Say Cheese!

By popular demand, we will now be offering cheesecake in the shop with a new variety each week.

For Easter this week, we have created a mile-high cake that combines 2 layers of carrot cake with a layer of cheesecake in-between. It is guaranteed to put you in a Sugar Daze!

What's your favorite flavor of cheesecake? What would you like to see us make next?

Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy!

Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy!, a photo by Sugar Daze (f/k/a LittleMissCupcakeParis) on Flickr.

Even though I'm officially on vacation, I have a hard time shutting off when it comes to making sweet after-dinner treats! I have limited baking facilities so have had to adapt someof my favorite recipes for simpler execution. This is a no-bake cheesecake that is super fast and easy to prepare. Here's what you need:

For the Crust:

1 sleeve of tea biscuits, graham crackers, chocolate cookies or whatever you want to make your crust with (about 20 cookies)
2 ounces unsalted butter, melted
2 tbsps sugar

1) Place cookies inside a plastic bag. Using a rolling pin or if you're like me and don't have access to one, the bottom of a skillet, bash the cookies until you have a very fine crumb.
2) Pour into bowl, add butter and sugar and stir to mix.
3) Using the back of a spoon, flatten crumb mixture into the bottom and up the sides of a shallow round baking pan or springform mold (8 inch).
4) Store crust in freezer about 10 minutes while you make the filling.

For the Filling:
3 packages Philadelphia cream cheese
200 ml whipping cream
1 cup sugar
juice from 1 lemon
4 large squares from a chocolate tablet (I used Perugina dark)

1) Whip cream until soft peaks form and set aside.
2) Using the back of a fork, mash cream cheese in a large bowl, add sugar and lemon juice and stir to combine.
3) Mix in whipped cream until you have a homogenous, creamy filling.
4) Spoon into crust and smooth with a spoon or fork for a flat surface. Reserve in fridge while you melt the chocolate.
5) Melt chocolate squares in microwave for about 60 seconds or until smooth.
6) Drip chocolate in dollops over the surface of the cheesecake. Drag the tip of a sharp knife over surface of the cheesecake in figure 8's for a decorative pattern.
7) Leave cheesecake in fridge at least 10 hours or overnight to set. Serve and enjoy!

If you have any simple, no-bake recipes you'd like to share,please do so in the comments section!

Say It With Flours

**Spoiler Alert** This post is dedicated to my husband on our 8th year wedding anniversary. It may contain some sappy sentimental gunk so if you don't want to hear it, point your web browser elsewhere....



Upon meeting me, a lot of people wonder how on earth a born and bred New York City gal like me wound up in Paris. Which inevitably leads me to tell the story of how I met my husband. So for once and for all, here goes:

I used to date a really cool guy named Tom. At one point in our relationship it became pretty clear that we would be better off as friends versus boyfriend and girlfriend. Did I happen to mention we worked at the same ad agency? So we still saw a lot of each other and I think did (and still do when he's not too busy with work to talk with me) a pretty good job on the post-breakup friends part. Which is how I came to accompany him to a party one night as his "wingman." You see, Tom was quite smitten with a coat check girl he had met one day while lunching with some Clients. He had returned to the restaurant the very next day to ask her out and she invited him (and he me) to a house-warming party she and her roommate, newly arrived from Paris, were having.



So, we headed on down to her pad - it was a Sunday night (I remember because we always watched X-Files together and that night was no exception) - so not a serious partying night. We walked into the party and while Tom left me to go woo Mademoiselle French Fry, I gravitated towards a group of people at the center of the room who were discussing some such club they had been to the night before. A very tall guy in a beige linen suit immediately caught my eye. He reminded of a cross between Crispin Glover (you know the Thin Man from Charlie's Angels) and Ralph Fiennes, and just exuded elegance and charm. He had a girl on his arm who was regaling everyone with a story about how drunk he had been the night before and that the poor dear was so sick, he had barely slept and was now suffering with a terrible hangover. I of course reckoned she was his girlfriend and didn't think much of it as little by little, I found myself talking with him alone about French literature and culture. His English was so perfect, I didn't at first realize he too was French until he mentioned something about growing up in Paris.



From time to time, his girlfriend strolled over to chat; I was surprised that she wasn't bothered at all by the fact that we had been talking so long - it had been hours - and I mentioned this to him. He started laughing and seemed very amused by my comment. Because you see, she wasn't his girlfriend at all but the other hostess of the party and Mademoiselle French Fry's roommate. Well, that certainly explained a lot and so when he told me he was leaving for a short trip to Paris the next day, but said he'd like to call me when he came back, I didn't hesitate for a moment. For you see, somewhere in that space of our conversation, underneath a horribly colored hand-made patchwork blanket hung on the wall, something had happened to me. Something I had never felt before and couldn't quite explain. When I got home that night, I called up my best friend Jen and inexplicably blurted out : "I just met the man I am going to marry."



We were engaged a few years later during a truly romantic trip to the South of France. We had arrived at a beautiful chateau near Lyon and as we were getting ready to go down for dinner, he said to me, "You look beautiful but I think your outfit is missing something" and got down on hand and knee as he proposed and pulled an engagement ring from his pocket. It was a magical trip and one I will never forget.



We've been through thick and thin, ups and downs, laughter and tears over the years and we're two kids heavier than when we met. A more opposite couple you will likely never meet : he's practically never without a suit (even on a cross-Atlantic flight) while I prefer jeans and my Pumas. He's into opera and classical music, I can spend days watching MTV. He's a whiz with numbers, anything scientific and can speak intelligently for hours on any topic from Nietzsche to the Neolithic Revolution. I'll be the one helping our kids with their English homework...and did I mention I like MTV? Yet we somehow manage to make it work and have fun doing so. Well, except for that time when we were both unemployed and expecting our first child. That was certainly no fun but we got through it!

So to you dear husband I say, Happy Anniversary! I love you and look forward to another 8 to the power of 2 years with you (or 64 years if I am not mistaken -- I learned that the other night while he was teaching something to our 6 year-old!). And for this occasion, I baked up some of his favorites - 1 dozen mini cheesecakes in 3 varieties: lemon, raspberry swirl and pistachio/white chocolate. I think it makes a pretty cool flour arrangement (as my friend Elizabeth would say!) and a sweet way to mark our 8 year anniversary.

Daring Bakers Challenge - Cheesecakelets

Strawberry, Raspberry, Peanut Butter Cup Fudge Ripple, Turtle, Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, Key Lime, Chocolate Coconut Cream, Pumpkin, Oreo, Dutch Apple Caramel, Chocolate Tuxedo Cream, Tiramisu, Dulche de Leche, Chocolate Mousse, Vanilla Bean, Kahlua Cocoa Coffee, White Chocolate Raspberry....Have I hit a flavor that tempts you yet? What do these all have in common you may ask? Look no further than the Cheesecake Factory's Cheesecake Menu and you will find these and many other delicious, mouth-watering flavors.



When we last lived in NYC, we had the Little Pie Company right around the corner from us and we went through a phase where we hit that joint weekly for their cheesecake and a few other goodies. Problem was they were a small business at the time and after a few months, I started getting a complex that I was maybe going there a little bit too frequently....that their employees were starting to notice those extra bumps and curves I was packing thanks to their sweet treats, and so I decided to back off for a while (and head to the gym a little more often).



The one offer I would never turn down though was a lunch and slice of cheesecake at the Cheesecake Factory in Miami on one of the many monthly pit-stops I used to make there when I worked for Burger King's ad agency. I have many fond memories of dining there with my former colleagues Pat & Holly; we would usually spend a couple of hours there between early morning meetings at BK HQ and the jaunt to Miami International to catch our flight back to NYC dishing about our Clients and bemoaning their reactions to whatever it was that we were presenting that day. Nothing made tolerating even the worst Client meeting better than a slice of Vanilla Bean or Oreo Cheesecake.



I was so ecstatic when the April Daring Baker challenge was announced and low and behold, it was cheesecake! This is hands-down one of my favorite desserts and I will never refuse a slice when offered. (Even when it came on the heels of a meeting where I sampled about 20 different Whopper sandwiches as part of R&D -- true story!).



The other day I was walking past a restaurant in my neighborhood that proclaims it serves the "Best Cheesecake in Paris." They apparently even won an award for it. I have been steering clear of them since. In the meantime, I am happy to content myself with the recipe you'll find below.



The April 2009 challenge is hosted by Jenny from Jenny Bakes. She has chosen Abbey's Infamous Cheesecake as the challenge. I decided to reduce this down to cupcake form, or cheesecakelets, and made 4 varieties:
- Abbey's as it is published below which yields a nice creamy slightly lemon-flavored cheesecake
- A Pecan Caramel Variety (Pecan crust with caramel de sel de Guerande topping)
- A White Chocolate & Strawberry/Rose Petal Variety (white chocolate cheesecake topped with fresh strawberries and a strained strawberry/confit de rose petal sauce)
- A Triple Chocolate Variety (dark chocolate crust with a 2-layer cheesecake - milk chocolate and white chocolate topped with milk chocolate shavings).



Here is the recipe. You can make this as a regular size cheesecake or do as I did and render it into cheesecakelets. I halved the recipe and ended up with 12 regular-size cheesecakelets. Enjoy! And many thanks to Jenny for this awesome and so simple recipe!

Abbey's Infamous Cheesecake:

Crust:
2 cups / 180 g graham cracker crumbs (I used crushed Speculoos cookies)
1 stick / 4 oz butter, melted
2 tbsp. / 24 g sugar
1 tsp. vanilla extract

Cheesecake:
3 sticks of cream cheese, 8 oz each (total of 24 oz) room temperature (In Paris, you can find Philly cream cheese at specialty cheese stores or the American groceries. For this recipe, I used a mix of approximately 3/5 Mme. Loik fromage nature, 1/5 St. Moret and 1/5 creme fraiche. Next time I will definitely use the Philly cause nothing really compares!)
1 cup / 210 g sugar
3 large eggs
1 cup / 8 oz heavy cream
1 tbsp. lemon juice
1 tbsp. vanilla extract (or the innards of a vanilla bean)
1 tbsp liqueur, optional, but choose what will work well with your cheesecake

DIRECTIONS:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (Gas Mark 4 = 180C = Moderate heat). Begin to boil a large pot of water for the water bath.

2. Mix together the crust ingredients and press into your preferred pan (I used a lined cupcake tin). You can press the crust just into the bottom, or up the sides of the pan too - baker's choice. Set crust aside.

3. Combine cream cheese and sugar in the bowl of a stand-mixer (or in a large bowl if using a hand-mixer) and cream together until smooth. Add eggs, one at a time, fully incorporating each before adding the next. Make sure to scrape down the bowl in between each egg. Add heavy cream, vanilla, lemon juice, and alcohol and blend until smooth and creamy.

4. Pour batter into prepared crust and tap the pan on the counter a few times to bring all air bubbles to the surface. (If making cheesecakelets, you will want to fill each cupcake liner to just about the very top.) Place pan into a larger pan and pour boiling water into the larger pan until halfway up the side of the cheesecake pan. If cheesecake pan is not airtight, cover bottom securely with foil before adding water.

5. Bake 45 to 55 minutes (my cheesecakelets were ready in 21 minutes), until it is almost done - this can be hard to judge, but you're looking for the cake to hold together, but still have a lot of jiggle to it in the center. You don't want it to be completely firm at this stage. Close the oven door, turn the heat off, and let rest in the cooling oven for one hour. This lets the cake finish cooking and cool down gently enough so that it won't crack on the top. After one hour, remove cheesecake from oven and lift carefully out of water bath. Let it finish cooling on the counter, and then cover and put in the fridge to chill (You really do need to do this. I tried one about 2 hours after it came out of the oven and was not at all happy with the result. After letting them sit overnight in the fridge, they were excellent). Once fully chilled, it is ready to serve.



Little Miss Cupcake Varieties:
Pecan Caramel:
When you throw your cookies into the food processor add in about 1/2 cup of pecans. After the cheescakelets have chilled, top with homemade caramel sauce. Make it more savory by using salted butter or throw in some sel de Guerande - coarse sea salt.

White Chocolate & Strawberry/Rose Petal:
At Step 3 of the original recipe, melt about 100 grams of white chocolate with the cream. Let cool for a few minutes and then stir into the cheesecake filling ingredients. For the topping, slice strawberries, mix with some granulated sugar and allow to sit for a few hours in the fridge. Once cheesecakelets have chilled, top with sliced strawberries and then mix some of the juice that has accumulated in the bottom of the bowl with some rose petal jelly. Pour over tops.

Triple Chocolate:
Replace butter in original crust recipe above with about 100 grams melted dark chocolate. For the filling, mix all ingredients except for the cream and divide into two bowls. For the milk chocolate layer, add a few tbsps. cocoa powder to 1/2 cup cream and then mix into one bowl. Use this mixture to cover crust in pan half-way. For the white chocolate layer, repeat as above in White Chocolate & Strawberry/Rose Petal variety and pour this mixture over the milk chocolate layer. Once cheesecakes have cooled, use a carrot peel to make milk chocolate curls for decoration.



**To see more Daring Bakers' cheesecake creations, please visit our Flickr Group : Daring Bakers Look Good**