Curing An Insomnia

I went to bed at 5 am today, yes indeed; it’s sort of a normal time for this student-having-long-holidays to sleep. The problem, I mixed up my sleeping time so much, I had trouble falling asleep. Imagine that!

I rolled here and there and my mind kept running around with all sorts of food. Such gluttony you must say, but it is actually due to the fact that I’m hungry since my late dinner just now.

By 10 am, after turning here and there on the bed, read some books, then back to bed and continued turning here and there, then played a little ps2, and back to bed for you-know-what and then finally I gave up and came online.

I met J online much to my delight. He pitied me and came over to accompany me. Then he got hooked on the ps2 and it just struck me to do the most therapeutic thing to calm myself – baking!

I ran through my list of to-bake/cook, yes I have a long one which I kept on accumulating but had yet to try out. My eyes locked onto something that was loved by everyone of all time – chocolate chip cookie.

Before this, I had a taste of the most wonderful chocolate chip cookie ever which was baked by my Nanny’s daughter for her beloved son. It was so addictive, my Godsister and I could not keep our hands off it. It was that sinfully delicious. Then I had begged her for the recipe and she kindly emailed me once she got back to Jakarta. I baked it and found it was nowhere near hers but still not too bad a cookie. At that time, I haven’t mastered my 20 year old oven yet, and burnt quite a number of cookies.

After about 2 years of experimenting with my oven, a lot more recently due to my interest in food flaring up, I had finally understood that small little old oven of mine.

The first batch of cookies came out and after a slight cooling; I took over to J with a mug of brewed milk powder. He took an enormous bite and then gave a resounding YUM!

Chocolate Chip ‘Orange’ Cookie

I actually altered the original recipe a lot. First, I had reduced the amount of butter because I found that 115grams of butter is too hard to measure (lazy me), and thought it would have been healthier anyway. To make it even more good, I split the flour and added in whole wheat flour and increased the amount of brown sugar ratio. Besides, they recipe called for 1 large US egg, and all I have is the Malaysian medium sized ones so I added another half.

During the time I added the flour in, the dough got too dry, much to my worry, and I decided to add some kind of liquid. I just ran out of fresh milk and it struck me, orange juice! I cut half an orange and juice it in. The smell definitely mixes well with the dough and I just had to lick my fingers. You know a cookie would be coming out good if you love the dough itself. LOL.

Anyhow, after tasting my end product, I decided it’s too sweet, it must be the sweetness from the orange juice that I had neglected, so if you’re trying this recipe out, do reduce the sugar. Milk might have been a better option since I could not really taste the orange in the cookie anyway. But J does not agree with me bout the sweetness and he is chomping the third cookie now as I blog. Maybe I have a sweet tooth so it’s up to you readers to adjust to your taste. Remember to scoop it further apart, as for me, due to my mini oven, I had to place them quite near and they ended up sticking to each other but I managed to break them up easily. It does produce a much rugged and homemade looking kind of cookies though.

Do contain the urge to over-bake; as the cookie does feel kind of soft even after browning, but after cooling it will be crunchy on the outside and chewy on the inside. Just my kind of favourite cookie!

1/4 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar
100 grams unsalted butter, cold, cut into 1/2-inch (1cm) pieces
1½ egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp baking soda (sodium bicarbonate)
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
Juice of half an orange (1/4 cup)
1 1/2 cups semisweet chocolate chips
1 cup walnuts, toasted and chopped

Preheat to 150 C.
Cream the sugar and butter together until smooth. Then beat in the eggs and vanilla.
Stir together the flour, baking soda and salt and then mix them into the batter.
Squeeze in the half orange and stir to incorporate.
Mix in the chocolate chips and nuts.
Scoop 1 overflowing tablespoon of the cookie dough onto the baking tray, each about 2 inches apart ideally.
Bake for about 20-25 minutes, or until brown. Remove from the oven and cool on a wire rack.
Devour warm with a mug of milk.

Makes approximately 20 large (and I mean HUGE) cookies.

Yet Another Cheesecake

I can’t seem to get over the chocolate and cheese love affair. Maybe I could have put cheese in a better limelight featuring it entirely in a cake. Therefore I took the opportunity of an occasion to surprise J.

J loves cheese. He adores cake. Cheesecake is then his greatest vice. I made this cheesecake especially for him, and had given him the liberty to do whatever he wants with it. He had chosen to devour it all by himself. Little did I know, I had given him his most powerful temptation. The poor boy managed to finish the whole cake himself in two days. Imagine that!

Lemon Sour cream Cheesecake

Not too bad a recipe but I had found that the amount of lemon is not distinct enough. Therefore I had increased the amount of lemon in the following recipe. My cake sank a lot after removing from the oven but luckily the top did not crack at all. This time the base is much better than the previous chocolate cheesecake but overall, we both found that we enjoyed the chocolate cheese affair more. Maybe we had indeed converted.

Base:
80g Marie Biscuits (crushed/grinded)50g Butter

Cheese Filling:
250g Cream cheese (1 block Philadelphia Cream Cheese)
25g Butter
½ lemon zest
1 tbsp lemon juice
2 egg yolks
20g sugar

30g corn flour
100g sour cream

1 egg white
30g sugar
1 tsp lemon juice

For the base, melt the butter and then mix into the crushed biscuits. Pressed it into an 8 inch round cake tin. Refrigerate till needed.

Beat the cream cheese and butter together. Then add in lemon zest and the lemon juice. Slowly beat in one egg yolk at a time. Then add in the sugar. Beat till creamy.

Stir in corn flour till well combined.
Stir in sour cream till well blended.

In a clean bowl, whip egg white, sugar and lemon juice till stiff peak. Stir into the cheese mixture and stir till well incorporated.

Pour onto the prepared base and bake in a water bath for 1 hour.
Let rest in the oven a few minutes after and then remove to let cool. Refrigerate for at least 5 hours before serving.

Serves 4-6 (In this case it served 1. LOL)

Chocolate and Cheese Love Affair

Chocolate was my love at first bite. Then it became my temptation, a craving. It then turns to addiction. We have always been together. It accompanies me when I’m down or celebrate with me when I’m happy.

Chocolate graces in various sweet treats including cookies, muffins, brownies, and of course cake. I even use it in toppings and even include it in my yoghurt. I could never resist a hot chocolate.

Cheese had always been his love. He eats it with practically anything. In eggs, on pasta, pizza, bread, and fish and in of course his most loved dessert – cake.

I wanted to bake cake for J and could not think of any perfect pairing other than chocolate and cheese. Hence a love affair was created. Yes, my love and his love – having affair.

Dark Chocolate Cheesecake

Baking it the first time proved to be hard. First obstacle was I could not find chocolate flavoured digestive biscuits for the base on the original recipe, therefore I googled and used another cheesecake base using digestive biscuits with cocoa powder. Perfect. Then I found that the recipe yielded for 1.2 kg of cheese! The ignorant me thought that one block of cream cheese is enough for all cheesecakes in the world. Therefore I freeze the prepared base and got another block of cheese the next day. Finally I divide everything by 2.4 to get the exact measurement and voila, a short but definitely decadent chocolate cheesecake is made.

120g dark chocolate
500g (2 pkt) Philadelphia cream cheese
83g sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence
2 eggs
73ml soured cream
½ tbsp cocoa powder

175g (6oz) digestive biscuits
2.5ml (1/2 tsp) ground cinnamon
15ml (1 tbsp) cocoa powder
75g (3oz) unsalted butter, plus extra for greasing

Make the base first so it's ready when you need it. Put the biscuits, cinnamon, cocoa into a food blender and break down to a fine crumb. Melt the butter and pour it onto the crumb and mix it in until evenly distributed. Line a spring form tin with baking paper or butter thoroughly and scatter the crumb onto the tin gently, lightly press down and set aside or leave it in fridge.

Preheat oven at 180C. Grease bottom and sides of a 9 X 3 inch springform tin.
Melt chocolate in the top of a double boiler, or heatproof bowl over hot water.
While chocolate is melting, beat cream cheese until smooth, then beat in sugar and vanilla. Add the eggs, one at a time.

Stir the soured cream into the cocoa powder to form a paste. Add to the cream cheese mixture. Stir in the melted chocolate.

Pour onto crust. Bake for 1 hour. Let cool in tin; remove rim. Refrigerate before serving.

Serves 4-6

Pardon the picture as I do not have a decent camera and have to make do with my PDA.

This entry could have been fit for SHF-dark chocolate edition, but I guess I can always participate in the next one! Oh I can’t wait. I am also looking forward to many other events especially IMBB.

J reported that he simply love the cake. He might be converting to chocolate-cheese lover soon. I could not deny the same for myself.