Soufflé Cheesecake

From rich creamy ones to non baked types, I love all sorts of cheesecakes, but this weekend I had a sudden craving for this very Japanesy soft cheesecake, Soufflé Cheesecake. ;)

As the name suggests, this cheesecake is very light like a soufflé and quite literally melts in your mouth as you eat. I had a slice in the evening after eating a lot of pizzas (again!). Although I was very full I destroyed the cheesecake with no problem. It's such a light cake that I could eat two, three slices easily!

To make this soufflé type cheesecake requires bit more than just keep adding the ingredients and bake (Don't get me wrong, The WOS cheesecake is still one of the best cheesecakes too!).

There are two things to remember.

One, beat the egg whites just to the right point. We want soft peak. If the egg white is not beaten enough then the cake will not have nice light texture and will lack the height. However, if the egg white is beaten too much, it will become difficult to fold in.
Two, steam bake on a low heat. Make sure that the tray always has water in it. If the water gets low during the bake, add more boiling water.

I like to keep mine as light as possible, but you can add biscuit base to give it a bit of crunch. ;)

Ingredients

Cream cheese 250g

Milk 250g

Egg 5

Sugar 100g

Plain flour 50g

Lemon 1

1. Preheat the oven to 180ºc with a tray filled with hot water.

2. Heat up cream cheese, milk and half the sugar on a low heat until they are combined well. Set aside to cool down.

3. Separate the eggs. Add egg yolks into the cream cheese mixture and mix well.

4. Sift flour into 3. Fold.

5. In a separate bowl beat egg whites with the remaining sugar and juice of lemon to soft peak.

6. Add 1/3 of beaten egg whites into 4. Fold gently until it's mixed in well. Fold another 1/3 of egg whites and mix well. Repeat the same process with the remaining egg whites.

7. Pour the mixture into a greased and lined tin. Smooth the surface.

8. Turn the oven down to 160ºc. Put the tin on the water filled tray and bake for 60 minutes (if the top starts to get too dark, cover with foil).

9. When the cake is baked leave it to cool in the oven before taking it out of the tin. Chill in the fridge.

Avocado 'Cheese'cake

As I promised on my previous post, I'll share the recipe for the healthy 'cheese'cake that I made on Father's day.

So..., the secret ingredients were...'Avocado' and 'Yoghurt'. It might sound weird but believe me, it works.

First, you start with draining the water of the yoghurt a day before. Line a colander with kitchen towel and place it in a bowl. Pour the yoghurt on top of kitchen towel. Leave it in the fridge for overnight. Following day you'll see water in the bowl and end up with thickened yoghurt which is going to be the alternative to cream cheese.

Then, puree an avocado really smoothly, mix it with the yoghurt. I didn't want to add any sugar so I added honey instead, which is a great substitute for sugar!

Now, we're almost there! Add gelatin to set, pour the mixture into cups and chill for at least a few hours.

This fake cheesecake tasted so good that I ate three portions! It's a great healthy dessert for little people too. :D (Not for babies under 12 months though, because of honey....) I think this avocado dessert is going to appear a lot during summer. :D

These are the basic ingredients. Add whatever you like to spice it up!

Avocado 1

Yoghurt 500g

Honey 20g (It was sweet enough for me but adjust for your liking)

Gelatine leave 4

Father's Day cake & dessert

It was Father's Day yesterday. Did everyone remember to send a big love to your dad or dads? I made Rum & Fruit cake for my dad and dad-in-law, who were both away this Sunday but the cakes were safely sent to them;)

I started the preparation for the fruit cake a little in advance by soaking the mixed dried fruits in rum for a month. I also made a jar of honey and rum soaked walnuts to put in the cake. Both the fruits and nuts were added to a nice moist butter cake along with a fair amount of rum... I added quite a bit of rum in order to make the cake last longer because I was sending it to my dad in Japan which my dad received a day before Father's Day. Yay!

And there was another dad who I made a Father's day treat for..., yes... on behalf of Lana..., it's my hubby and the coolest dad for Lana, Andy! I made a special cheesecake for him (also me and Lana). But it's not a usual cheesecake. It was a sugar-free, flour-less cheesecake. See? I care about our 'daddy's health', so went for a healthy option. ;D

Not only did the cheesecake have no sugar nor flour, it actually had no cream cheese nor cream! However, it tasted like and as creamy as those high calorie ones! I was well impressed!

I'll share the secret ingredients and the recipe on my next post... (so watch this space! ;D)

With Lana's footprint. :) This is how I sent the cake to Japan.

お父さん、いつもありがとう。 

Maple Cheesecake

Since Andy started a new contract, I've been baking cake most of the Sundays for Andy to take it to the office on following Monday, which is great for me because...I get to bake more!
So far, people at the office have been giving me very nice comments (someone even ordered my ginger cake! ;D).

This week I made one of my classics with a little twist, Maple Cheesecake. I used maple biscuits as the base, and added maple syrup in the cheesecake filling. It's a bit different from the ordinary lemony cheesecake, but it tastes richer and deeper with the maple.

The cheesecake safely made it to Andy's work and about 11am I received a text from Andy, saying 'cheesecake is gone.'... Hopefully that was a good sugar supply for a Monday morning... :)

More cheesecake? ;D
Vanilla Cheesecake
Caramel Cheesecake with hazelnuts
The WOS Cheesecake

Easter Monday & Joint birthday party

As well as it was Lana's birthday yesterday, it was Easter Monday and we had an afternoon joint birthday party for Lana, Steve and me.

So..., there were three cakes on the table, what a treat! Of course, I started (oh, Lana did too!) with a slice of cake...

My birthday cake was made by my mum-in-law. It was a very pretty iced cake with lemon curd. Umm, yum yum, thank you, Chris!

I made sugar free non baked cheese cakes for Steve. Since it was Easter, I used Easter eggs as a cup and put bunnies and eggs on top.

Andy wanted to make vegetarian sausage rolls so I made a sheet of puff pastry too... I love making puff pastry. It's very therapeutic and much more rewarding when you see a nice rise and flaky pastry come out of the oven. ;D

Considering we had a bit of hectic days beforehand, I'm very pleased that we managed to have a lovely afternoon. :)

Happy Birthday to Chris

It was my mum-in-law, Chris's birthday two days ago, and we had her birthday meal yesterday.

I made a cheese dome cake. I started decorating the cake with Maltesers chocolate because I knew she would love it. As I was putting the Maltesers, the cake started to look like a face, so I decided to turn it into a face, which ended up looking a bit funny...

Surprisingly, Chris had made a dome cake for dessert too! What a coincident! Hers was ice cream cake, hummm, that was very nice.. ;D

Once again, Happy Birthday to Chris! :D

Oh, by the way, the face is not her face...

Valentine's Day dessert

For the Valentine's day dinner, Andy made prawn cocktail and avocado salad for starter, and monk fish and scallop risotto for main. They were super tasty;)

For dessert, I made lime cheese cake with crushed macaroon and sugared strawberries.

The whole full course dinner experience at home was great. I felt much more comfortable than going to a posh restaurant. And the best thing is I was given a 'hungry monkey' size dish. You don't get that much food in a posh place, do you!

Vanilla cheesecake

This weekend we were invited to Tinny's new place so I made a big vanilla cheesecake. I love both making and eating a cheesecake. ;)

Although I had a slight problem when I was making this cake (my baking tin's bottom was too loose that when I pour the cream cheese mixture, it started to ooze out...), it came out ok.

We had it while everyone (except sleepy me...) was playing poker. I was a nice midnight treat before bed. :D

Thanks to Tinny for a lovely time and letting us stay. ;)

Here is how to bake this baked cheesecake...
The World of Sweets: New York Cheesecake

Andy's birthday cake... 2011

Haaapy biiirtthday to yooou, haaaapy biiirthday to yooou, haaaapy biiirthday dear Andy, haaapy biiirthday to yooou...!!

It was Andy's birthday yesterday. I made a caramel cheesecake with caramelised hazelnuts sponge and vanilla cream for my awesome hubby:)

I prepared the cake day before and couldn't wait to show it to him when I woke up... so, we had the cake for breakfast. ;D Nom nom nom...., nom nom nom..., nom nom nom...happy birthday Andy...

And..., it wasn't long before the whole cake disappeared...

I like birthdays. Great excuse to have cake for breakfast:)

Once again, happy birthday to Andy. xxx

1st Anniversary!

Hello everyone, it's been a while since my last post... it's not that I've been lazy to blog..., but there have been some exciting things happening with me and The World of Sweets, so I've been a bit all over the place...
Anyway, I will let you know what those news are very soon, but today I'm going to share with you the bits of the most fiery night of the year..., November 5th!

Yes, It's Bonfire Night! But not only that..., it's our wedding anniversary;) And yes of course...., celebration has to come with cake... not only one, nor two, nor three but four cake! I'm such a lucky girl to have excellent bakers around me:)

 Chris, my mum-in-law and an amazing baker, made us a rainbow cake coated with American icing (yum yum..) and colourful hearts. Seriously..., that was an art. Not only was it tasty but also nice to look at. ;D She also made cupcakes which were displayed with some sparklers, what a pretty idea for bonfire night:) Thanks to Chris for making my rainbow wedding cake come true;)

Andy's aunt, Carol brought us a plum and almond pie, which was also very nice. The combination of marzipan-like-taste almond filling, sour sweet plum, and crusty pastry was so good that I had it again on the following morning for breakfast... hummm, yum yum yum... Thank you, Carol;)

And..., this was my cake...
It's a... well..., let's call it a "dome cake". It's a dome shaped sponge cake filled with non-baked cheese cake and coated with more cream!! Because it was our anniversary I wanted to make a cake that looks little bit more special and also is full of MY favourite stuff such as cream cheese and sponge cake... (Oh, and of course I knew that Andy liked that cheesecake filling too!)  All in all, I was very please with the result;)

Finally, thanks very much to Steve for organising such an amazing night with lots of foods and fire works. It was awesome!

Oh and of course..., to my dear husband, Andy... Happy Anniversary! Thank you for being a part of my life and making me smile everyday...xxx :D

The famous WOS Cheesecake

Hooooo Laaaa Laaaaaaa, do you remember the New York style cheesecake I made a little while ago (see my post). These cheesecakes are so good that their taste is beyond words!!! Any words I could use to describe it would pale in comparison to what it was really like! I'm usually modest (yes..., I am...) but when it comes to these indescribably tasty cheesecakes, I just want to the whole world to taste it. I might start selling them, and I'm not even joking...

This time, I made two different ones. One with berries. The berries add a fresh juiciness to the rich cheesecake, which make you easily finish the whole cake with one go!

The other one is hazelnut liquor. A couple of drops of the liquor is enough to give a hint of nutty flavour, which make the already-rich cake even richer:) This one tastes a little more grown-up.

On top of their amazing taste, they are a perfect size for two (or one hungry monkey) since they are 10 cm in diameter.

Aaah, my cheesecake shop might come to your town in the near future...

One of the best Cheesecake ever!

Today, I was so determined to make this New York cheesecake (in fact, it was decided last night. See my digestive cookie preparation!)

Carefully design and planed the recipe in my head, I went in the kitchen and started. Everything had gone as I planed before a catastrophe happened at only a few steps away from the end...

I took out the cake from the oven. Then when I was taking the tin off the cake, my hands slipped. Next thing I saw... my lovely cake was up side down...  My mind couldn't take it in... then gradually it came to me... "NOOOO! SH*****T!" But, strangely I felt... sort of ok..., and took a deep breath, started making another one without no messing up...

Aaaanyway, take two went smoother than ever thanks to the failure from earlier. Indeed, this cheesecake is the best I ever tasted! I'm really glad that I didn't give up...

Today I learned that a strong determination is the key to success!

Ingredients;

*Base (15cm deep cake tin)

Digestive cookies 80g

Sugar 25g

Butter 50g

*Filling

Cream cheese 250g

Single cream 100g

Sugar 50g

Egg 1

Egg yolk 1

Corn flour 1 1/2 tbsp

Lemon juice 1/2 tsp

Vanilla extract 1/2 tsp

1. Put digestive cookies and sugar in a plastic bag. Smash them finely.

2. Melt butter and put it into 1. Mix well.

3. Place 2 on the bottom of a cake tin evenly. Bake 2 in the pre-heated oven (180º) until it's golden. Cool it down.

4. Meanwhile prepare the filling.

5.Mix cream cheese, sugar, lemon juice and vanilla extract together.

6. Add egg and egg yolk into 6. Mix well.

7. Pour single cream into 6. Mix well.

8. Add corn flour into 7. Mix well.

9. Pour the filling mixture on the base.

10. Bake in the oven (180º) for 45 minutes. When the top of the cake starts to get brown cover it with foil.

11. When the cake it baked, turn the oven off and leave the cake in the oven for another 30 minutes.

12. Take out the cake from the oven. Let it rest in the fridge at least a couple of hours before serving.

New York Cheesecake

Christmas highlights

I've solely enjoyed the festive season's baking and tasting all sorts of Christmas treats;) Here is my highlights!

For the porters I made chocolate cupcakes. With cocoa powder and white chocolate, they should be a nice warm up sugar supply. I also made a panettone. I used the giant cupcake mould to shape the bread, and it came out like a.... hat of some kind...., but it had a very nice Christmassy taste;)

We visited Andy's mum and dad over the Christmas.
On Christmas Eve, we had cheese raclette and pancake for dessert. It was a great fun to make pancakes on the table:)





Moving on to Christmas day, following the tradition, Christmas pudding was lit up nicely. Home-made custard and sherry trifle with extra thick cream and Steve's cheese cake made my stomach more than full...

After a little rest on Boxing day.....,


On the bank holiday Monday, Andy's uncle, aunt and cousins came around to Andy's parents' house. There were 14 people in the house! Thanks to the well-organised buffet by Chris and Pete, we enjoyed a nice dinner. And of course..., desserts;) cupcake, apple tart, cheesecake, trifle....
I couldn't choose one, so I tasted them all.... so full, so good...

Key lime cheesecake

Andy got us those pretty dessert from M&S.

They might look tiny for greedy monkeys, but the sugary biscuit base, the rich cheese cake middle, and refreshing lime jelly was definitely a satisfaction:)

Humm, I have to say M&S does good desserts... yummy yummy....

Leftover hard rock cakes

Whiteorangecreamcheese...

Racheal brought us suger supply at work. Those were the ones that unfortunately (to me fortunately) left by the monkeys who care about their calorie intake, so of course, I volunteered to take them back home. I kept them in the fridge to enjoy after dinner.

When I got them out from the fridge and put a fork in... it was blocked....

I was like 'Nooo"... my lovey soft sponge's gone rock... the cream wasn't really creamy anymore.. more like butter... though the orage jelly top was sort of ... ok...

They still tasted like cake though and actually quite a nice treat after a hard day.

Next time I will make sure just to eat them immediately without putting them in the fridge.

U hu! hu! cheesecake from Pavilion in Kuala Lumpur

Fluffy cheesecake! My house mate got these sweeties from Pavilion in KL.

OK..., they look bit messy but tasted so sweet and nice. My favourite was the strawberry one in the middle.

They are small and the texture is quite light, but the cheeseness and the topping is very satisfying. Even a greedy monkey like me was happy after two cups;)