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.

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!!

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.

Traditional French Macarons are not easy at all, and I spent a lot of time researching the technique and everyone’s tips on egullet. I was so stoked when I checked after 10 minutes and they had the little frilly feet!! I know they are far from perfect, but after my last attempt which was just an EPIC failure – these are like perfect to me.

I left mine to rest before baking for approximately 30 minutes which I like to think helped the shells, however the consistency was just a tad too thick which means the tops arent quite as glossy as I would like. They taste divine like an amazing brownie though.

After a little snowboarding incident on the weekend (check out my sling – and yeah that is a fairy costume hehe)

I’m at home for a few days, and I’m not really supposed to be using my arm at all.. so I embarked on some easy one arm baking these are my new favourite oaty cookies, and you can swap out the dried fruit for any dried fruit of your choice, ditto for the nuts, so they are super adaptable.

180g / 1.5 sticks + 1 tblsp butter
1 1/3 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp mixed spice
2 2/3 cups rolled oats
180g dried apricots, chopped into approx 4 pieces each
1/2 cup sultanas
1/3 cup pecans or any nuts, very finely chopped

Preheat oven to 392°F (200°C).

In a large bowl, cream together the butter, brown sugar, egg and vanilla until smooth and fluffy. In a separate bowl, whisk the flour, baking soda, spice and salt together. Stir this into the butter/sugar mixture. Stir in the dried fruit and nuts.

Put the mixing bowl in the fridge for about half an hour or for as long as you can stand (you can skip this step but your cookies may be a little flat and not as chewy).

Place on a COOL (very important) baking sheet with the same space between them as the width of each ball of cookie. Bake them for 10 to 12 minutes until golden at the edges but still a little undercooked-looking on top. Let them sit on the hot baking sheet for five minutes before transferring them to a rack to cool.

If you wanted to make these super super awesome times four, then you could add chunks of white chocolate, about 100grams or as much as you wanted really, cut into fairly large chunks so as to not affect the texture of the mix too much. I only had a tiny amount of white chocolate but its like a jackpot when you get a cookie with chocolate in it!! mmm.

Click on more to see the recipe…

Streusel
1/3C packed brown sugar (2.5oz/72g)
2 T granulated white sugar (1 oz/26 grams)
1 cup walnuts or pecans (I used pecans) (4 oz/113 g)
1 ½ t cinnamon½ cup flour (2 ¼ oz/65 g)
4 T softened unsalted butter (1/2 stick/2 oz/57 g)
½ tsp vanilla

Batter
4 large egg yolks
2/3 cup sour cream (5.5 oz/160 g)
1 ½ t vanilla
2 cups flour (7 oz/200 g)
1 cup granulated sugar (7 oz/200 g)
½ t baking powder
½ t baking soda
¼ t salt

1 can apricot halves (or real fruit, or any fruit you feel like)

Prepare a 9 inch springform pan by lining the bottom with a circle of parchment paper cut to fit, and then greasing the rest. Preheat the oven to 350 F/180 degrees C.

In a food processor pulse the sugars, nuts and cinnamon until the nuts are coarsely chopped. Remove ¾ cup to use as filling. To the remaining add the flour, butter and vanilla and pulse briefly to form a coarse, crumbly mixture for the topping.

In a bowl, lightly combine the yolks, vanilla and ¼ of the sour cream. Set aside.
In a large mixing bowl (or your kitchenaid) combine the dry ingredients and mix on low speed for 30 seconds to combine. Add the butter and remaining sour cream.
Mix on low speed until the dry ingredients have been moistened and then increase to medium speed (high speed if using a hand mixer) and beat for 1 ½ min. Scrape down the sides as needed.

Gradually add the egg mixture in 3 batches, beating for 20 seconds after each addition and scraping the sides each time.

Remove from the mixer and use a spatula to fold the batter a few times, making sure that the very bottom and the sides all incorporate evenly. Reserve about 1/3 of the batter and scrape the rest into the prepared pan. Smooth the surface with a spatula—this is a thick cake batter and will require smoothing.

Sprinkle with the prepared streusel filling and then layer the fruit over that.
Dollop the rest of the batter into blobs over the apples slices and smooth it out with a spatula if you can, mine was too thick so I just left it in blobs which looks cooler anyway. Sprinkle the streusel topping over the top of the cake.

Bake for 55-60 minutes or until a cake tester comes out clean.
Let the cake cool in its pan on a rack for 10 minutes. Serve warm or at room temperature.

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