which she said “You better get used to it – what do you think we will be doing at your house tonight?” (I was scared at this…). Anyway I assumed all was fine but then they took my blood pressure 3 more times. I could see my mum getting a bit emotional on the other side of the room because she had raised blood pressure while carrying me and had a very bad labour/birth.

This is where I almost broke down because they told me I had to go to hospital for monitoring. Had my mum not been in the room I think I would have fought them but she was backing them up and they were very insistent. I started crying and saying that I really didn’t want to and that I knew once I was in hospital that I wouldn’t be able to come home. She reassured me that if my blood pressure came down they would let me leave. I had no choice reall but to accept what they were saying.

At this point I almost completely lost it and rang Jonno in tears outside trying to explain the situation. I asked him to leave work and go to the hospital. My parents drove me back home – I said I wanted to get stuff for the hospital but really I just wanted as much time as possible to calm down! Anyway calming down was NOT happening at all in any form because my contractions had just intensified about 4 times in pain from my waters going and probably the fact I was stressing out. They were coming every 5 minutes and I just knew in my head that once I got to hospital with my blood pressure being so high and having proper contractions there was no way out.

We jumped in the car to head to the hospital and the contractions got worse again. I tried to breathe and calm myself but I kept bursting into tears and couldn’t believe the whole situation. We arrived at the hospital and at triage my blood pressure was even higher to the point where even I was quite worried. They moved me to the labour ward and hooked me up to the ctg (monitor that looks at baby’s heart beat and my contractions) and a blood pressure monitor. My first blood pressure reading was almost normal! I was overjoyed. I asked the midwife how long I would have to stay on the monitor as I wanted to go home and staying on the bed was worse than walking around. She said 2 or 3 hours and my heart almost broke.. I text Jonno telling him to hurry as I needed his support and I felt sure the baby was going to be born in the hospital. Eventually the doctor came in to assess me again and I begged her to go home. She said they were waiting on my blood results and if there was nothing wrong then I could. At this point I was overjoyed. I also realised that the CTG had slipped down and was not picking up my contractions which were now 3-4 minutes apart and rather painful. Actually very very painful from having my movements restricted. I was worried that I was not coping very well with the pain and still had some time to go.

Jonno arrived and we left the hospital together. It was rush hour traffic (6.30pm) and I knew the drive home was going to be agony. It certainly was, labouring women should never ever go in a car at that point. Poor Jonno was trying to drive fast while avoiding bumps and finding alternate routes home to the traffic. At one point we were stuck in a traffic jam and I was writhing around in the passenger seat praying to God to help me through this. It seemed like the contractions were getting longer and longer but I had long since lost the ability to time them by this stage.

Eventually we arrived home and called my midwife who said she was on her way. I paced around the house trying to breathe through contractions. At this point I noticed if I sat down I almost fell asleep instantly, but then woke to a horrendously painful contraction. I was feeling nauseous and extremely, extremely tired. I realise now that I hadn’t had anything to eat except a few grapes the whole day and a piece of bread! My midwife arrived and told me I wasn’t breathing properly and needed to cope better so I tried to keep doing her method of breathing. I laboured on the toilet for a bit and at this point I asked her where the second midwife was (who brings the gas & air) as I was getting worried I wasn’t coping. She said she wouldn’t call her until she had assessed how far along I was (meaning an internal). I point-blank refused and Jonno started explaining to her why I didn’t want one. She said fine she wouldn’t give one if I didn’t want it but still wasn’t going to call the second midwife. I was NOT impressed as gas & air is your only option for pain relief and you are meant to be able to have it from the beginning of labour. Eventually she wore me down and promised a quick and gentle examination (which it was not) from which she said I was only 4cm. I was slightly distraught by this news thinking I was further along and she then called the next midwife.

The second midwife arrived just after 8.30 with the gas & air. By this stage I was starting to make noise through the contractions and convinced myself I could wait a bit longer for gas & air as it was my “last resort” of pain relief and I was quite scared it would have no effect on me. The midwifes were sitting together on the couch in our lounge and at 9.50 I stuck my head in and asked to be shown how to use it. I sat on the bed and used it for my next set of contractions. It didn’t take the pain away, but I found if I breathed it through then it took the edge off the end of the contraction but not the beginning which was by far the worst bit. By this stage I was really really zonked, my head kept nodding off in between contractions which were now lasting a minute or more with only 30s-a minute in between them.

I could hear the midwives in the lounge making lots of phone calls to the hospital. They came into our room and explained that the hospital hadn’t read my results properly and they strongly advised me to transfer by ambulance. At this I point blank refused stating I knew the risks and they said OK.

Sometime after 10 I started getting the urge to push and my body started doing it involuntarily.

Jonno was beside me on the bed and I was clawing at his arm through the contractions. I was sitting with my back against the wall and I knew I was in a bad position and Jonno kept suggesting I change to which I’m pretty sure I told him to shutup! At some stage the midwives both appeared in the room and my MW did another internal to see if my cervix was fully dilated which it was (I was so happy hearing this – and misinformed too, I thought because I was fully dilated and my body was pushing the baby would be here straight away!) pushing at first felt satisfying although the contractions were strong and painful at the beginning. I stopped using the gas and air at this point (NO IDEA why in hindsight). The midwifes started telling me to push with each contraction but his head kept going back up. At 10.50 the pain became extreme and he began crowning, I can honestly say I have never experienced such excruciating pain. The midwives kept saying I should feel his head but I was way too scared. I felt like I was tearing horrendously and had no desire to feel what damage was being done. The midwives were telling me to stop pushing and breathe and I was trying/screaming in pain it really was the most indescribable pain. This went on for what felt like forever but apparently must have been about 15 minutes.

Eventually I couldn’t bear the pain anymore and pushed with the next contraction and his head and then his whole body slipped out. (11.06). They put him on my chest and it was the most surreal thing ever this baby with a HUGE cone head (hubby thought he was permanently deformed) all white and purple. I cuddled him for half an hour and we decided that we could cut the cord as it had stopped pulsing. Jonno cut the cord after a few attempts (that thing is huge, gross, and tough). I had refused the injection to help deliver the placenta and the midwives were getting impatient for it to arrive and tried to start pushing on my stomach to which I quickly fought them off. Ten mins later I had 2 big contractions and yelled for help and out it came by itself. It was disturbingly gross and half the size of the baby! I gave the baby to Jonno for cuddles and to be weighed and for me to be inspected (thankfully, after all the excruciating pain and damage I imagined I had done I was completely fine and didn’t need any stitches or anything at all) then had a nice shower. When I got out the baby was dressed and everything cleaned up, we just sat on the bed with the baby and called up my parents to come over. Eventually everyone left, after a few attempts to feed him (he was totally uninterested) we put him in his basket and went to bed, only waking once for a feed in the night.

I’m still a long way from the lovely country I call home, New Zealand. While everyone there enjoys stunning summer days and long evenings, we have rain, sleet, snow, and darkness at 4pm.  The last 6 months have brought an entirely new way of life for me, and one major unexpected change.

You know that saying about plans going astray, well, yeah, I can verify that is true Still, my life is very nice right now, just a bit different from our plans of just a few months ago. We always had planned on coming to London for a few years to work. We planned on having a baby at some stage and coming back to NZ to settle. Little did we know that I was already pregnant when we left glorious New Zealand! So that was one small spanner in the works. I looked for work solidly for a few months once we arrived, but there was just no software development jobs going. In hindsight I should have given up looking a lot earlier and worked in a cafe, but I didn’t, and well, then it became too late because I sprouted a somewhat huge baby bump. Thankfully my husband landed a sweet job very soon after we arrived (and they love him, he has just had a promotion!), otherwise we would have been on the next plane home.

on the tube, blissfully unaware of the baby growing in there

So, here I am, jobless, and growing a baby in my belly. People ask me what I do and I have a hard time answering – what on earth do I do? Well, I spend a lot of time on eBay, that’s for sure. Having a baby has increased my addiction even further and opened my eyes to the designer baby second hand clothing market. Thankfully we also bought a car that turned out to be a piece of crap, because I spend lots of time fixing it or visiting our mechanic, who I am getting to be quite good friends with haha. I go for walks, I go shopping and have hot chocolates, I cook and sometimes I even clean.

Yeah. My life is pretty sweet. And on top of this I seem to have been blessed with the worlds easiest pregnancy. I haven’t had any morning sickness, or anything weird like that, and I’m only just getting to the uncomfortable stage where I walk the poor baby into door frames and stuff.

31 weeks pregnant!

What else is going on….

I’m so itchy. I don’t know what causes it, although I do have a general idea of what trigers it – water, or more specifically taking a shower. Generally I can minimize the itching if I just jump in and out very quickly and then slather some moisturizer on my legs. But – sometimes a quick shower just doesn’t cut it. Like right now. I really needed to wash my hair, and as you probably know, my hair is really, really long. This means it takes me a few minutes to shampoo and condition it, plus shave or whatever else I gotta do, and by the time I get out my skin is crawling.

I literally scratch to the point where I am covered in red marks and lines. It usually takes about half an hour for the urge to scratch to disappear and then about half an hour after that I feel like I can function normally. This has been going on for years and years, and I go through periods of months when I am fine and some where I am not.

I think maybe I have some kind of liver problem, or food allergy. Its getting to the point where I really need to do something about it, because its getting damn hard to scratch certain bits now I’m pregnant! Plus the thought of having a little baby and one hour of itchies freaks me out.

Yeah apart from that not much else. I feel my next few posts will be baby stuff related.. so please forgive me xx

Bottom Cake flourless chocolate and orange with dark ganache frosting
Top Cake carrot and macadamia cake with cream cheese frosting

The decoration was rushed and gross, I find it way too hard to decorate a cake iced with cream cheese so it came out a bit of a disaster.

The way that is best, especially considering I am on a no-eating-baking kick, I will make some slices and take them to my family to vote. I know this family is kind of crazy on the high calorie foods so I’m gonna skip the fruity/lemon/blueberry crumb bars all together… I hope this is a good decision!!

Tonight I will be making:

• Caramel Mocha Nut Slice
• Caramel White Chocolate Macadamia Slice
• Coffee Toffee Bars
• Florentine Slice

I really want to try out Nanaimo bars but I think they don’t quite keep up with the standards of the rest. My flatties and family are gonna be stoked with the leftovers…. off to the supermarket to buy CALORIES kthxbai

edit: decided against caramel white choc macadamia.. maybe next time…

Click for bigger piccy

Unfortunately these look HIDEOUS in the pictures. They looked damn adorable on individual plates and I seem to have taken pics of the ugly ones haha.

Made dinner tonight to celebrate with family end of exams. Chicken paella wiuth chozorio and bacon *drooool* and tiramisu cupcakes. I think I got in everyones good books – Just as well because the whole creation session took hours lol! Once again this is another super long reciepe, infact much longer than the lemon meringue cupcakeys, because the assembly factor of these takes SOOOO long.

To be honest the inspiration for these comes from movenpick tiramisu icecream, possibly the best icecream flavour in the world. You can see the empty carton in the background of the finished pics hehe! The marscapone cream tastes just like the icecream and I ate waaay too much of it in the baking process! But it was totally worth it

Vanilla ButterCake
90g Softened Butter
1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence
1/2 cup caster sugar
2 eggs
1 cup self raising flour
2 tablespoons milk

1. Preheat oven to 160 (or 180 if you dont have a fan) and line 12 muffin cases
2. Beat all ingredients together on low speed until just combined, and then on high speed until batter changes to lighter colour.
3. Divide mixture into cases, smooth tops and bake for 15-20 minutes, turn onto wire rack to cool.
4. Make mascarpone cream & coffee mixture.

Mascarpone Cream
250g Mascarpone (this is actually a cheese, sometimes found in the cheese or sour cream section)
1/4 cup icing sugar
1 tablespoon marsala ( i used port, with a similar result but I imagine marsala would be much much better)
3/4 cup / 180ml thickened cream, whipped

1. Combine mascarpone, icing sugar and marsala in bowl and fold in cream.

Coffee Mixture
2 tablespoon instant coffee granules
2/3 cup boiling water
4 tablespoons marsala (or 3 if you prefer)

1. Combine all in small bowl, cool.

Assembly
1. Remove cakes from cases. Take a cake and carefully cut horizontally into 4. I dunked each piece into the coffee mixture but you could brush it on if you wanted a less tiramisu-ey result.
2. Join the pieces with layers of mascarpone cream.
3. Spread the tops of the cakes with mascarpone cream and sprinkle with finely grated dark chocolate.
4. Refridgerate for 3 hours before serving.

Piccies (I need to refine my camera skills)

The cupcakes themselves were a major let down as they shrunk from the cases sooo much after cooled they were tiny. I need a good chocolate cupcake recipe please. However the stand out was the mocha buttercream/frosting.

Infact Jonno raved about it so much after I forced him to try it he started eating the leftover frosting out of the bowl!! Dangerous stuff. I have a whole bowl in the fridge Im hoping I will frost a cake for my friend Hong with the leftovers.

This is a basic, creamy, sweet but not tooth-achingly sweet buttercream. The espresso majorly cuts the sweetness down and turns this into an adult frosting, although i got major compliments from my 8 year old brother-in-law on them too

One stick of butter is 113 grams or half a cup or 8 tablespoons. I always have to google for this conversion, it seems americans do butter measurements in sticks. I’d love to see what a “stick” of butter is exactly

Laura’s Mocha Buttercream

This recipe makes AlOT. Enough for 36 generously frosted cupcakes. Make sure to sift all dry ingredients well before adding.

2 sticks / 16 tablespoons / 226 grams / 1 cup room temperate butter
8 to 10 cups sifted confectioners’ / icing sugar
2/3 to 1 cup sifted unsweetened natural cocoa
1 cup espresso
1 teaspoon vanilla

Beat butter until soft and well beaten (preferably in a kitchenaid with the paddle attachment but I wont stop you from doing it in something else). Stop beating and add 2 cups of the icing sugar. Beat until smooth and well incorporated. Scrape down the bowl and paddle. Add all of the remaining ingedients gradually and process or beat until completely smooth and creamy. Add more sugar or coffee if necessary to bring the icing to spreading consistency.

You can make this a day in advance and keep it in the fridge, and bring to room temperature and re-beat it before using.

This is a very palatable smooth frosting and pipes extremely well with the wilton 1M star tip for cute cupcake spirals

Recipe + Pics + Variations after the jump…

Rhubarb & Yogurt cake

125g butter
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
2 eggs
1 cup yogurt
2 cups chopped rhubarb (or apple or banana)
1 tsp vanilla essence
2 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt

Cream butter & sugar. Add eggs one at a team beating until fully mixed in each time. Stir in yogurt, fruit and vanilla. Add dry ingredients and fold in. Spoon into floured round cake tin (about 10″). Sprinkle with topping (if desired, I used the icing because I know how good it is!!) and bake at 180 degrees Celsius for 45 minutes or until done.

Optional Topping

1/3 cup sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 tbsp melted butter
1/2 cup chopped walnuts.

Passionfruit Icing

1 cup icing sugar
1 tbsp butter melted
pulp of 2 passion fruit.

Pineapple/Passion fruit variation.

Swap all of the brown sugar for 1 cup of white sugar and all of the fruit for 1 tin of crushed pineapple + the pulp of one passion fruit. Ice while still warm with passion fruit icing (reciepe above just stir together ingredients).