Mmm, cheeeeeesecake
Apr. 12th, 2009 08:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
croikSo for almost every major holiday we get together with my dad's side of the family (he's one of five siblings), and we rotate from house to house. Now that TK and I have a place, our hat is in the ring and we volunteered to host Easter dinner. Two of the families couldn't make it so it was a smaller group than usual, but that didn't stop us from going all out!!
Easter-color cheesecakes!!
I dunno if you've ever seen green and pink cheesecakes before (I hadn't until trying out the recipes for the first time yesterday) but they were deliiicious. The green is Mint, and the pink is Pink Lemonade. None of our family had ever heard of these flavors in cheesecake before, so I feel like we generated some good dessert buzz! More interesting than the usual cherry squares and vanilla ice cream, anyway.
If you want to make your friends or family raise an eyebrow, here's the recipe I used, taken by Mary Crownover's book I Love Cheesecake (which I happily recommend).
Lemon cookie crust
18 lemon sandwhich cookies, fillings intact (I used Golden Oreos which worked fine. Normal Oreos for the mint)
5 tablespoons butter, melted.
Crush the cookies into crumbs, add butter, mix well. Spread across the bottom of your greased, 9 inch cheesecake pan.
Filling
32 ounces cream cheese
1 cup sugar
3 tablespoons cornstarch
4 large eggs
*6 ounces frozen concentrated pink lemonade, thawed
*2 teaspoons lemon extract
*1 drop red food coloring (I used 3 for extra pinkness)
This makes for a VERY strong lemon taste. Everyone in my family liked it (or at least said they did!) but you can probably cut back if you want something a bit more subtle.
For the mint, subtitute the lemon stuffs for 1/2 cup creme de menthe, 2 teaspons vanilla extract, and green food coloring. I used non-alcoholic mint syrup. Unlike the lemon the mint was very subtle, but it left a cool aftertaste which made it pretty good.
Cooking
Beat cream cheese, sugar, and cornstarch until smooth. Add eggs one at a time, mixing in between. Stir in the rest of the ingredients and pour into your pan. Bake at 350 for 15 minutes, and then at 200 for 2 hours. The recipe also recommends letting the cake stay in the over for another 2 hours with the heat off, and then chilling it overnight.
Voila! Holiday-colored cheesecakes.
This book has a ton of other really interesting recipes I'm interested to try, like orange and pumpking and peanut butter mm mmm mmmmmm. Though you can probably take the basic recipe above and just mix in different juices and extracts (I'm kind of tempted to try kiwi-strawberry cheesecake. Or even more fabulous: blue moon cheesecake. MMMMMMMMMMMMM!!)
Tomorrow's my birthday (omg spinster) and I'm gonna spend it finishing my book! Wish me luck!
Easter-color cheesecakes!!
I dunno if you've ever seen green and pink cheesecakes before (I hadn't until trying out the recipes for the first time yesterday) but they were deliiicious. The green is Mint, and the pink is Pink Lemonade. None of our family had ever heard of these flavors in cheesecake before, so I feel like we generated some good dessert buzz! More interesting than the usual cherry squares and vanilla ice cream, anyway.
If you want to make your friends or family raise an eyebrow, here's the recipe I used, taken by Mary Crownover's book I Love Cheesecake (which I happily recommend).
Lemon cookie crust
18 lemon sandwhich cookies, fillings intact (I used Golden Oreos which worked fine. Normal Oreos for the mint)
5 tablespoons butter, melted.
Crush the cookies into crumbs, add butter, mix well. Spread across the bottom of your greased, 9 inch cheesecake pan.
Filling
32 ounces cream cheese
1 cup sugar
3 tablespoons cornstarch
4 large eggs
*6 ounces frozen concentrated pink lemonade, thawed
*2 teaspoons lemon extract
*1 drop red food coloring (I used 3 for extra pinkness)
This makes for a VERY strong lemon taste. Everyone in my family liked it (or at least said they did!) but you can probably cut back if you want something a bit more subtle.
For the mint, subtitute the lemon stuffs for 1/2 cup creme de menthe, 2 teaspons vanilla extract, and green food coloring. I used non-alcoholic mint syrup. Unlike the lemon the mint was very subtle, but it left a cool aftertaste which made it pretty good.
Cooking
Beat cream cheese, sugar, and cornstarch until smooth. Add eggs one at a time, mixing in between. Stir in the rest of the ingredients and pour into your pan. Bake at 350 for 15 minutes, and then at 200 for 2 hours. The recipe also recommends letting the cake stay in the over for another 2 hours with the heat off, and then chilling it overnight.
Voila! Holiday-colored cheesecakes.
This book has a ton of other really interesting recipes I'm interested to try, like orange and pumpking and peanut butter mm mmm mmmmmm. Though you can probably take the basic recipe above and just mix in different juices and extracts (I'm kind of tempted to try kiwi-strawberry cheesecake. Or even more fabulous: blue moon cheesecake. MMMMMMMMMMMMM!!)
Tomorrow's my birthday (omg spinster) and I'm gonna spend it finishing my book! Wish me luck!
