i made a blueberry cheesecake

I don't know why but I had been craving cheesecake for a little while. It's not something we have often during the year, and I think I've only made 3 or 4 times in my life. There's something a little daunting about it to me for some reason. I'm not sure if it's because I'm afraid it will crack down the middle while it cooks. Or if it's because you usually have to use a spring form pan to make it, and I have this nightmarish scene in my head of going to pick up the pan and the bottom completely falling out. But blueberries were on sale at the store (buy one get one free) so I decided to try my hand at making one last weekend.

I think it turned out pretty well for someone like me with the jitters. I used Tyler Florence's ultimate cheesecake recipe but changed the crust from a traditional graham cracker to more of a shortbread base since I don't think I can eat graham crackers.

It turned out shorter than I had anticipated, which was just fine with me. I think I used my larger spring form pan and if I had used my smaller one it would've been taller in the end. In hindsight, I think it justified the need for cutting wider slices. :)

Here's my recipe for the crust:

- 2 sticks of unsalted butter, room temperature
- 2 cups of flour
- 1 cup of sugar

Mix all of the ingredients together until it forms a dough consistency, and then press it along the bottom and slightly up the walls of the spring form pan. (I actually had some leftover so I just made a few little shortbread cookies with them.) Bake in the oven for about 15 minutes or until light brown.

I pretty much followed Tyler's recipe for the filling. For the blueberry topping, I added about 1/2 cup of water and increased the sugar to 1/2 cup and cooked it a lot longer so that a simple sugar would form with the blueberries which made it a little bit thicker.

I hate to sound like I'm bragging, but I have to say it was quite a delicious cheesecake! It was definitely not as difficult as I had anticipated it to be, although some water did seep into the foil that was wrapped around the pan (but I don't think that caused any damage).

The only disappointing part was forgetting that it would need to chill in the fridge for at least 4 hours, so we were kind of bummed that we had to wait until the next day to dig into it. But, as you can see, once we did it was quite rewarding! Tony took a couple of pieces in to work to thank a couple of his coworkers for their help on a project, and one guy who said he normally doesn't like cheesecake ate the whole piece without a complaint!

That, besides an empty plate, has to be the biggest compliment. :)

layered blueberry cake

I saw a recipe/article in a recent issue of the Rachael Ray magazine where the woman baked a cake in a large jelly roll pan so that it was really thin and only took about 15 minutes to bake. I decided to give it a try and brought it to work for a picnic lunch at work on Friday. I was a bit skeptical about the recipe because it only called for 1/2 a cup of flour and that just seemed way too low to me. Instead, I went with a cake recipe from the How to Cook Everything cookbook by Mark Bittman (you all know how much I heart this cookbook!) and I think it turned out great. Super easy to put together and the flavors are so refreshing for warm and sunny summer days.

Ingredients for the cake:

2 cups of flour
2 -1/4 tsps baking powder
4 eggs
1-1/4 sticks of butter (room temperature)
1 cup of sugar
¼ tsp almond extract
1 tsp vanilla extract
¾ cups of milk
½ tsp salt
1 pint of blueberries

Directions for the cake:

Beat the butter and sugar for a couple of minutes until it’s smooth, then add the eggs one at a time. Add the sugar, extracts, salt, and baking powder and mix well. Then alternate adding the flour and milk until it’s all blended together well. Add ½ of the blueberries, then pour it out into a buttered and floured jelly roll pan (I put a sheet of parchment paper on top of the pan which made it much easier to clean up later).

My batter didn’t reach all of the edges which was fine because I ended up trimming the edges anyway when I cut out the rectangles, and it made for good snacking. Hee hee. Oh and bake it in a 350 oven for 15-18 minutes (I started with 15 minutes but it wasn’t quite brown enough on top). Let it cool in the pan for a few minutes, and then cut it into rectangles. Transfer the rectangles to a cooling rack and let them completely cool before icing.

Icing ingredients:

1 – 8 oz. package of cream cheese (room temperature)
½ cup of prepared lemon curd (I like the Dickinson’s brand)
½ cup of sugar

Directions:

Blend all three ingredients until smooth. Then spread the love.

I stored the cake in my cake carrier with the lid on in the refrigerator overnight, and then let it thaw out to room temperature before we cut into it at lunch time (around 12:30 pm). The cake stayed nice and moist that way vs. the piece that I made for my husband that I put in the fridge without anything covering it. The cake got tougher overnight, but it was still yummy.

I can see using this technique of layering with different fillings in the future for other fun cake ideas. It really is pretty quick to put together from start to finish. Enjoy!

blueberry bread pudding

I stopped by the farmer's market near Harvard Yard after work today and picked up another crate of freshly picked blueberries, plus three ears of corn for Tony to enjoy tomorrow night. Dang stupid corn allergy! These look so yummy!

Last week, I bought a really long loaf of French bread that we only managed to eat half of. So I thought I'd try to figure out how to make bread pudding with the hardened loaf tonight. I Googled for a recipe and basically came up with this one by combining a couple of them and based on what I had on hand. It actually came out really good! :)

Here's a shot of what it looked like before I put it in the oven:

And what it looked like after. Not very pretty actually since the blueberries kind of exploded. But it tastes much better than it looks!