Cranberry Cheesecake: A very late post

I hope you're looking forward to summer! What is the one aspect of summer that you're most looking forward to? Maybe you like the long hours of daylight, the endless blue skies, all the outdoor activities, family gatherings and holidays, the beach, or glorious sunsets? Or perhaps you like watching the magnificent summer thunderstorms? I'm mostly looking forward to enjoying those cool, sweet treats that the hot sun makes me crave. Here is a recipe for a no-bake cheesecake filling that I made last year around this time. I'd promised to post about it when I made those mung bean potato biscuits (remember?) but never got around to writing the post. Well, here it is, a year late, but still a recipe to make.

The Recipe (makes two 8" tarts):

Pie crusts (follow recipe here)

Filling:

• 300 mL fat free, plain greek yogurt
• 400 mL light, plain cream cheese 
• 3/4 cup frozen cranberries
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 tbsp milk
• 2 tsp gelatin (powder)
• some water

Mix together yogurt, cream cheese, and milk until a smooth mixture forms. It's best to let the cream cheese come to room temperature so it softens before blending. You can also soften the cream cheese in  the microwave using the defrost setting. 

Melt and cook frozen cranberries in a pan. Pour some water on the bottom of the pan until the bottom is covered with a layer of water. Cook until cranberries pop and soften. Pour into blender and blend until an even mixture forms. Strain to remove large pieces of skin and seed. Return to pan, add sugar, stir to dissolve, and cook until thickened, like a syrup. Take off heat and stir in gelatin to dissolve. Add to cream cheese and yogurt mixture and stir to combine. Pour into prepared pie tins, and place in the refrigerator to set for at least 4 hours before serving. 

Note: you can set aside some cream cheese and yogurt mixture to decorate the top if you like. 

This is the yogurt I used. I also added the jam to the rest of the cranberry puree (it's only a small amount). 

Frozen cranberries.

Mung bean potato biscuits baked into a tart crust

Adding the filling

Swirls for decoration

You can also make it one colour. Texture after setting. 

Homemade Chocolate Candy Cups

A few years ago, one of the best things happened in our neighbourhood: a Lindt chocolate outlet store opened. Last month, there was a 50% off sale on all store items and we bought a couple 2.2kg bags of dark chocolate pieces. When there's that much chocolate sitting in the house, the biggest temptation is to just take some and try out recipes. So I tried making some chocolate peanut butter cups and some chocolate ice cream cups.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups:
Filling Ingredients:

• 2 tbsp peanut butter (preferably slightly hardened chunks from the bottom of natural peanut butter jars)
• 2 tbsp sour cream
• 2 tbsp honey
• 1/2 tsp instant coffee
• 1/4 tsp salt

Shell: ~ 2 oz Dark chocolate

Materials: Twelve ~1 inch diameter paper liners

Melt chocolate in the microwave using 10 second bursts, and stirring in between. Spoon a teaspoon into each paper liner and coax to the edges using a small spoon or toothpick. Stir mixed filling ingredients and place in a piping bag (or plastic bag with a corner cut off) and pipe into the centre of the paper liner on top of the chocolate. Pour enough chocolate on top to cover the peanut butter filling, allow chocolate to re-solidify at room temperature and place into the fridge until ready to serve. 

Peanut butter fillings

Chocolate peanut butter cups. Just have to wait for these to firm up

Chocolate Ice Cream Cups:

Filling Ingredients: 

• 1/3 cup whipped cream
• 1 tbsp melted dark chocolate
• 1 tsp sugar

Shell: ~ 2 oz dark chocolate

Materials: Twelve ~1 inch diameter paper liners

Melt chocolate in microwave using 10 second bursts, stirring in between. Spoon a teaspoon into each paper liner and coax chocolate all the way up the edge of the paper liner using a toothpick. Add more chocolate if needed to keep a thin but consistent layer all around. Place liners into the fridge to let the chocolate solidify and cool down. For the filling, fold sugar and melted chocolate into the whipped cream and spoon or pipe into the cooled chocolate shells. Place into the freezer to let the filling firm up before serving.

Frozen chocolate ice cream cups. There's a bit of frost on the surface of the ice cream. 

The truffle-y ice cream centres and thin crisp (from the freezer) chocolate shell make these such an enjoyable treat

Egg Medallion

Last time I went on vacation with my family, we bought these small cake tins with removable bottoms. I'm actually not sure whether they're for making cakes because the bottom is pretty loose, which will allow the batter to leak out easily. It could be for individual bread rolls, but they're only ~5 cm wide and 4 cm tall and I only have four of these, so it would be a very small bread recipe. This morning, I used these as egg moulds to make breakfast today, and it worked quite well. Take a look!

The removable bottom cake tins. I just put them upside down (as in the picture above) on a hot pan and slipped a raw egg with some cheese and pepper into the small whole at the top. 

One large egg fits perfectly into tins this size: 5 cm diameter, 4 cm height. Since I used a non-stick pan, I didn't use any oil. I was reminded to be careful not to scratch the non-stick coating with the tins by my mom, and the rounded edges of these tins were perfect. After removing the bottoms of these cake tins, I placed them upside down on a hot pan, and allowed 30 seconds for the cake tins to heat. In the meantime, I whisked an egg slightly with some black pepper and shredded cheese. Once I was sure the pan and cake tins were hot, I poured the whisked egg into the upside down cake tin and waited.

This is how it looked when I turned the tin onto a plate after a few minutes. The hot aluminum tin evenly distributes the heat from the pan to the sides of the egg medallion, which allowed the whole egg to get cooked. 

A sprinkle of very finely chopped red pepper, and some green fruit and veg (avocado and cucumber) makes a pretty and tasty breakfast. 

Green Tea Ice Cream

While I'm on the green tea trend, I made some green tea ice cream. The first batch of homemade ice cream this season marks the start of many warm sunny days...

The Recipe:
Ingredients:

• 1 tbsp green tea powder
• 1 1/2 cup whipping cream
• 1 3/4 cup water
• 1/4 cup sugar + 6 g splenda (or 1/2 cup sugar)
• pinch salt
• 1 egg yolk
• 1 tbsp cornstarch

Place egg yolk in a large bowl that will hold at least 4 cups of liquid. Stir together 2 tbsp sugar and cornstarch and set aside. In a pot, place in the rest of the sugar (and substitute) and green tea powder and stir to mix evenly. Add water and cream and heat on medium heat, whisking to make sure everything is evenly mixed. Once cream mixture is just simmering (tiny bubbles should be forming at the surface and it should feel hot if you put a drip on your finger), take pot off heat. Add sugar and cornstarch to egg yolk and whisk to form a lumpy mixture. Slowly pour hot cream into the egg yolk and sugar mixture while whisking. Now pour entire mixture back into the pot and stir with a heat proof spatula or wooden spoon gently until it thickens a bit. Mixture should coat the spatula or back of spoon and leave a clean track when you run a finger across it. Strain mixture through a sieve, allow to cool to room temperature and chill completely in the fridge.

Pour into pre-frozen ice-cream maker after chilling and churn away! For me, it took about 25 minutes for a chunk to get stuck, so I knew it was ready. Scoop into a freezable container (about 4 cups volume) and freeze for a few hours to let ice-cream firm up.

Churning ice cream after 15 minutes. 

Some microwave toffee walnuts to go with the ice cream. 

A few hours later: green tea ice cream

Green Tea Croissants

There's this program called "peaksaver" in Canada where electricity costs more during the daytime on weekdays and less at night and on weekends, so as to lower the stress on the power grid. This means I save most of the baking for weekends. Sometimes it becomes too hard to wait for the weekend and I find myself getting started on a weekday. Last week was one of those weeks, but I thought of the perfect thing to make: croissants. Croissants are made by folding a layer of solid fat (usually butter) into a yeast dough, and folding the resultant dough over and over again to achieve many layers. Making them can take up to a few days because the dough has to rest in the fridge for hours between each fold. Starting on a Thursday night made them ready for baking on Saturday. I combined cream cheese and butter with some green tea powder for the fat layer for half the recipe, and just butter and green tea powder for the other half. Since I only had whole wheat flour at home, I used that for both recipes. Both turned out alright. The cream cheese croissants were softer while the butter ones were crispier.

The Recipe:
Ingredients:
Fat layer:

• 100 g unsalted butter
• 125 g plain cream cheese (or use all butter if desired)
• 2 tsp green tea powder

Dough:

• 250 g whole wheat flour
• 25 g pea fibre (not really necessary)
• 1 tsp yeast
• ~1 cup lukewarm water
• 4 tbsp sugar
• 1/4 tsp salt

Softened the butter and cream cheese, add green tea powder, and stir together to combine. Roll into a large, flat square about 6" (~15 cm) wide between two pieces of plastic wrap. Store on a flat surface in the fridge for 15 to 30 minutes to let it firm up. Meanwhile, prepare the dough by stirring all ingredients together and kneading it into an smooth, elastic ball. Roll out into a rectangle about 7" by 14" (~17.5 by 35 cm) large. The idea is to get it slightly larger than twice the size of the butter layer. Place the chilled butter layer on one side of the rolled out dough and fold the other side over so that the butter is sandwiched between two layers of dough. Make sure there are no air pockets between dough and butter and pinch the sides to seal the butter in. 

Roll the dough out a bit so that it becomes a rectangle with one set of edges longer than the original 7". Fold into three like a letter, wrap loosely with plastic wrap and place in the fridge to chill for anywhere between 1 to 8 hours. Repeat this roll, fold, and chill process again three to four more times. 

When the final dough has had time to chill and rise slightly in the fridge, it is ready to be rolled out, cut, and shaped into a croissant. On a floured surface, roll out dough into a layer just less than 0.5" (~1 cm) thick. Cut into triangles and add a small slit at the base of the triangle to help with even baking. Roll into crescents starting at the base, and place on a lined baking sheet. Allow to rise at room temperature for 1 to 2 hours and bake in a 350F (~175C) oven for 20 – 25 min. Allow to cool on a rack. 

Green tea butter sitting on dough

Cut out dough, ready to be shaped into a croissant

Before baking (this is the cream cheese and butter batch)

Before baking (this is the pure butter batch)

Fresh from the oven (this is the butter batch)

Texture of the cream cheese and butter croissants (retained green tea colour better than the butter ones)

Texture of the pure butter croissants

Honey-snap cookies

I've been having trouble finding inspiration for stuff to write here lately, so lets just skip right to the cookies. I think I'm going through a "cookie phase" right now, because I just made those chocolate ginger cookies, and now I have a batch of honey-snap cookies in the kitchen. These have toasted millet, which are supposed to be very healthy due to its rather abundant B-vitamin content (look at the WHFoods: Millet page for more info). Here's how they were made...

The Recipe:
Ingredients:

• 2/3 cup minute oats (any rolled oat will probably work as well)
• 1/3 cup wheat bran (can substitute oat bran, small flaked coconut, or psyllium husk if you don't want gluten)
• 2 tbsp toasted millet (toasted in dry pan until they popped)
• 2 tbsp skim milk powder
• 2 tbsp cornstarch
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 egg
• 2 tbsp butter
• 1/2 cup honey
• (optional) 2 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder

Sift and stir together cornstarch, milk powder, cinnamon, baking powder, and salt. In a small pot, heat honey and butter until the butter melts and mixture is runny. Take off heat, and allow to cool slightly. Add sifted mixture, oats, bran, millet, and egg, and stir to get an even mixture. Add cocoa powder if desired. Place spoonfuls of batter on a lined baking sheet, making sure to leave at least a 2 inch (~5 cm) border around each spoonful because cookies will spread while baking. Bake at 350F (or ~175C) for 8 to 10 minutes or until the edges begin to turn golden brown. Cool on a wire rack and cookies will become crispier as they cool. 

Note: Cookies can be stored in an air-tight container at room temperature to preserve crispness; they will turn into a moist, cake-y texture if stored in the fridge. 

Millet and oats, with milk powder, cornstarch, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon on top

Spoonfuls of batter before baking (these ones have cocoa powder)

The baked cookies. Again, these have the cocoa powder and appear darker. 

Crepes

It's finally starting to feel like spring here, with the weather being sunny, breezy, and 19 degrees today. To me, crepes are  a particularly fitting food for spring because their light and delicate nature reflects the new grass, budding flowers, and baby animals born in this season. An additional bonus is that they can be topped or filled with almost anything you fancy, so I went ahead and came up with...

The Recipe:
Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup whole wheat chapati flour
• 1/4 cup shredded cheese. 
• 1 tsp black pepper
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 whole egg
• 3/4 cup milk

Whisk together in a large spouted container. In a non-stick pan, greased if desired, med-high heat, cover the flat surface of the pan with a thin, even layer of batter. To do this, take the pan off the heat, pour enough to cover about half the area into the centre. Swirl batter in the pan until the surface is evenly covered. Return pan to heat and cover until the steam that collects on the lid falls back to the pan and makes sizzling noises. Crepe's surface should look dull but the colour unchanged. Loosen edges of crepe from pan and flip with a heat-safe spatula. Cover and wait until you hear sizzling from the steam falling back to the pan again. Remove crepe from pan and repeat to finish other crepes. Makes 6 to 8 depending on size of pan

Dry ingredient mix - chopsticks help break apart shredded cheese

Some finished crepes

Brunch. Turns out strawberries and yogurt taste pretty good with black pepper crepes.

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