strawberry cheesecake

I was never a huge fan of cheesecake until I started making them myself. I was always dissatisfied with the crust, or the sweetness, or the texture. Store bought cheesecakes haven't got anything on homemade cheesecakes. It's practically a whole different desert. They're not too difficult to make. This is only my third cheesecake ever. Here's the recipe I used.

I had some strawberries in the fridge and was toying with the idea of incorporating fruit into my cheesecake as I had only ever made the plain vanilla cheesecake.

I used about 2 cups of fruit, mashed them with a potato masher and then used the blender to puree.


I prefer chocolate wafers to graham crust. Who doesn't want more chocolate in their lives? Plus the chocolate crust reminds me of my favorite part of dairy queen ice cream cakes. To make the crust, crush the cookies by hand or with a hand blender and add 4 tablespoons of melted butter.

Now comes the fun part. I don't own a springform pan or anything fancy so the cake went into that lovely round casserole dish. How to ensure it can be properly removed from said casserole dish? Your friend parchment paper saves the day.

Get a square of parchment paper bigger than your dish. Fold in half and the continue folding in on itself so you can make a circle with the right diameter for your pan, like so. Use the middle of the circle as your guide.


Then trim the paper with scissors along the top edge of your pan and voila!


Butter the pan before arranging the paper around it.



Parchment pan with strawberry puree lurking in background.

Back to the crust. Press the cookie/butter combo into the bottom and up the sides of the pan with your fingers. Careful not to leave any holes or your batter will spill out of the crust and we don't want that. Bake at 325 for 8 minutes.

This is 3/4 cup of strawberry puree and a package of cream cheese.

This is the finished batter. Tricks: use room-temp ingredients and don't put air into the batter, it's not about vigorous mixing, more of a folding action. Of course, if you have a mixer it will do the trick, but my arm is my mixer.

Pour the batter into your crusted pan and then it's time to get fancy! I dropped the other 3/4 cup of puree over the batter to make amazing patterns by running a knife around the blobs, all while imagining myself on ace of cakes.

Psychedelicious, man!

The prize, fresh out of the oven 1 hour 25 minutes later.

The morning after a good night's sleep in the fridge. This is when the casserole lid came in handy.

It barely cracked, booyeah!


This is by no means a healthy or low calorie desert, but I tend to give my cheesecakes as gifts so as not to overeat them! This cake tasted exactly like the cheesecake version of strawberry ice cream. While it cooked Rocky said " this is what heaven must smell like!"

Blueberry Muffins

Before I went on holiday I baked some delicious blueberry muffins since they were on sale 3 punnets for 5 bucks. There was nothing particularly healthy about these muffins, save for the berries; lots of butter, sugar, eggs, oh my! They came in handy on my maritime road trip and were very tasty warmed by the fire with coffee and baileys.

You can find the recipe on Martha Stewart's website. Very good and buttery.











I have certainly been enjoying my new apartment and the kitchen facilities: brand new appliances, pantry (with spice racks)! It's been super fun to warm up the house with visitors and new recipes. More to come for sure.

Why does my pantry have a window? I open this door and get inspired...

inspired by banana loaf

I rarely follow recipes. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love browsing recipes on the internet but I'll take them as inspiration and then jazz them up. In baking, I will never put the right kind/amount of sugar a recipe calls for, as I usually find them too sweet. Also, I often eat my baking for breakfast the next day, so a lesser quantity of sugar somehow makes me feel virtuous and healthy.

Inspiration for this recipe came from the Coconut Lover's Cookbook. Originally called Orange Coconut Banana Bread, I didn't add any oranges (didn't have any) and so I substituted with chopped dried black cherries and a couple of squares of 70% dark chocolate, also chopped. Decadent!

1 1/2 c flour
1/2 c grated coconut
1/2 chopped nuts (I used almonds--recipe says walnuts)
1/4 t baking powder
3/4 c sweetener (I used 1/4 c of agave syrup and 1/4 c raw cane sugar)
pinch of salt
1/4 c coconut milk ( I used almond milk)
2 large eggs (I used 1 egg and 1 egg replacement)
1 1/2 c mashed ripe bananas (about 3)
1 1/2 T grated orange rind
1/4 c orange juice concentrate (I added butter instead!!!)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Combine all dry ingredients. Add all the wet ingredients and fruit. Mix until just moist. Pour batter into 8 1/2 x 4 1/2 inch greased loaf pan. Bake for 55 -60 minutes or until knife inserted into center of cake comes out clean.

Chopped almonds. Nutty goodness.

This is the part where a fine line is drawn between virtue and decadence.


Banana turd and dry ingredients.

About to get baked. Oh yeah.

Closeup at breakfast the morning after.

Orange got thrown into the equation finally. I adore blood oranges.

B-day Food Times

It was my birthday over the weekend and of course lots of food was consumed for the occasion. My sister surprised me by traveling from Halifax to visit me and celebrate. Good times were had by all. Lots of candy and chocolate always help.

This is what 31 looks like. Yeah, not too happy. This was pre-sister surprise...I was a lot happier a few hours later.

I still had (and have) lots of school work to do, so it was decided that my sister and friends would do the cooking for me. Sweet. I went to the Mile End library and worked on my paper, then when it closed I went to Cagibi for coffee/work.

I requested my beet cake recipe and my wish was granted. The beet cake was quite the ordeal and as a result of hilariousness and distraction I now have enough leftover batter for 2 more cakes. My sister, who was "in charge" of the cake misread the instructions and tripled the amount of liquid in the recipe. We also spent ages boiling the beets and mincing them, then sticking them in the blender to puree. By the end of all this, I had joined in the cooking game and we were all sick of dealing with the beets. So all the beets, oh roughly a whole blender full, also went into the batter, although the recipe called for 3/4 cup. Needless to say there was a lot of re-jigging of the recipe. I used my critical thinking skills and did some stuff. I emptied about 1/3 of the batter into tupperware for future use/re-jigging. Then we added more of everything except liquid, and kept tasting it until we were satisfied. Finally we threw it into the oven and hoped for the best. I knew if all else failed, if I made buttercream icing it would make even the worst cooking fiasco taste acceptable. We eagerly awaited the results.


The beet cake batter BEFORE we realized our mistakes.

Clearly not impressed with the execution of this recipe.

In the meantime, my dinner was being made.
Sauteing portobello shrooms, leeks and onion for the risotto.

Goofing around...

Tada! My delicious birthday meal. Cornmeal and sweet chili crusted cod, black sesame crusted tuna, amazing herb and mushroom risotto and my salad. So good. This meal involved a lot of butter, which is perfect for those special occasions.

As for the cake, it turned out great!

Here it is in the process of getting iced. As I mentioned, buttercream icing saved the day. It was sweet and rich, just like I like my men icing. Butter, icing sugar, cocoa, shredded coconut, vanilla, almond milk. Delicious! Could have used a bit more cocoa though.

Mmmm...double layers....drooooool.

Icing the cake was almost as good as eating it.

I ate some for breakfast the next day.