Baked New York Cheesecake

I have saw and heard a lot of good comments on the Baked New York Cheesecake(flourless version), even my colleague's wife also strongly recommend me to try on this. So without any hesitate, I baked after getting hold of all the ingredients. And I must said, the result is really fantastic. The texture is so smooth that it really melts in your mouth when you eat it. The original one is just baked cheesecake with white sour cream on top.


But for me, I am a person who loves Vibrant Colours. So I added some yellow to the sour cream mixture and make it look sort of like custard. Other than that, I also pipped some Rose Scented Cream Cheese to go with some fresh Strawberries and Cherries to enhance the flavour and colour of the cheesecake.

As you can see, my cheesecake is kind of low compare to the one sold outside because I had used a slightly bigger springform tin. I just wanted to try having a small portion of the cheesecake instead of the usual big slices. For those who are interested to try out this wonderful cheesecake, the recipe are as below:

Ingredients:
350g Cream Cheese, room temperate to soften
75g Unsalted Butter, melted and cool
80g Castor Sugar
135g Egg, about 3 60g eggs
1 Tablespoon Lemon Juice
Zest Of 1 Lemon
100g Of Sour Cream
35g Castor Sugar
Assorted Fresh Fruits

Methods:
1. Preheat the oven to 180 degree.
2. Diced the cream cheese and beat the soften cream cheese until creamy then add in 80g sugar and continue to beat until sugar dissolved.(about 4-5 mins on medium speed)
3. Next add in the eggs(lightly beaten) gradually in about 4 - 5 interval and beat well with each adding for about 2 minutes.
4. Add in the lemon juice and zest then stir till well combine.
5. Finally stir in the melted butter and pour the mixture into a prepare "7" round tin(i used a 8" springform tin) and bake for about 30-35 minutes.
6. While baking the cake, cream the 35g sugar with sour cream until sugar is dissolved then set aside.
7. When the cake is done(brown in colour), remove from the oven, switch off the heat and close the oven door.
8. Pour the prepared sour cream mixture in the middle of the cake and then put the whole cake back into the oven and let it continue to heat up using the remaining heat from the oven for about 10 - 15 minutes.
9. Remove, and set aside to cool completely before decorate it with extra cream or fresh fruit to serve.

Notes:
a) If after 30 minutes the colour of the cheesecake is still very pale, increase the oven temperature to 200 degree and bake till golden brown.
b) For my yellow colour sour cream mixture, I added about 1 teaspoon of yellow food colouring and beat till well combined.

Rose & Lavender Macarons

A special gift for a special friend. Tomorrow is one of my best friend Christina's Wedding Day. So I thought of making something "In" and different for her as a small gift. After going through a long search of my recipe lists, I still settle to make macarons but I designed something romantic for her.


I come up with these Rose & Lavender Macarons in Heart Shapes version. In this special day of her, I hope to send her my best and warmest regards and hope that you will be the most Prettiest and Happiest Bride.

I made the Rose Scented Butter Cream with grinded dried rose petals to make the cream more fragrant and with it's natural nice pinky colour. While for the lavender shell, I made the Lemon Butter Cream with some grinded Lavenders to enhance the lemon flavour. And these two flavour really infused my whole kitchen will wonderful aroma.

I had never thought that these two lovely flowers really make a great pair when making macarons with them. They have wonderful colours and fragrant that makes you want more of these additives goodies once you sank your teeth in them.

But as for my Lavender Macaron, I think that the colour is not good enough as I can't actually achieve the voilet colour that I want after baking. It turns out to be slightly towards the greyish side. Hope next round if I had a chance to try this again, I can achieve a better colour for it.

Overall I still loves the rose macarons, maybe it's because of it's colour, texture and shapes. I love the Heart Shapes one as I find it very adorable and too wasted to be eaten. I guess these can make a great Gift for Anniversary or Valentine Day Gifts too... :)

Foodies Confidential @ Sunday Times

Some of you might found this page familiar at Today's Sunday Time, Life Page Section. Yeah! All thank to LiJie from Strait's Time Food Blogging who give us this wonderful opportunity to share our food blogging experience with even more people in Singapore. For those who didn't get a copy of the sunday times, and you are interested in the interview details, you can click on Baking and Bonding on Ellena & Reyon to read the articular.


From this column, I only can said it really a great experience to share my thoughts and views on food blogging. On the other hand, it's also an excitement for Reyon and I to actually do a home baking and be photograph by a professional photographer. And I had to thank to all those friends who actually went to buy the newspaper to support us and as well as to get more information on our recent progress.

Lastly I do hope from this blog and some other links of mine can actually give those new reader some help and tips. I also looking forwards to receive any email regarding of exchanging of cooking/baking tips. Thanks again for visiting my humble blog :)

Pistachio Macarons With Assorted Cream

I guess I am really into French Macarons Craze..... Whenever I saw new macarons flavour from those blogger's site I will be very tempted to try it out. It is just like little kids having fun with the jigsaw puzzle. We can mix and match different kinds of macaron shells with different assorted flavour of butter cream which is very challenging and fulfilment when you do get a good result out of it.


Like those blogger who tried Pistachio Mcarons, we had to grind our own pistachio in order to have it as one of the main ingredients. And very surprisingly, ground pistachio do give a very nice colour and fragrant when making into macarons. This round I made a batch of about 15 Pistachio Macarons to pair with 3 assorted Italian Butter Cream which are: Coffee Butter Cream(reyon's flavour), Lemon Butter Cream and most stunning one which is the Pistachio Butter Cream. Out of the 3, I guess Pistachio Butter Cream goes very well with the Pistachio Shell because of it nutty flavour and crunchy bits.

Hazelnut Macaron With Durian & Coffee Butter Cream

This is the 3rd times that I have made successful macarons out of the 6 trials. Thing starts to get better each time when I gather more advices and tips from my blog pals. This round, I tried to make the Hazelnut Macaron using the ground hazenut rather than almond and it really taste great with it's nutty flavour.


For this batch, I managed to make the Italain Butter Cream with two different flavour. I divide the cream into two portions and added fresh durian flesh into 1 portion and coffee essence into another.

My dear son loves the Coffee Butter Cream macarons which I also added some extra instant coffee powder into the batter to make the shell fill with more coffee fragrant. Overall I am very happy with this bath of hazelnut macaron and I will continue to experiment with new flavour whenever I get some spare time off from work.

Lychee Charlotte Cheesecake

This is a very special fragrant fruity Asian kind of cheesecake that I had never try making before. The very first time I saw this cake is from a blog pal's flicker picture. Then after a few months later, my best pal Tracy make this for her cell-group gathering. Base on what she had told me and feedback from her cell-group members on the cake that she had made. I decided to make one using lychee preserved in canned syrup.


You can use any basic non-baked cheesecake recipe, and just include some chopped lychee in the recipe and reserved some whole lychee on top as decoration. To make your cheesecake more presentable you can used some ready bought sponge cake and cut it into half then soaked one side with some lychee syrup and stick it on the surrounding of the spring form or mousse tin then prepare the biscuit based on top.

I can said, this is a very nice and refreshing cheesecake compare to those that I had made or eaten before. It's neither too sweet or cheesy and with the added whipped cream, it made the texture of the cheesecake more smooth and silky......

Assorted Macarons

Wow.. it seems like I am getting Macarons CRAZY these few days. Just like what other bakers do, when you starts to get the hang of it, you seems to be addicted in making them. It like even though you use the same ingredients, but each time you will gets kind of different result for your macarons.


So far I only tried making 4 different Flavours which are Chocolate, Black Sesame and Green Tea. The 4th one which is the Rose scented I was not able to get it done correctly due to the batter consistency. It had spread too much and the end result was very bad just like those 1st few failure batches macarons that I had.

Out of all these assorted macaron, I still loves the Green Tea with Chocolate Ganache. Maybe it's because I love anything with green tea content. Em.... so maybe next weekend then I will try making other flavour if there is still volunteer who want to try. Actually I also love Coffee flavour, maybe I will try to experiment with it too.

Green Tea Macaron With Chocolate Ganache

Em... most of you all will be wondering why I also follow the trend on making macaron! Hahaha..... Actually I find it very challenging when you actually achieve something that you always want to make but failure after a few attempt. The moment when you gets the finally product right, the feeling of achievement is nothing that can be bought with. I had 3 total failure batches that can't even be eaten. Then 4th batch is at least something that is presentable and edible.(but I guess like some feedback I had, I might have overbaked it compare to this batch, cos it's very crispy and it won't turn soft even if you leave it in room temperature after sandwich it with cream)


Then finally after more research and gathering of tips from forum pal, I managed to find the Key to successful. The main issue is to DRY the macaron shell completely before baking, and the oven temperature is also very important. Too hot, the shell will crack and no feet develop.

From making these macarons I had tried 3 different recipes from over the blogs that I research which I think that had the easier steps and clear instructions to follow for beginner like me. I just use the normal macaron recipe without the Italian Meringue because I don't have a candy thermometer to measure the boiling point of the sugar syrup. So I won't be able to try out what's the different between a Normal Meringue and Italian Meringue. You might wonder why I don't stick to the same recipe instead of changing one after another, that's because I love to do experiment with my baking. I love to try out what's the different between each recipes even though they called for the same ingredients. Some one o two steps that are different from each recipe will end out having different result. This is the same philosophy as life, if you make a different decision in a matter the result will end up in different way. So why that's why some people will stick to one decision while other might like to change according to the situation.

So after much hard work and failure. Finally I am able to come out of my own macaron. But I still need to practise to perfect on the shape and "feet". Really thank a lot to all those members who provide me with all the valuable information from Imperial Kitchen and my blogger pal Evan.

My Without Feet Macarons

Wow..... finally after so many tried and error, I managed to get my macaron a decent look and sandwich it with cream and give it a bite. Although I still have not master the perfect macaron with those little "feet" that original macaron had. I still already very happy with my end result, at least it's getting better each tried.


This round, I used another recipe that is different from the previous 3 unsuccessful macaron. I got this easy and well explained recipe from Tamami's blog through a forum. I have half her recipe and managed to come up with about 8 macarons which measure around 1.5". I had pipe the macaron batter on a Silicon Baking Sheet instead of the normal baking paper as from some comments it shows that Silicon sheets do give better "feet".

I bake these macaron at 160 degree for about 10 minutes then removed, leave it aside to cool then sandwich half of them with chocolate cream and the other half with peanut cream.

My son and mum loves both the favour but their find that the peanut cream goes better with this almond macaron shell. I guess it because of the almond taste. The case is very crunchy and chewy and I am very happy with the end result. So I will continue to carry out the experiment until I find a good way to develop the "feet" so that I can make a perfect macaron too......

Double Chocolate Chips Cookies With Nestum

This is Reyon's favourite Chocolate Chips cookies that had a mixture of Black and White Mini Chocolate Chips together with Nestum. The texture of this cookie is very crunchy due to the adding of the Nestum. You use any kind of chocolate chips, chopped dark chocolate or even with some extra nuts to create different favour and texture.


The recipe is introduce to me by my best blog pal Tracy, but I had used only half of the original recipes to make and add in some extra RUM for some extra fragrant.

Ingredients: (make about 30 - 35, 3cm cookies)
90g Light Brown Sugar
90g Unsalted Butter, cubes
95g Plain Flour
1/4 Teaspoon Baking Powder
50g Nestum(instant cereal)
50g Mini Chocolate Chips
1/4 Teaspoon Vanilla Essence
Pinch Of Salt
1/2 Egg, Light Beaten

Methods:
1. Sift together flour, salt and baking powder in a bowl and set aside for later use.
2. Cream butter and sugar till pale, beat in egg, vanilla essence and RUM(if using) until well combined about 1 minute on medium speed.
3. Fold the flour mixture into the ready butter mixture.
4. Next stir in Nestum and Chocolate Chips with wooden spoon or spatula.
5. Drop teaspoonful of dough onto baking tray lined with baking paper and bake for 15 - 20 minutes at a preheated 180 degree oven till slightly browned at the edge.



Notes:
a) I added about 1/2 Teaspoon Of RUM liquor to give the cookies an extra fragrant.
b) Nestle Nestum can be found in most local supermarket under the cereal or coffee/tea session.