Tasty Thursday - raspberry / strawberry mini cheesecakes

Here's my first Tasty Thursday blog hop recipe contribution. If you'd like to go find more head to the how to mommy and link up!

As we have had the fortune of doing in the past, we spent Canada Day with some dear friends of ours. It was a potluck and as luck would have it Toby and our host were speaking on the phone before anyone else had confirmed. What could we bring? Toby's response - we'll bring the desserts. (Oh and just so you know, our hosts have an awesome blog themselves over here lots of lovely recipes and such)

For my US friends, especially the one who asked what Canada Day was!, like US Independence Day, Canada Day is a day to celebrate our becoming a nation with the requisite ceremonial blowing up of things and also by LOADS of red and white.

Q says Happy Canada Day!

But this is about the desserts...

I was thinking of a recent twitter conversation I had with @omakase_ninja about how "smaller" treats were better: his logic, based on an article we were reading was that you could eat more and not feel guilty; my logic was that you could try different flavours.

This (plus two eggs) will be cheesecake

So there you were. From those innocent remarks I went off in search of a mini cheesecake recipe - thanks to a recent Costco expedition we had loads of cream cheese in the fridge. What I found was a nifty blog (that's been added to my list of places to go spend some time...when I have any) called Rainy Days and Sundays (LINK) and a posting from 2007 about mini cheesecakes. Armed with that info, and the link there to a Food Network recipe, off I went.

So changes I made - no chocolate wafers here but I had some left over graham cracker crumbs so used that instead. A little less sugar too because I think graham cracker crumbs are pretty sweet, and in all honesty I've never had anyone complain that a dessert I made wasn't "sweet enough."

Like the blogger, I didn't use orange zest, opting for the more universal vanilla. You see I wanted to use raspberries on some, strawberries on others. Cherries were also considered but decided against for no better reason than I had no cherry jam. Different flavours means less guilt in having more than one right? Oh and I made a double batch of the Food Network recipe as I was aiming for 24 mini cheesecakes (the size of my mini cheesecake pan). I ended up with 22.

So here's the recipe with my modifications.
Tools: mini muffin pan and a baking sheet with a rim.

2/3 cup graham cracker crumbs
1/4 cup butter, melted
1/2 cup ricotta cheese
4 ounces cream cheese
1/3 cup sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 eggs

(okay, I REALLY wish recipes would just all go by weight of ingredients that are larger than a tablespoon but that's a whole other vent)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. (yep, I use C for the weather, kgs for my weight, cms for my height and F for baking!)

Mix the graham cracker crumbs and the melted butter. Spray the mini muffin pan liberally with baking spray or use your favourite grease-type-product. I used spray.

Portion out the crumbs to fill the mini muffin cups. Again, I was comfortable with the volume in 22 (the other two I put some water in when baking - not sure where I picked that info up from but there you go).

Press the crumbs down firmly. I found that using a shot glass (well, whisky snifter actually) with parchment paper wrapped 'round the bottom worked great. Put the pan in the oven for about 5 minutes to set the crusts. NOTE be sure the crusts are cool before adding the filling!

In a food processor combine the ricotta, cream cheese, sugar, vanilla and eggs. Blend until smooth. When you think you're done, add 10 seconds to be sure. I even put the stuff through a sieve before proceeding. You don't want lumps.












Put the mini muffin pan on the baking sheet with the rim. My pan has 24 spots and so this worked beautifully. If you're doing 12 then a smaller baking dish should work. Pour the filling into a measuring cup or something similar (a vessel with a spout). Portion out the filling.

Right before it goes in the oven add enough water onto the baking sheet to come halfway up the sides of the mini muffin pan. Or, forget about reading that like I did and just make sure there's enough water to cover the sheet and not spill when moving it from the counter to the oven.

Bake for 25 minutes. Put the mini muffin pan on a rack to cool for about 30 minutes then in the freezer for another 15. I used a small offset spatula to loosen the cheesecakes from the pan. They popped out and I put them in little red and white paper cups.

Just before service I topped each with a bit of jam and some fruit. They were a HUGE hit, especially with the kids but they were very fiddly to make. I'll definitely do them again when the presentation matters but not as an everyday kind of dessert.

found a place for the cherries too

EASTER 2011

Yes, I know it’s the end of June.

I was talking to some friends about Easter at my mom and dad’s place and I figured that as there might not be another one (at least not at that house) I really ought to do a post about it even though it’s a couple of months late.

Yes, my mother has an Easter Tree

I think my mom divides the year into Christmas, Christmas prep, Easter, Easter prep and Hallowe’en (Dad's in charge of the Hallowe'en prep). To say she loves the holidays would be a bit of an understatement I think. But Easter at their house is something else. I really don’t remember how it started, or when. I have some vague memories of my brother and I hunting around the house we grew up in but it was nothing like what goes on today.

It must have been sometime while I was in high school and my cousins, who are all years younger than my brother and I, were all wee ones. Start adding some friends of mom and dad’s who didn’t have other places to go on Easter, and then some friends who’d come by before or after their own family obligations. Add some of my brother’s friends, then some of ours. Then throw in everyone’s kids now and it’s a bit crazy. I think at its apex there were easily 150 plus people through the house on Easter Sunday. It’s gone down a bit to a more manageable 60-70 or so with about an even split between adults and kids I think. 

When I send out our email invite to our friends I always include something along the lines of “Easter Egg Hunt – so long as you define “egg” as chocolate.” Anyway, back to being in high school. I remember waking up at 6 a.m. to help Dad sort out the chocolate. We would have spent Friday and Saturday labelling all of it and then a couple of hours on Sunday planting it all around the yard, cars, window ledges, bird feeder, tree etc. Yep, you read that right. LABELLED. Kids have to find 12-14 pieces of chocolate. Adults get 6-8. There’s no way to actually HIDE 800+ pieces of chocolate so it isn’t that you have to find any 14 pieces of chocolate. You have to find YOUR 14 pieces.

 

We’ve had Easter in the snow (actually my third favourite kind of Easter) and Easter in the rain (not as bad as it sounds but not ideal). We’ve had cold and crisp Easters (my second favourite kind) and we’ve had blazingly hot Easter (the absolute WORST kind of Easter – everything melts. It’s the only time we actually didn’t place anything and just handed out bags of chocolate. No fun at all). And, more often than not, we’ve had Easters like this year – a little cool, a little overcast, but nice enough to eat outside. My favourite kind – perfect.

Hunting for chocolate

Getting lunch ready

Hanging with Dad

Q and Uncle George

This year was obviously also Q’s first Easter. He was a champ. He got passed around from family member to friend and on again. He maintained his standing as the world’s easiest baby by hardly fussing at all and sleeping in his stroller in the backyard.