laurasaur

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 was a cake for my friend Melissa who turned 12 years old last week.

Inside the cake was what I normally bake when I am not sure of someone’s preference, layers of chocolate and vanilla cake with a chocolate buttercream.

I have only been in London a few weeks and already I have hunted down two French patisseries for the sole purpose of buying macarons. Last week when we were in Canary Wharf for interviews I stumbled upon Paul and bought a giant macaron. Unfortunately no one was sure what flavour it was, and even after sharing it and eating it neither of us had figured it out. The texture however was devine and it was far richer than the Ladurée ones, but obviously very bland. I think the huge one from Paul was 2 pounds something, and roughly equates to 3 or so of the little Ladurée ones which were 9 pounds 80p for 6 + a pretty box. Ouchie.

After discovering last night that there are two Ladurée shops in London – First stop today was Harrods. Which of course is packed full, mainly with tourists, and looks to have quite a cool food court with people chowing into these amazing looking gelati/sundaes.  But I wasn’t there for any of that and in fact we made it through the ground floor in possibly record time to end up in Ladurée.

Hubby helped me pick out 6 little macarons – here is my verdict. (L-R in pic above)

Orange Blossom – hubby chose this flavour and although I wouldn’t have done so myself I quite like it. The green ganache slightly put me off but it does taste very floral.

Salted butter caramel – Third place? Almost sticky ganache, with a scorched caramel flavour.

Vanilla – rich with vanilla seeds, although tastes slightly pasty almost. On second thoughts the aftertaste is of an amazingly rich vanilla icecream.

Chocolate -Thick and rich with a nice deep ganache. I give second place to this guy. I think this may actually have been bitter chocolate, they didn’t have both available and this is light and not so sweet.. I wonder.

Rose – amazing rose flavour, super fluffy ganache almost like whipped cream, consistency too thin for my liking but still devine, strongly rose scented and tasting like turkish delight.

Pistachio – My favourite, densest and delicious, with a nice texture. Mmmm.

All in all amazing! If you want to make me happy – buy me macarons. Pistachio ones if you are too scared to choose

Is it sad that my goal is to try all the flavours? Haha. The berry ones, and of course lots more pistachio ones And to be fair, I must of course compare with all the ones from Paul and then Pierre Herme when in Paris!!

One of the reasons I didn’t mind so much moving to London was that Paris was apparently so close by. Now I am yet to discover that nor see any cheap way of getting there, but I made an amazing discovery, there are not one, but two Ladurée stores in London. Ladurée and Pierre Herme may or may not have been two of my biggest driving factors to go to Paris…

image from http://www.laudree.fr

I’m really annoyed I missed seeing bodyworlds it closed just before we arrived here. There is an exhibition on at the welcome collection called “Exquisite Bodies” which is sort of not really similar, well, its wax models anyway and has the added bonus of being free.

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.