Blackberry and cream cheese Swiss roll

More blackberries and another Swiss roll! (Hum? Am I addicted to Swiss rolls? My last Swiss roll was only a few weeks ago, was it?)

This time I added blackberry jam in the sponge to make it taste "super blackberry". ;D And of course, there is blackberry jam in side along with cream cheese icing... Hummm, what a combo!

They were already in the "Sooo goood" territory as is but they went extra level when I froze them. Oh man! I easily downed three pieces after a massive pasta meal...

Even my top taster Andy said "It's a little piece of Heaven." Yum yum yum, life is not bad... :)

Bagels & Rolls for sleep over

Last weekend we had a sleep over with the Greenway at our house. We decided that each one of us would arrange their own food so that everyone got what they wanted for dinner. So..., Boys had Chinese..., Greenway girls had pizza and I...bagels...(yes, it was dinner, not brekki...)

I baked some bagels and also some rolls for the following morning breakfast... (...? however...., there were only a couple of rolls left in the morning... hum, I must have kept eating them in the night...)

Since it was "Fish Friday", I did smoke salmon and cream cheese bagels. I love it, I love it, I love it... As far as I remember I eat at least three of them, maybe four... it was that good. ... salmon and cream cheese... I can't get enough of it...

By the way, the photo of smoke salmon bagel was taken by Brian. Look! how much better his picture is than mine, and he used our camera too! That's the difference between a "Pro" and a "Monkey"... Thanks, Brian. :D

The weekend was great fun. Thank you, Brian, Mahalia, and Skyla. ;)

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

Apple & Cinnamon cheese cake

There were apples and cream cheese that had been sitting and looking at me every time I open the fridge..., so I came up with this recipe to finally use them up. ("Fridge clearing cake" that's what I'm going to call it!..;D).

After having left the cake in the fridge to chill, it got very moist and the taste of apple and cinnamon seems to have really sunk in. It was like having apple pie and cheese cake at the same time in my mouth... yum yum....

Although it's a sort of cheese cake, it's not as cheesy as normal cheese cake like my New York cheese cake. In fact, it's more like in between cheese cake and pound cake.

I cut the cake into small square pieces and had them with a nice milky cup of tea... Hummm, "one more piece" led to another and another, and before I knew the cake was gone... Hummm, it was... bit too good....

Ingredients:

Plain flour 150g

Baking powder 1 tsp

Salt pinch

Cinnamon powder 1/2 tsp

Cream cheese 300g

Brown sugar 15g

Egg 2

Apple (grated) 2

Honey 2 tbsp

1. Grate apples.Preheat the oven to 180ºc. Sift flour, baking powder, salt and cinnamon together.

2. In a bowl, beat cream cheese and sugar together until it's fluffy.

3. Add eggs into 2 one at a time and mix well.

4. Mix grated apple and honey into 3.

5. Fold flour mixture into 4.

6. Pour the mixture into a cake tin. Bake in the preheated oven (180ºc) for 40-45 minutes.

Rogaliki

Rogaliki is a croissant-like shaped polish cookie filled with jam. These cookies are a great fun to make and look pretty;)

What is unique about Rogaliki is that it has cream cheese in the dough, which makes the cookie light and flaky as well as tastes a little sour. Although apricot jam seems to be the most popular filling, we can put any jams we like... This time I put apricot and my plum jam (have you seen my jam?).

It looks complicated to shape the cookies, but it's not too difficult. See my drawing here! Hopefully, that would make your job easier ;D

As there isn't much sugar in the dough, this cookie is quite versatile... Add sweet jam, caramel sauce, chocolate spread to have them as tea time treat, or try something savoury such as cheese or nuts for snacks with drinks...

To see the recipe, visit The World of Sweets Recipes, Poland.

Sugar free cupcake

Yesterday, we were invited to Steve's for BBQ and I brought the cupcake family with us...

This time they were sugar free. Although I'm still experimenting the sugar free cake recipes and these weren't  quite 100% "THE" one yet, I think (or at least I want to think...) it is getting closer to what I want.

So..., here is how they were this time...

My :-) points..., the cakes were risen perfectly. The taste of mixed spices did work. The cherry nose gave a nice accent.
My :-( points..., the texture was still not as moist as I want. It could have been sweeter...

Just to share my experimental recipe...

Ingredients;

Flour 100g

Artificial sweetener 1/2 cup

Butter 50g

Cream cheese 50g

Egg 2

Baking powder 1 tsp

Mixed spice 1/2 tsp

Vanilla extract 1 tsp

---

Cream cheese and sweetener (For decoration)

1. Pre heat the oven to 180ºc. Cream butter, sweetener and cream cheese together.

2. Add eggs and vanilla extract into 1, and mix well.

3. Sift flour, baking powder, and mixed spices into 2. Fold in.

4. Pour the mixture into cupcake moulds. Put cherry in the middle. Bake in the preheated oven (180ºc) for 30 minutes.

5. Mix cream cheese and sweetener and decorate the cupcakes as you like....

Well, well, well..., I hope I will get the "Wow" moment with my sugar free recipes... Until then, my experiment continues...

PS. Steve... Thank you for the lovely Sunday BBQ... ;)

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