Pining for a recipe?

Pineapple Cheesecake

This was the first cheesecake I tried with my own recipe and it's still one of the favorites. It's probably what I would have made for mom since her birthday is this weekend..if I had been here. First time in four bloody years that I'm not in college and I can be home for her birthday, but now I can't - because of some dumb as hell visa complication, and the fact that this country will make your life difficult just to do so (that's how it feels anyway), I have to leave the night before her birthday and miss it. The first time I made this cake and everyone loved it I was oh-so-unbelievably proud...it was the first time I baked and I'm not really sure why I did it at all. I told mom i wanted to learn how to cook for college, and she said well sure but why don't you bake a cheesecake, ask Sohni (one of my best friends ever and the most amazing baker in the world) for her recipe. Actually, I guess the first time I really baked was a bit disastrous - it certainly was a cheesecake but due to the lack of philadelphia cream cheese that the recipe called for (those were the days it wasn't available anywhere), the cream cheese was so dense, the cake felt like it was attacking your insides. After struggling past a mouthful and deciding I had no reason to be polite to myself and chucking the rest in the bin, I decided to figure out a method to thin it...sour cream worked like magic. So the first successful cheesecake was the one above. Now that my blog has been completely taken over by fairly unattractive photographs of these goods, I feel like the recipes should be shared.


The base I use for all my cheesecakes is pretty much the same. Much of this came from my friend's recipe, but several things were tweaked to comply with the harsh conditions (poor Mihi) of my current home.


Crust:

• Roughly 10-15 sugar cookies
• 3-4 Tablespoons melted butter

Filling:
**All these should be room temperature, so make sure you give the cream cheese and sour cream some time to warm up before adding them**

• Roughly 6 oz cream cheese
• 1/3 cup sugar (or Splenda)
• 1 egg
• 4 oz of sour cream
• ¼ cup flour
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 tsp lemon juice 

Directions:

Crust Directions:

1. (Pull out filling ingredients so they can warm up from fridge while you do this). Pulse cookies until crumbled completely. Depending on what you want here, I add coconut shreds (after crushing them completely) to the lemon cheesecake, and once in a while I throw in some chocolate / chocolate chip cookies for a slightly different flavor. Crushed nuts add a nice flavor too. Mix in butter so when you make a fist the cookie crumbles hold together, grease pan then press onto bottom and up the sides of the pan a bit; sometimes I get lazy and don't bother going up the sides, it doesn't matter much. You can also throw this in the oven for a few minutes before putting it in the fridge if you like, but I've noticed this doesn't make too much of a difference either, so I usually put it straight in the refrigerator while making the filling.

Cheesecake Directions:

*Preheat oven to 350 Fahrenheit*

1. All the filling ingredients should be at room temperature i.e. cream cheese and sour cream.

2. Beat the cream cheese until light and fluffy with an electric mixer set on low.

3. Add the sugar a little at a time and continue beating until creamy.

4. Add one egg at a time and beat after each egg.

5. Add flour, vanilla and lemon juice, mix well. For the chocolate cake, I skip the vanilla essence.

6. Add the sour cream and beat well.

This is the basic batter. From here it depends on what type of cake you're making. For the lemon cheesecake, I add more lemon juice and grate some lemon zest into the batter. For the pineapple, I strain crushed pineapple pieces (haven't seen fresh pineapple here ever), chop them up and mix those in. For chocolate, I melt semi sweet chocolate chips and any chocolate bars around the house and stir those in; I add a tiny bit of milk to help stir it in easily. I tend to add some Hershey's chocolate syrup too, mostly for the fun of it (who doesn't love pouring syrup into things?). For berry I grate some lemon zest in, and prepare the berry filling on the stove (see below)then swirl that in - pour a bit, mix with a knife, keep repeating till you get a cool-ass texture that people find impressive.

8. Pour your cream cheese mixture into the crusted (ew, that sounds pretty gross, but you know what I mean) pan.

9. Place in the oven until the sides look baked and the middle isn't completely set. Just jiggle it a bit, but basically the edges should look done. A lot of recipes say you need a pan of water and such shenanigans, but until I'm opening a bakery this works pretty well. The cheesecake continues to set/cook in the fridge/after you take it out of the oven so don't worry about it.

10. Remove from oven and let cool, then refrigerate for about 24 hours to get the full effect. Seriously, cheesecake is always better after about 12 hours minimum...I know what I'm talking about, don't test me bitches.

Strawberry marble filling: defrost frozen berries and puree (I use about 6-7 frozen blackberries and that's usually enough). Add about 1/4 cup of sugar (taste to make sure it's sweet enough as the berries can be very strong in flavor), tablespoon of corn starch and a bit of water, put it over stove and let it bubble till it's thick, then cool. Mix into the cream cheese mix, one layer cream cheese then dots of swirled berry (with knife) repeatedly.

*DISCLAIMER! Actually, it more of a claim, no dis nor er. Anyway point being: I use Splenda instead of sugar for most of my recipes as my mom is diabetic. The berry was the most effective at hiding the sweetener aftertaste that sometimes pokes it's nasty head through, since the flavors of both the berries and the lemon zest were strong enough to mask that subtle too-sweet-almost-tastes-like-poison flavor. The above measurement work for sugar too though, since every time I bake for a party or someone else I use sugar. 

#ThirdWorldProblems

Blackberry Marble Cheesecake

I may technically live in a third world country, but it really feels closer to fourth or fifth and 'developing' may be a stretch. Okay maybe that's a little unfair; even in the last year there have been small improvements, like people actually removing ice off the roads once they freeze over. Take the cheesecake above, however. Cream cheese is found at a large market that sells quite literally EVERYthing food related under one roof, and we pay roughly $20 for a kilogram. Philadelphia cream cheese? I wish. It's about $20 for 8oz, no kidding. And that's when you can find it, which is about once every three or four months. I don't even eat cheesecake so there's no way I'm spending that much on cream cheese for other people, I'm really not that nice. Luckily most other ingredients are available - except fresh berries. The only time I've seen berries here, they were the small boxes that you get in grocery stores in the US (you know, the plastic ones that have just enough berries for a small snack and leave you still-hungry), and I kid you not, those blueberries were $40. Forty goddam dollars. And yes, of course I'm converting to USD. So fresh berries in my cheesecake? Fuck no. Frozen it is. The chocolate and this were the crowd favorites, but of course the empty bottles of cabernet and whiskey makes for a very complimentary crowd either way.
It's pretty interesting living in a place where you can only get certain items at certain times of year. And I don't mean mango season for mangoes - I mean everything from cereals to walnuts. If you find a cereal you like, you better pick that shit up right then and there, and stock up too. The way food items are brought in is in bulk - in fact the most common brand for anything American is Kirkland (yup, I'm talkin Costco here) - and once the shipment comes in, the city is flooded with that item for a month or so. Honey nuts cereal the latest shipment? You will find it EVERYwhere. But the second it runs out, so does your luck. You have no idea when it will be available again, if ever. It's fun to try and bake/cook with substitutions though - keeps life interesting in the middle of nowhere. You know what we never run out of though? Check it out ->

No, this isn't a liquor store. This is every supermarket in the city. The part that really tickles me though, is that the alcohol is the only thing that has security tags on it. And a part of the supermarket, on the second floor, is a proper shop that sells furs that cost up to USD 1000...those don't have security tags. Only the booze does.

When Life Gives You...

Lemon cheesecake with coconut crust, topped with lemon rinds

The lemon rinds were, unfortunately, far less attractive than I had hoped. Once I figured out how i wanted the strips of detergent-smelling skin (why is it that so many dishwasher/laundry detergents smell lemony fresh? It's a bit nauseating and totally ruins real lemon flavored things since all I can think of is clean underwear), I didn't really know how to arrange them. After a ten minute glaring contest with the smooth yellow surface, the unblinking cake won and I decided to just lay them on and stick it in the fridge so it would be out of sight. After all, when life hands you lemons...i guess you make lemonade and don't deal with the damn peel.

Speaking of life's lemons, I had a regular traumatic experience today. What does that mean? It means I go through this event on a regular basis, but it's still pretty damn traumatic. Poor Mihi.  If I ever get married or am in a relationship, I know one thing we will not be doing together - getting haircuts.
I think it may be one of the most disconcerting repeated activities of our lives. I went through a phase in high school when I really wanted to shave my hair off completely but everyone I knew (and our school was TINY) promised they would disown me. As much as I wanted to experiment, I wasn't ready to be that bald girl with no friends just yet, so the hair stayed. Pity. I still want to do it but the closest I get to visualizing it is on a hairdresser's chair. When I have a horrendous amount of money I can't spend, I'm going to employ someone to wash my hair for me every morning. That part is heaven - the trouble starts when you return to the spin-able high chair that makes you feel like you're six again since your feet can't touch the floor. The wet hair can look a bit sexy, the comb-through, sure, but then it goes one of two ways - either it's almost all put up and you look bloated and masculine (well, I do) or they put it up in a bunch of clips and you look like an anime Sailor Moon style person. Of course, it doesn't help when you're mom is waiting in the back saying "wow, you look like a man!" Thanks, mom. The really unsettling part though, in my humble (ok maybe not too humble) opinion is the fact that you have to stare at yourself for the entirety of the haircut. I mean, you can close your eyes, but then you look really strange to anyone else in the parlor. Plus you don't want the hairdresser to think you can't see them....you keep your eye on those scissors as they snip away your painfully grown out inches of not-so-luscious locks. So there you are, watching yourself. I like using the time to practice raising my eyebrows, one at a time, and carefully observe each and every flaw on my face (man there are way too many). The question is, what else can you do? It's quite an earth-shattering moment as you realize you are not quite as good-looking as you had hoped. Nobody should have to stare at their own face for so long, in my opinion; especially under fluorescent lights that highlight each bump on your skin. It just isn't nice and it isn't doing anyone any good whatsoever. By the time the hair stylist asks me if my hair looks okay, I'm too excited to get away from my own reflection to do more than glance at the handheld mirror and nod my satisfaction. Really, anything to get away from myself by that point.
Thank god I'm really good-looking - even if I look like a man without the hair, I'm a good-looking man. I think if I was really ugly, I'd stop getting haircuts altogether. I had a dream a few nights ago where I was looking at myself and said to someone 'I read somewhere that we all think we're five times better looking than we are in reality.' Shit, I woke up terrified. Thank god I still look good terrified. I wonder if unattractive people know the truth about themselves - are we socially obligated to inform them of the harsh reality, or is ignorance really bliss? Man, life can be so tough sometimes. 

Chill Thoroughly Before Serving

Chocolate Cheesecake topped with semi-sweet chocolate chips, chocolate syrup and shaved dark chocolate bits

The first one to be baked was a dark chocolate, both the color of our skin and one of the first instances of my grandmother's hatred. Maybe hatred was too strong a word - or maybe it burned down to slight dislike as the years passed and she realized I wasn't going anywhere. Well, at least not until after her. Even if hatred was too intense to describe her attitude towards me, it was ideal for her demeanor towards my poor mother. Why my mother tried to please her in the first place is beyond me. I wasn't going to try to please her; she trapped me in the house each afternoon when all I wanted to do was play in the sun with the servant's children. At the age of nine, tanning is hardly the end of the world. When I was younger I decided she was just a mean woman, or she didn't like children. There were people like that, Roald Dahl had assured me. In fact if I met more of them, maybe I would be able to move things with my mind too! Matilda was a lucky girl. Of course when my brother came along six years later, chubby and cheerful, my grandmother's affection proved my theories wrong. I would have been jealous if only I cared more. Instead I decided she only liked males, since my father, brother and grandfather were the lucky ones, and I could live without her approval - I'd been doing fine so far. My mother still laughs whenever she tells me the story, and I had to admit I find it pretty amusing too. I was a child, after all.
She walked into the living room and there was my grandmother on the rocking chair. In retrospect, I'm not sure why we had a rocking chair back then, but it stuck with us for a few years. I remember falling off it once and scaring my mother half to death with my screams. Anyway, it really creates the perfect setting for this story, although we didn't have a cat for her to stroke as she rocked back and forth. So there she was, and as soon as my mother walks into the living room (where yours truly is innocently toying with her latest Barbies) her voice slices through the air. No really, if it could have physically sliced, my mother would have required a few stitches.
"Why are you turning her against me?"
"I'm sorry, what?" Confusion clouding mother's face, anger darkening the rocking grandmother's. Rock, rock. For the effect of the story, let's pretend it was creaking. Creeeak, creeak.
"You are turning her against me!"
She can't help it; mother's fighting a smile. Still no idea what is going on, so rather than repeat this a few times she just waits.
"Mihi asked me why I'm so chocolate. So chocolate! I know this is your doing!" Oh dear, the hysterical pitch was hit.
Poor, fair (she's not too chocolate herself - definitely getting darker as time passes, but way back when she was mistaken for Italian a lot) mother pulls me away to 'berate' a very confused four-year-old Mihi; but really, to leave the creaking, croaking crone and laugh. I was a curious child and hadn't yet experienced the Indian shame of being dark-skinned just yet. Innocent little Mihi. Oh the years to come would teach me all right, especially since I was the darkest of the family (woe is me!) but ignorance was no excuse; that was the fateful day my grandmother decided I was on my mother's side. Oops.
Nearly twenty years later, I quite like being brown - I don't need no tanning beds, Snooks. This, however, just may be the reason I still don't eat chocolate. Or maybe I just don't like the feeling of being in love.

Put in Oven for Twenty Two Years

There they sat, four cheesecake portrayals of my life. 

Imperfect, yet trying oh-so-hard to look professional and pretty. After all, it isn't where you come from or what you're made of as long as you look good, right? As my favorite mug used to say (thank you mom for the gift) -

"BEAUTY: If you're beautiful on the outside, nobody cares what you're like on the inside."

Just kidding! Well, sort of.

So after roughly seven hours of oven heat, a few "you remind me of your grandmother when you're in the kitchen, you make such a mess, there is batter everywhere" exasperated mother grumbles, and a few burnt fingers (chocolate chips can heat up really fast), I had my life set out on the table, all ready for the following day's dinner party.

Clockwise from left: Lemon cheesecake with coconut crust (lemon rinds didn't turn out as pretty as I had hoped but once I cut them I couldn't quite figure out how I wanted to arrange them), Blackberry marble cheesecake, Pineapple cheesecake and Chocolate cheesecake.

Okay so maybe the one year of photography in high school didn't do all that much, but I also just got lazy and used the closest camera I had...which was not a camera but a cellular device. I wasn't planning on starting a blog, and honestly, who walks an extra ten feet just to pick up a real camera? Clearly not this girl.
I really, really hope people like cheesecake. A lot.
Because I don't really eat desserts.
Yeah, seriously. Go figure.