Time is of the essence for me at the moment. In between feeding, changing and playing with my baby (and changing and changing and changing), there is precious little time to do anything other than get myself showered and dressed – some days I even fail to do that!

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.

This is one of my first fondant attempts all by myself and I am super happy with how it turned out (except for the colors, more on that below). It is a four layer cake and has a white chocolate mouselline buttercream in between all layers and on the outside. The fondant is a mix of vanilla and almond. I was meant to stripe the layers but got distracted when I was assembling the cake, hahaha FAIL.

I didn’t have anywhere near enough time and as such my colors are not what I would like them to be but hey hey its here. I cut out the corner slice to take a photo and the cake is SO GOOD. So moist and rich and flavourful – and it has been in plastic for 3 days already because I knew I wouldn’t have time – how right I was!

Crap tons of photos to follow

So surprising how some things just taste so good together. Cheese and chutney, marmite and chips, tomato sauce and everything.. haha.. Feijoas and Bananas are another awesome combo. And real vanilla bean.. although you can substitute 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract if you want. Nice way to celebrate the first day of a new job… I feel like a proper grown up. Onto my second real job.. it’s all good.

10-20 feijoas, halved and scooped
1-2 ripe bananas sliced small
seeds of 1 vanilla bean
2 tablespoons of brown sugar
1 tablespoon of butter

1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup coconut
1/2 cup oats
50g butter at room temperature

Mix fruit and vanilla seeds in an ovenproof dish. Sprinkle brown sugar over and dot butter on top.

Mix all dry ingredients in a deep bowl. Cut the butter into rough pieces and rub it into the dry ingredients with the tips of your figures until well mixed in.

Crumble this mixture over the fruit in an even layer. Bake for about 20 minutes at 180C until you can see the caramel mixture bubbling just under the crumble. Let cool slightly before serving.

• 224 g cream cheese, softened
• 58 g butter, softened
• 125 g sifted confectioners’ sugar
• 5 ml vanilla extract

beat butter and cream cheese till creamy then add remaining. makes enough for 24 frosted like icing or 12 piped on.

I have a secret love for jam doughnuts. And on a trip to Melbourne I discovered hot fresh jam doughnuts, om nom nom so good.

These are no where near the same thing, but they do bear quite a large resemblance to the jam doughnut even though they are not fried. Best as hot as you can stand out of the oven but they do heat up well in the microwave too.

Recipe after the jump…

Adapted from taste.com.au

Ingredients

2 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
2/3 cup caster sugar
1/2 cup caster sugar to coat
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 egg
175ml buttermilk
1 tsp vanilla extract
about 5 tsp of jam (I used rasperry and cherry)
100g unsalted butter
1 tsp ground cinnamon

Preheat oven to 180°C and line a 12 cup standard muffin tin with cupcake cases (my batch only made 8).
Place the flour, baking powder and the first measure of caster sugar into a medium sized bowl.

In a jug, combine the vegetable oil, egg, buttermilk and vanilla extract. Add to the dry mixture and stir to only just combine.

Place a large spoonful of the mixture in each case and make an indent in the centre. You want to fill them enough so that the jam will not seep throught the mix into the bottom of the case. Fill each indent with a generous 1/2 teaspoon of which ever jam you like. Cover the jam with the remaining mixture and bake for 20 minutes. Remove from the oven and set aside to cool slightly.

Meanwhile, melt the butter. Combine the extra caster sugar and the cinnamon in a large bowl. When the cupcakes are cool enough to handle, I find practically straight away, dip each cupcake into the melted butter and then roll in the cinnamon sugar. Serve while still warm.

Fluffy frosting

1/3 cup water
1/4 tsp cream of tartar
1 cup sugar
2 egg whites
flavouring (1 tsp vanilla or similar)
coloring if desired

Combine water sugar and cream of tartar in a small saucepan.
Stir over low heat until mixutre is bubbly and sugar is dissolved but not colored.

Place egg whites in a clean large dry bowl and start to whip with electric beater. Add syrup in a thin stream and beat for approximately 7-10 minutes until mixture is not hot and stiff peaks are forming. Add vanilla and colouring if desired and beat through.

250g softend butter
1 tsp vanilla extract
3/4 cup caster sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 egg
2 cups plain flour
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1 tsp baking soda
400g any kind of chocolate chopped up.

preheat oven to 180 degrees and line oven trays with baking paper
beat butter/sugar/vanilla/egg with eletric mixer until light and fluffy.

stir in flour, cocoa, baking soda. stir in chocolate

roll tablespoons of dough into balls and place 5cm apart on trays, bake about 12 mins and cool on trays.

variations: add a handfull of sliced toasted almonds and 1/3 tsp almond extract.

Third post off old blog

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)

I felt like baking and jam… and trying out the much famed vanilla vanilla magnolia cupcake recipe. Of course you could use whatever jam you have on hand. I desperately wanted a cream cheese frosting but darn it there was none in the fridge (surprise surprise this stuff doesn’t last long around here), and for reasons I will not mention but are painfully related to cycling to and from work I did not feel like walking to the supermarket!! OW.

Recipe, pics after the jump.

Vanilla Cupcakes with Jam filling
adapted from Vanilla Vanilla cupcakes from [ More From Magnolia ]

Makes about 12 cupcakes

1.5cups flour
1 cup sugar
1.5 teaspoon baking powder
.25 teaspoon salt
1 stick (113g) unsalted butter, cut into 1-inch cubes
2 large eggs
.5 cup milk (I actually used rice milk but whole dairy milk is best)
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Few drops of almond extract
A half jar of jam flavor of your choice

1. Preheat oven to 325°F (160°C). Line cupcake pans with paper liners; set aside. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine flours, sugar, baking powder, and salt; mix on low speed until combined. Add butter, mixing until just coated with flour.

2. In a large glass measuring cup, whisk together eggs, milk, and essences/extracts. With mixer on medium speed, add wet ingredients in 3 parts, scraping down sides of bowl before each addition; beat until ingredients are incorporated but do not over beat.

3. Fill liners 1/3 full then top with a teaspoon of jam. Fill until 2/3 fill with remaining batter. Bake, rotating pan halfway through, until a cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean, 17 to 20 minutes.

To make frosting:

1/2 cup butter
1 1/2 cup icing sugar
4 tblsp milk (once again I used rice milk but normal is better)
1/2 tsp vanilla essence
1/4 tsp raspberry essence

Beat butter and icing sugar together until mixed. Add other ingredients and if necessary more icing sugar to bring it to a pipeable consistency. Pipe onto cupcakes. Enjoy!