Chocolate Cheesecake

I made this recipe a few times already, and I'm getting better every time ^^ The recipe is very rich and chocolatey, so you really have to like that if you want to try this one! And even if you don't like chocolate, the cake is a lust for the eye :)



For this recipe you're going to need chocolate. My first cake was with 70% cacao dark chocolate. A higher percentage of cacao does give the cake a better taste, but as the cake is rich enough by itsself, I wouldnt recommend using dark chocolate. I don't really notice it myself, but I ate the first cake all by myself, because the rest of the family thought it was too rich XD The second time I just used milk chocolate drops and didnt bother with the quality of the chocolate..

One thing you have to keep in mind with this recipe that you make sure that the filling doesn't get too wet and that you dont bake it for too long. It burns pretty fast and when you leave it to cool, it will also harden a bit too..
Another thing that gave me some trouble was the cream cheese. Over here, we don't have "cream cheese" as a product in a bucket or so, but we have many different kinds that would supposedly fall under the cream cheeses xP So, if you can just buy cream cheese over there, use it! If you have no clue where to get it, things like mon chou, philadelphia and mascarpone will do too. Mon chou makes the filling a bit sour, philadelphia and mascarpone make it more creamy. ^^ I started off with mon chou, but the second time I took half philadelphia and half mascarpone.. that worked a lot better for me ^^

Before I really give you the recipe xP I just have to say a few things. In the cookielayer, you have to use butter. Unsalted butter does give it a better taste, but if you don't have it, feel free to use salted butter or any other butter you can find.. The original recipe used unsweetened cacao powder, but why not use sweetened? You can also variate the chocolate (that remind me I should try it with white chocolate!), cream cheese and also the digestive cookies. Crushed chocolate wafers would also taste very nice as a cookielayer ^^

Ingredients:
Cookielayer:
24 digestive cookies (or 150 grams)
1 tablespoon sugar
1/4 cup (unsalted) butter (about 60 ml melted butter)

Filling:
275 grams chocolate
900 grams cream cheese
1 1/4 cup and 2 tablespoons sugar (240 grams)
1/4 cup (unsweetened) cacao powder
4 large eggs

Topping:
3/4 cup whipping cream
170 grams chocolate
1 tablespoon sugar

Decoration :) (I used the whipping cream I had left for this, and mixed in some chocolate. For this, make sure to first 'whip the cream' before you add other ingredients)

Cookielayer:
1. Start off with greasing a 18-20 cm cake pan (7-8 inch).
2. Put this aside and start with the cookies. It's easiest to crush these in a mixer, but feel free to do it by hand! Mix the sugar in and leave it to melt the butter. Mix the butter in too.
3. Take the cake pan and put the cookie-sugar-butter stuff in and press it evenly to the bottom. Leave it in a pre-heated oven at 175 degrees Clesius (or 350 Fahrenheit) for about 5 minutes (or 15 minutes if not pre-heated).

Filling:
1. Doubleboil the chocolate untill everything is melted. Take the pan off the pan with water and let it cool for a while (make sure it stays pourable).
2. In the mean time you can measure the right amount of cream cheese, sugar and cocao powder and mix these in a mixer.
3. Blend in the eggs, one at a time!
4. Add the chocolate to the mixture and blend again.
5. Pour the filling over the cookiecrust and put it in a pre-heated oven of 175 degrees Celsius (or 350 Fahrenheit). Let it set for about 1 hour, or just until the top of the cake looks dry (beware of burning!!).
6. When it looks done, take it out of the oven and let it cool.

Topping:
1. Doubleboil the chocolate untill it's melted.
2. Take the pan off the bigger pan with water and add the whipped cream. Use a handmixer to mix these together, or poor it into a mixer.
3. Pour the topping over the cake and make sure it fills all the cracks. If you want the sides to have some topping as well, leave some aside or make more later on. It gives a nice effect if you pour the topping in just the middle, so that it doesnt touch the edges.
4. Put the cake into the fridge and leave it for about 1-2 hours until the topping is set. Don't wait for it to become hard, like chocolate, the topping will stay a bit soft.
5. If you want to do the sides too, take the cake out of the fridge and use the topping you have left to spread it onto the sides. It can be quite a pain in the ass to get this smooth though!

Then you should have a wonderful cake ^^ I actually still have a picture of the first time I made this recipe. It was a bit burned, way too rich and I actually might have overdone the decoration XD You can actually see the difference between this dark chocolate cake, and the milk chocolate cake you can see above.

Marshmallow-Jelly Pie

* Note: I've recently made a new recipe for this one, with chocolate chips inside. But other than that it's all the same, moreover I've made the recipe a lot clearer! So I'd recommend using this recipe, and simply add fruit and jelly to it after!



This is a recipe I just tried out, and actually turned out really good! Like, with all my recipes, I changed the main recipe. It's a really delicious recipe for in hot summers. Like for today, it's really hot, but luckily there is a bit of a breeze!

The pie has three layers: a cookielayer, the marshmallow layer and the jelly-layer. The cookielayer is pretty basic. The marshmallow-layer is something I had never tried before. I didnt think marshmallows would actually melt! I put fruits in the jellylayer, but you could add practically anything you want in that one ^^

Ingredients:
Cookielayer:
24 simple biscuits
1 spoon of sugar
50 grams butter (preferably unsalted)

Marshmallowlayer:
100-150 gram marshmallows
75 ml milk
150 ml whipping cream
4 gelatine leaves

Jellylayer:
Fruit, in my case it was (canned) peach
Ready-to-make Jelly (for this one, I bought a package. I chose lemon, because I thought it would taste the best with the other ingredients. Another method for this one is melting real jelly in water, which I will explain later on)

Cookielayer:
1. Crush the biscuits in a mixer or by hand (I recently discovered the mixer and love it. My mom always made us crush them with a glass in a bowl - that's also effective). Add the sugar and mix that in too. Melt the butter before you add it, and mix it again. You should get a bit wet cookie-suspence now. You can always add more cookies if it's too wet, or more butter if you feel like it's too dry.
2. Dump the cookie-suspence (for lack of a better word) into a 18 or 20 cm cake pan (about 7-8 inches) and devide it equally over the bottom. I like to use a spoon for this, but you can also use your fingers. Make sure the cookie-layer is "solid" by pressing it against the bottom.
3. Leave this to cool down in the fridge for about 15 minutes.

Marshmallowlayer:
1. This one is pretty easy, but takes a while. Just put everything into a big enough pan and double-boil it (also called au bain marie, if you don't know this, I'll explain later too ^^). Just wait until all the marshmallows are dissolved and try stirring it every once in a while. Make sure it doesnt burn, or the water under it doesnt overboil!
2. When all the marshmallows are melted take the pan off the boiling water, and leave it a while to cool down. A few minutes will do, then poor it onto the cake-base.
3. Leave this to cool in the fridge again, this time for about 30 minutes. After 15 minutes you can add the fruits, so later on they won't float in your jelly xP

Jellylayer:
1. Before you start working on the jelly, start decorating the cake with the fruits. You can use a cookiecutter, or just a knife, to turn the fruits into fun shapes and decorate it with those.
2. Now start working on the jelly. In my case, it just said on the package how to make it. I had to add hot water with the jelly given, wait till it had dissolved and add cold water. In stead of cold water, I used the syrup that came with the canned peaches.
3. When this suspence has cooled just a little bit, you can start pooring it over the fruits in your cake. Do this with a big spoon, so your marshmallowlayer won't get any wholes in it.
4. Leave this to cool in the fridge, yet again, but this time for about 3 hours.



Finally, you should be able to eat ^^ I also promised some information, so here it goes. I hope you find the information usefull ^^

Alternative for jelly-layer:
Ingredients:
250 ml juice
3 sheets of gelatine

For this one first check the gelatine. I prefer using gelatine sheets and they require 12 leaves per liter. If you use gelatine powder, just look up the amount it needs for a liter and devide it by four.
What juice you use depends on the fruit you are using. If it is canned fruit, you can just use the juice that comes in the can.
1. You will first need to heat the juice. Put it on a medium fire. It does not have to boil, just make sure it doesn't burn.
2. Take the juice of the fire and add the gelatine. Stir until the gelatine is dissolved.
Gelatine sheets require resting in water for a few minutes before use. Just read what your package says about this.
3. With this suspence, you can do steps 3 and 4 of the jelly-layer ^^

Dubble-boil (au bain marie):
For this method you fill a big pan with water, till about halfway, but maybe you'll have to add more later. In the smaller pan you put the ingredients you need to boil and place this in the bigger pan with water. Add water, if needed, untill the smaller pan is surrounded by it, but the bigger pan is not overflowing (keep in mind that when you heat the water, it will expand as well). Put the big pan, with the smaller pan in it, on the fire. This way the ingredients in the smaller pan have a way smaller chance of burning. You also use this method to melt chocolate ^^

As for the jelly I used, I thought I'd add a picture (maybe it helps?.. Something like this sure does make things easier! ^^

Creamy herb paste/spread

(Edit: I changed the name to herb spread, as it is a better name for it I believe, but haven't changed this in original post)

A recipe I actually invented myself (dont praise me, anyone could come up with this <.<).. I wanted to make blini's at that time (little pancakes) after I had it in a restuarant. They were so delicious I had to try!

The blini's were made of a american pancake-mix, and then, according to the recipe on it, making little pancakes. Take one pancake, royally spread the herbpaste over it, royally put salmon on that.. Then on top of that, more herbpaste and another pancake.. Just like a sandwhich ^^ Make sure to do everything ROYAL! That really does make it taste a lot better ^^ In my case, the pancakes turned out pretty floury - but then again I never tasted american pancakes and have no idea what they are supposed to taste like - but the result was VERY good ^^

Anyway, the herbpaste is very simple to make ^^ My mom also really liked it on her bread without anything else.. It's really nice as a sandwhichspread on warm these. It's very airy and light, but it's creamy and cool too (you have to keep it in a fridge, so that one was logical <.<) You could use it for anything else you can think of I suppose.. and since this recipe is so easy.. you can give your own twist to it just as easily ^^



Ingredients:
- mon chou
- herbs (like parsely, chives, anything!)
- garlic
- lemon juice (just a bit, one squirt xP )
- anything else you want to put in it XD

Cut it and then: MIX IT!!!
I told you it was simple! For the cutting: make small pieces and try using siccors, it really makes things easier! Do make sure you've cleaned it beforehand, or you have a special foodsiccor..
The most simple version I made was with just mon chou, a bit of lemon juice, leek and parsley.. It's really good ^^ Of course you can change this one in whatever way you like.. By using more herbs, different kinds, or using spices.. I bet the same recipe would be really good with pepper and chilli powder.. that would give it a cool red colour too!!



Although you can add practically anything to the mon chou, getting the right combination can take some time and experience ^^ The lemon juice is actually not for the taste.. It's to make the paste a bit more smooth and spreadable.. I would advice to use it, but feel free to just leave that out too ^^
Note: there are no measurements for this recipe. It really just depends on the amount of mon chou you feel like using or need and how "herby" you want it. You should really just try out how much you like. Make sure you notice you can always put more in, but never take anything out!

Chocolate slices

These were supposed to biscotti (do I spell it right?).. The hard biscuits that you can drink with coffee or so.. but I stopped halfway the recipe, and declared them done! They were really nice actually.. especially with some topping, like jam, or just vanilla topping out of a jar (yes, I know, evil xP).. Anyway, as there are the first posts for my blog, yet again some copying from what I already typed xP
I feel like I should have done more cranberries, they did give it some extra (sweeter) taste.. how that is possible when cranberries themselves arent sweet at all, I dont know, I just remember I really liked those in it. If you don't like chocolate though, you shouldnt try this. It is very rich!

Ingredients:
- 1/2 cup of butter (room temperature)
- 3/4 cup granulated white sugar
- 2 big eggs
- 1 big egg yolk (egg yellow xP)
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract (coconut extract is real good too :d)
- 1 3/4 cup flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 cup cacao powder
- 1/2 cup cranberries (can try raisins too)
- 1/2 cup chocolate chips (white or milk)

Mix the sugar and the butter in a bowl untill it's light and fluffy (2-3 minutes) with a handmixer or mixingmachine (whatever you've got). Add the eggs and yolk one by one, mixing properly after you add each one of them. Beat the vanilla extract into the mixture.
In a second bowl add the flower, baking powder, salt and cacao powder and mix them. Add the other mixture in it and stir it again with a hand mixer. Add the cranberries and chocolate chips and mix again.
Heat the oven to 170 degrees Celsius or 340 degrees Fahrenheit. While it's heating up, make two long rolls of the cake-mixture and put them on a baking sheet. Put them in the middle of the oven for 25-30 minutes.



The cut them into thick slices and DONE! ^^ You can also add some icing on it.



Type: HEAVY! Dun eat too much at the same time xP It will make you FULL! xD But it's chocolate :3 and very delicious :3 you could eat it with fresh fruits.. that's nice ^^ it's like a cookie.. it's not really good as desert.. at least, I can come up with better things XD

Forgive me my photographic skills please! I'm working on it :)