Recipe: Cookies and Cream Coffee Cheesecake.

July 30th was National Cheesecake Day. I happened to be off from work, and I was browsing the internet, like ya do, and I came across this bit of wonderful news. I wanted to bake something I hadn’t made in a while, and a cheesecake was one such thing. It was clearly a sign from the universe that I had to make a cheesecake that very day.

I wasn’t sure which kind I wanted to make. My first thought was peanut butter or maybe almond butter….but then I started thinking my fiance really likes coffee and coffee-flavored stuff…and I have all these leftover faux-reos from the Cookies and Cream Cupcakes I just made…so I found a pretty simple recipe for a coffee cheesecake, made a few of my own tweaks and additions, and the Cookies and Cream Coffee Cheesecake with Coffee Whipped Cream and Dark Chocolate Drizzle was born. Pretty long name for a cheesecake, but it earned it.

longest. name. ever.

My fiance loved it, and so did my co-workers (it was too good not to share!). So now, I’ll share the recipe with you, so you can share it with your family and friends. It’s the circle of life (or cheesecake).

Cookies and Cream Coffee Cheesecake.

What you’ll need for the crust:

16 Oreos or faux-reos

2 tblsp butter

What you’ll do for the crust:

Preheat oven to 350. Combine the cookies and butter in a food processor until finely crumbled. Press on the bottom and up the sides of a 9 in disposable pie pan, like so:

the crust of it.

Bake for 10 minutes Let cool completely. Leave the oven on at 350 for the cheesecake.

What you’ll need for the cheesecake:

2  8 oz packages of cream cheese, softened

1/2 cup of sugar

2 eggs

1/3 cup of very strong freshly brewed coffee at room temperature (I used Gevalia Crème Brulee  flavored)

What you’ll do for the cheesecake:

In a large bowl, cream together the cream cheese and sugar until well mixed. In a small bowl, whisk the eggs, and add them, along with the coffee to the cream cheese and sugar. Mix until smooth (this should be less than a minute). Pour into cooled crust and bake for approximately 35 minutes, or until set. You can tell it’s set by lightly touching the center and it not sticking to your finger. It should look something like this:

all set.

Let it cool completely, then refrigerate for at least 2 hours.

What you’ll need for the coffee whipped cream:

1 cup chilled heavy cream

1/4 cup confectioners sugar

1 tblsp very strong coffee at room temperature (I used the same coffee as in the cheesecake)

What you’ll do for the coffee whipped cream:

In a chilled bowl (cream whips best when the bowl is cold), whip the heavy cream until it forms soft peaks. Add the sugar and the coffee, and continue to whip until stiff peaks are formed. Using a star tip, pipe a shell border of  whipped cream around the edge of the chilled cheesecake, and a single rosette in the center, like so:

pipe it good.

Finally, in a small saucepan, combine 2 ounces of GOOD dark chocolate (I used Scharffen Berger Unsweetened Fine Artisan Dark Chocolate) and a tablespoon of butter over low heat, stirring continuously until completely melted. Pour chocolate into a plastic decorating bag BEFORE cutting the tip off. Hold the bag directly over the chilled cheesecake, then snip the tip, and drizzle the chocolate back and forth until you’ve reached drizzling nirvana.

enlightenment.

Chill it again for about 30 minutes, then cut, serve, and devour….err…I mean, enjoy. 🙂

gone in 60 seconds.

Pumpkin Biscotti: A Matter of Personal Preference.

I was thinking about biscotti the other day and how I haven’t made it in at least two years – I was definitely still in pastry school the last time. I remembered that it wasn’t the hardest thing to make, but it also wasn’t the simplest. So, I whipped out my old test book, and searched for the recipe.

It was definitely something I could do, but this recipe was for almond biscotti. And I really wanted to try a more seasonal flavor. I’ve been on a pumpkin rampage, and I still am, so I thought I’d give the old internet a search, and see if I could find a pumpkin biscotti recipe that suited my needs. I quickly came across this one on simplyrecipes.com. It was from 2007, but in the world of baking, that really doesn’t matter – a good recipe is a good recipe, pretty much forever. So I went to work.

I followed the recipe pretty closely – except that I tried to cheat and not flour my hands when I went to knead the dough – HUGE mistake. This dough is über sticky – make sure you use plenty o’ flour. It makes rolling it into a large log that much easier.

biscotti log (sort of)

The one thing about this recipe I did find momentarily confusing was that it says to roll it into a large log, but that the logs should be relatively flat. Well, in my mind, a log is round, not flat, so I didn’t quite understand at first what this was telling me to do. So, I thought back to the last time I made biscotti, and just did that, which was just make a long flat-ish dough strip (as you can see in the picture), and bake it the first time in that shape.

As biscotti means “twice baked” in Italian, you gotta bake this puppy twice. So, after it baked as a flat log, I removed it from the oven, turned the  heat down, waited for the log to cool slightly, then cut it into strips, and baked it again.

baking twice makes it extra nice.

So, here’s where my personal preference came into play. I don’t like my biscotti super hard and stale-tasting. I like it crispy on the edges, but still a little soft in the middle. So, I baked it the second time just long enough to achieve my desired results, which was somewhere around 7-8 minutes.

crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside.

Someone told me that although it tasted fantastic, it wasn’t biscotti because it wasn’t hard enough. Well, friends, that’s just not true. Biscotti can be as hard as you like it – the only requirement is that you bake it twice. You know, since that’s what it’s named for, and all. 🙂

Celebrate with Eggless Coffee Cake.

So, around my office, I’m kinda known as the dessert queen – and I’m ok with that. I’m always testing out new creations on my very-willing-to-be-taste-testing coworkers, and they always give me honest feedback, so it’s a win-win. I’m also always making the goodies when someone’s birthday rolls around. Well last week, someone in my office conveniently “forgot” to tell anyone that it was his birthday, until we found out accidentally later that afternoon (when the HR rep delivered his birthday card in front of all of us – ha ha). But no one gets off that easy. I decided that I would whip up a quick better-late-than-never birthday cake that night, and surprise him the next morning.

I flipped through my recipe binder, and decided a small coffee cake would be perfect. I had all the ingredients (so I thought) and I even had some leftover cinnamon chips that would be an excellent addition to the batter. I started going to work. Three ingredients in and I suddenly realized – I was all out of eggs. Yikes. I really didn’t feel like running out and getting them – I already started the whole cake making process!

running on empty.

But then, I had an idea. I’ve made vegan cakes in the past, and they sometimes use white vinegar in place of eggs. I did have white vinegar, so I figured, what the heck, I’ll give it a tray. I guesstimated that two tablespoons of vinegar per egg would be sufficient. I definitely didn’t want to go too heavy on the vinegar and wind up with an overpoweringly gross vinegar cake.

my hero.

Well, once again, those two years of pastry school paid off – the cake was delicious – I dare say even better with the vinegar!

eggless and proud of it.

I guess it’s true what they say – never settle for the same old cake.  (Ok so no one really ever said that. But it does seem to be true.) Change really can be a good thing, my friends. Even good ol’ eggs can be replaced by something better, if you look around a bit. 🙂

Recipe (Super Bowl) Sunday: Chocolate Coffee Cupcakes.

No, I didn’t make a Super Bowl themed dessert. The marketer in me was angry at the rest of me for not taking advantage of this timely social event and making something football-related. The rest of me justified it by saying… “meh.” The Super Bowl just ain’t my scene. Maybe if the Eagles were playing, I’d pay it some attention, but, full disclosure here, I tuned in to watch Madonna, and then went into the kitchen and started baking another un-football-related treat. And now I shall share said treat with you.

For some reason, it seemed like everywhere I went this week, I wound up in a conversation about coffee. A new flavor to try, where to get the best cup, here’s a coffee cheesecake, someone loves coffee ice cream, etc. So, with coffee already on my mind, I figured why not get it on yours, too. What I love most about this recipe, is that it can be made with any type of coffee you desire. I’m a huge fan of the flavored varieties, so I opted for a Creme Brulee coffee. However there are no rules here. Dowhatchalike. 🙂

the phantom of the opera cake.

 

I used to sing show tunes around the house all the time. For some reason, I just stopped, I think possibly in part because I was living in apartments with little to no insulation, and my singing voice tends to be louder than most (in highschool we did a show where everyone needed to use a microphone…except for me), and I didn’t want to scare the neighbors (or my cat). However, it does lend itself perfectly to show tune singing.

 

i could've been the next Ethel Merman.

I was visiting with my mom the other day, and she asked me if I still sang show tunes. And my answer was, regretfully, no. And I started wondering why. I don’t live in an apartment anymore – there was no real excuse. I’d somehow abandoned something I loved doing more than anything without even realizing it. So I went home, grabbed my favorite old CD of show tunes (an Andrew Lloyd Webber compilation) and rocked out, particularly to songs from Phantom of the Opera, for some reason.

The phantom of the opera is there, inside my mind.

In a strange coincidence, a couple days later in class we made an “Opera Cake,” which is layers of coffee syrup soaked cake (called “Joconde”), interspersed with coffee buttercream and a single layer of ganache, topped with chocolate glaze, and traditionally the word “Opera” written across the top.

my confectionery aria.

This cake was fun to make, and even more fun to eat, being the coffee addict that I am. However, it took all my willpower to refrain from bursting into song while making it. Someday, if I own my own bakeshop, show tune singing while baking will not only be acceptable, but required.

Make new dreams and try new things, my friends – but never forget the old ones. And if over the course of your busy life you somehow do, just have your mom remind you – that’s all i ask of you. 🙂

Indiana Jones and the Tiramisu.

I had a dream that my teacher was dressed up like Indiana Jones, and was making me take everything out of his kitchen cupboards. I’m not really sure what this means – he doesn’t look or dress anything like Indiana Jones in real life, and it’s not like I just watched one of the movies or something. And other than being in the kitchen, none of this had anything to do with pastries at all.

whip that...meringue?

Needless to say, when I saw him in class tonight, I couldn’t help but giggle. But that quickly passed when we launched into baking cakes, one of them being Tiramisu.

I had never made Tiramisu before, nor have I ever considered making it, even though I enjoy eating it very much. It just sounded complicated and challenging. And honestly, it kind of is. But that didn’t stop Dr. Jones from finding the Ark, so by golly, it was not going to stop me from making it!

raiders of the lost pastry.

We created this classic dessert over the course of two nights – baking the lady fingers on the first night, and making the mousse and assembling the cake on the second. I have to say, this was a fun cake to make, and probably the best tiramisu I’ve ever had – and I’ve had many. Chalk it up to excellent teamwork and coffee syrup.  

the last crusade.

I think we found the holy grail, Indy.

cupcake love.

I’ve mentioned before that I’m not a big fan of Valentine’s Day. However, I must pay homage to it, because, if it had not been created by large corporations to generate sales in an otherwise dead time of the year, I may not have ever found my way into baking. For it was my lack of gift ideas many, many years ago that led to my first attempt at really creating confections. Sure, I’d made box cakes before that  – with jarred icing. Nothing fancy – no decorating, or writing or anything of that sort. So while looking through the pages of a magazine, I stumbled across decorated Valentine’s Day cupcakes, with personal messages, hearts, etc. “I can do that!” I ambitiously declared. So, I got some tubes of icing with some plastic decorating tips, and went to work. I wish I had a picture of them – they were – well, not like the ones in the magazine, to put it nicely. But they weren’t a cake wreck either. There was real potential there. My boyfriend at the time loved them too – they tasted even better than they looked, and he was impressed with the time I put into the gift. His reaction, combined with the fun I had making them, inspired me to keep at it.

So here I am, keepin’ at it.

Years later (I will not say how many, at the risk of revealing my true age), I’m still making cupcakes for Valentine’s Day. This year, I made a chocolate coffee cupcake, with coffee-infused frosting, and a thin mint Girl Scout Cookie on top.

nothing says love like baked goods.

Practice really does make perfect. And even though these cupcakes looked and tasted 10 times better than their ancestors, the reaction they garnered upon receipt was the same. So get out there and make something sweet for your sweety. Plus if you’re lucky, they’ll share with you. It’s a win-win.

The perfect cupcake of coffee.

I love coffee. I would not consider myself a coffee snob – I don’t turn up nose at the less than stellar free coffee they offer in the office and invest in an overpriced unpronounceable cup of java latte grande super americano with a shot of whole beans. But i do drink it every day, and I go into a state of serious withdrawal without it (headaches, crankiness, confusion – oh, it’s ugly). Although I may not be a coffee snob, I am a cake snob. I’ve worked hard over the years to achieve cake perfection myself (of course i know there is always room for improvement though), and I eat every cake with a critical tongue.

Recently, it was a colleague’s birthday and this person is a known coffee connoisseur (addict). So, what better way to celebrate the birth of a coffee-lover than with coffee-infused cupcakes!?

have your cake and drink it too.

 

Topped with a very slightly coffee flavored buttercream (just enough to bring out the coffee in the cake), and sprinkled with semi-sweet dark chocolate shavings, these java gems were the bells of the breakfast ball. Cake & Coffee – perfect together.