Not Quite My Jam

When the frustration of untreated roads in a snowstorm that everyone knew was coming leads to a 3 hour commute home, what better activity is there than baking? Clearly I wasn't going to make it to the supermarket for ingredients so I was left foraging in my pantry to bake with whatever I had on hand. After a few false starts due to lack of ingredients, I found a recipe I could make: Raspberry Pecan Thumbprints. I've never actually made thumbprint cookies but they always look very pretty so I've been wanting to try it for a while. This recipe comes from the old classic, the Favorite Brand Name Bake Sale Cookbook. I didn't notice what the brand name ingredient was though. Whoops.  I set to work softening my butter while I gathered the rest of my ingredients...and realized that I didn't have pecans. Oops. Now they're Raspberry Walnut Thumbprints! I'm still amazed that I had raspberry jam but no pecans!

Moving on, I creamed up the butter, added the brown sugar and the vanilla, and then pondered if I should actually mix the dry ingredients as directed. Nah. Nonsense. So I chucked in the allspice, cinnamon, and salt, gave it a quick stir, then tossed in the pecans walnuts, gave it another quick stir and finally added the flour. Dough complete. Very easy.

But the dough is not the challenge of thumbprint cookies! Oh no, it's the shape and the filling. So here we go. I was suppose to roll one inch balls, flatten slightly, then press my thumb in, smoothing any cracks that form. I have no idea how big one inch is and I will never measure so I just guessed. It didn't help that the recipe didn't specify how many cookies this recipe would yield. So I couldn't even figure out if I was on the right track or not. I ended up making roughly two dozen cookies. In hindsight, I think I should have made them smaller but oh well. I rolled them all out and pressed my thumb into them like a pro. Except I didn't really like the look of them. Maybe it's because I have long nails or maybe I don't know how to properly thumbprint but all of the indents were oblong instead of circular. I feel like an actual round tool would have been more appropriate. Next time, Gadget.

Next, I had to fill the thumbprints with "a heaping 1/4 teaspoon of jam." I take issue with this direction because by the time you make 1/4 teaspoon heaping, you've basically got a half a teaspoon. I pretty much ignored this direction and put in enough to fill the holes. And since I think I made my cookies too big, it was at least a half a teaspoon in each. It was also really difficult getting the jam out of a 1/4 teaspoon scoop but I managed a system of using the back end of a spoon to scoop the jam out of the measuring spoon. I do weird things in the kitchen.

Finally, I was supposed to "scatter the remaining pecans walnuts over the filled cookies." Yeah, no. I see a lot of issues with this direction including that I didn't want any walnuts actually in the jam. Plus, I knew just scattering the nuts would mean that they wouldn't stick. So, like a crazy person, I actually pressed bits of walnut around the sides of each cookie. For what it's worth, by doing it that way, it looked exactly like the picture. It took a while, but hey, what else is there to do when you're snowed in? (Lots. There were lots of things I could have been doing in my house but did not.)

Now, before tossing these into the oven, a slight diversion on my oven temperature. I finally bought an oven thermometer and the conclusion is...I have no freakin' clue. I tested it once before when it was set to 350 and it was reading 400. Today when I tested it, it was reading 325. So I turned up the heat to 375 in hopes that it would get to an actual 350. Then it was actually 375. So I turned it back down. Then it was back down to 325. Then it was back up to 365 for no reason that I understood. I have no idea what's going on or how to fix it. My oven sucks. So I just landed on "I guess I'll keep an eye on my cookies" and tossed them in.

I was pretty curious to see how jam behaves in the oven. I didn't perfectly fill the thumbprint holes in case the jam expanded a bit to fill the holes. This was an inaccurate guess. The jam stayed pretty much exactly where I put it and cooking it just made it set. Well now I know. All in all, they didn't turn out to be the prettiest cookies as a result.

The cookies grew a bit in the oven which only emphasized the weird shapes of the jam. Alas. But look at that excellent walnut decoration, right?! As far as taste goes, I liked the base cookie a lot but I think the jam makes them way too sweet. But I don't really like sweet things so they're probably fine. Since I was home alone, I had no one else to taste test so I'll have to wait for some other opinions. All in all, not a bad snow day's work. The whole baking/cleaning process took me only an hour from start to finish so I deem these quick and easy cookies. So go try to make some cookies with whatever is in your pantry! You never know what you might come up with.

Butterscotch, Briefly

Hello peoples! This will be a very brief post because I'm in academic hell right now. Seriously, after this, baking may not recommence until about 10 days from now. Sad, I know. Blame my professors for giving me two exams in the same day. And before anyone says, "Well, if you have so much work, why are you baking?" let me just say that sometimes you just need a little break from thinking. Baking allows for the brief mental holiday. Anywho, today I'm making Oatmeal Butterscotch Cookies from the Bake Sale Cookbook. I had all the ingredients already (yeah, I actually had butterscotch chips. I have no milk in my house but I have butterscotch chips. Go figure.) so I could dive right into the baking.

Beat butter, sugar, and brown sugar. Cool, I can do this in my sleep. I miss that KitchenAid though. I didn't get quite the fluffyness that I got the last time I baked. It got sufficiently beaten though. The only wet ingredients in this recipe are two eggs and vanilla so I was already anticipating a pretty thick dough. Whoops! I seem to have dumped about an extra half a teaspoon of vanilla into the batter. Umm...yeah. I either got overconfident in my pouring abilities or I am overtired. No, just kidding, I'm just really overtired. So yeahhhh...hopefully they'll be ok.

After blending the dry ingredients (and after the mandatory puff of flour when I turned the mixer on), I had to stir in three cups of oats and one bag of butterscotch chips. Man, was that hard to stir. Even before I added the oats I triple checked the recipe because three cups of oats seemed like way too much. However, I battled through, loudly and aggressively, and eventually had semi evenly blended batter. Then I had to drop by TEAspoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets. It's usually tablespoonfuls so I was intrigued by this direction. I also tried to be diligent about the measuring because I always make cookies that are too big. The recipe said this would make about 4 dozen cookies. I call bullshit on that one. I made between 5 and 6 dozen cookies.

I decided to speed the baking by using two cookie sheets. Two problems with that. The first was that the pan on the bottom shelf burned the cookies. Yes, I should have rotated the pans halfway through but I am just so tired and it wasn't going to happen. Also, when the cookies burned, they burned in a weird way. It was like sugar oozed out of the cookies and then burned (the picture should demonstrate this phenomenon). Or maybe the butterscotch chips oozed out. Do butterscotch chips melt? What is butterscotch anyway? So many questions. Anyway, now my kitchen has that caramelized, blackened sugar smell. Score. Oh, and the second problem was that the cookies stuck to the pans. Which rarely happens to me so it was a little weird. Too tired to contemplate it further. Here there be cookies:

They're yummy. I don't really know if I've ever had or enjoyed butterscotch or oatmeal and I've certainly never had them together but they were pleasant cookies, though a bit sweet for my taste.

Critical Reception:
I served the pumpkin cookies (redux) on Thanksgiving as one of the many desserts. They were much loved and my grandmother asked me for the recipe. Nuff said.

A Disney Moment: Make Mine Music
Aaaaand, another collection of shorts that Disney passed off as a feature film. However, this one I really enjoyed. It was slow to start but really picked up with Casey at the Bat. Anyone who knows me knows that I love a plot with a depressing ending. And this movie has a couple of those for me to enjoy. I also liked the classic Peter and the Wolf. I even liked the narrator telling me which instruments represented which animals. The only downside for me was the twist where they had a whole scene about the duck dying and going to heaven and then (spoiler alert if anyone cares) he's not dead after all. That was annoying.

Other highlights for me included Johnny Fedora and Alice Blue Bonnet and The Whale who Wanted to Sing at the Met. Johnny Fedora's music was performed by the Andrews sisters who I totally love but the whole time I couldn't stop wondering if the song existed before the cartoon or if it was written for the cartoon. If it was written before the cartoon, I really wonder why the Andrews sisters were singing about the true love of a pair of hats. It was cute and fun though and I enjoyed it. The Whale who Wanted to Sing at the Met had just the level of absurdity that leads you to believe that the whole thing is a dream sequence. And it is. Because Willie the Whale gets harpooned and dies instead of getting to sing at the Met. It was still just shocking enough to make you say "Noooooo! Willie the Whale! Singing in heaven is not softening the blow for me!"

Overall, some good shorts, some that fell flat, but of the 5 dark times Disney films, I'm going to put it as my favorite. Winner!

Is it a Brownie? Is it a Cookie? I'm So Confused!

Welcome back! For today's culinary delight, I bring you Chewy Brownie Cookies. I've actually had a request for a baked treat sans chocolate. I thought about entertaining that request until I decided that I'm no short order cook. I bake when the spirit of baking moves me and my baking decisions are based on the pictures in my books. So if all the delicious pictures are of chocolate desserts then the request-er is shit outta luck. So there. This is MY kitchen.

So with that bit of aggression out of my system, let's get back to the Chewy Brownie Cookies. This recipe is from an oldie but a goodie, the Bake Sale Cookbook. I'd love to say that thought went into choosing this recipe but the truth is, the picture looked yummy and I didn't want something overly complicated today. The picture makes them look like a lighter version of the Deep Dark Chocolate Fudge cookies. And the recipe didn't call for melting chocolate for once so I was pretty into that. The first step in the recipe was to preheat the oven and place sheets of foil on the countertop for cooling cookies. Huh? Why wouldn't I just use a cooling rack like I have for every single other thing I've baked? I couldn't think of a good reason so I ignored this direction. Plus I just don't have that much counter space.

Next, I got to combine brown sugar, shortening (remember, code for Crisco!), water, and vanilla. After digging around in my cabinet for a bit, I brought out my really really big bag of brown sugar that I bought from Costco. Seriously, this is a huge bag of brown sugar. I almost dropped it on my head. That would've hurt quite a bit so I'm glad I didn't. Anywho, after measuring out the brown sugar and heaving the bag back up to the top shelf of my cabinet, I had to measure out 2/3 cup of Crisco. This being the Brand Name Bake Sale Cookbook, they actually did call for Crisco so that was exciting. On the other hand, Crisco is kinda gross. It's so slimy but firm and I just tried not to think too hard about it as I spooned it out into the 1/3 cup measuring cup.

I miss using the KitchenAid Mixer. My mixer was not inclined to blend these ingredients well. I had to scrape down the sides of the bowl about 6 times and it was just annoying. (Santa, are you listening?) Things got a little easier after adding the eggs but the whole mixture seemed a little grittier than it should've been. After that, I was supposed to combine the flour, cocoa, salt, and baking salt and then add it to my mixture. I don't know why I felt so lazy today but I didn't feel like dirtying another bowl so I just measured the ingredients and tossed them in. I'm sure it'll be fine. Then I had to beat just until blended but this was hard because so much of the batter was sticking to the sides and not mixing in properly. I feel like some parts of the batter were over blended and some were under blended and can you even over blend a batter like this? I don't actually know. Hopefully not. In any case, then I just had to add two cups of chocolate chips. Two cups seemed like a whole lot of chocolate chips for the small amount of batter that it looked like I had. Nevertheless, faithful slave to cookbooks that I am, I followed those directions and stirred in those chocolate chips.

The final step was to, of course, bake. Here are the directions: "Drop dough by rounded measuring tablespoonfuls 2 inches apart." Can someone explain to me what rounded measuring tablespoonful means? I've seen this before and it still confuses me. If I were to actually use my measuring tablespoon then I would have really small cookies and then how would I get the dough out of the tablespoon? It seems inefficient to me. I just use a regular kitchen tablespoon, like the kind you use for eating. I guess it's just one of those unsolved kitchen mysteries that I'll have to figure out in my own good time. Anywho, with a short baking time, these cookies were done pretty quickly. There was one odd moment where, after 3 full batches of cookies, I attempted to make a 4th batch but only had enough dough for 3 small cookies. After staring at it for a few seconds, I decided that would be absurd and turned off the oven. Sorry if I've offended you by wasting batter but...too bad. So, here they are:

They smell delicious. I love the smell of chocolate in my kitchen. They look like cookies. They smell like cookies. But they taste...like brownies? But not entirely like brownies. Like thin chocolate chippy brownies? Like a brownie/cookie hybrid? I really don't know but they do taste good. Definitely strange but I would recommend this recipe for anyone who wants a brownie cookie. In hindsight, I maybe should have been anticipating this outcome. After all, they are titled Chewy Brownie Cookies.

Critical Reception: 
Yummy yummy cookie sandwiches. The best review I got was from a fellow grad student who said, "Holy crap, these are awesome!" Not really sure what else to say. Everybody liked these cookies and people were pretty excited when they realized there was filling between the cookies. Good job, Food and Wine Cookbook.

A Disney Moment: Bambi

It’s impossible for you to understand my reaction to Bambi without a little family history. As a kid, I was more or less ambivalent towards Bambi. I didn’t really hate it but I didn’t really have a desire to watch it either. More or less forgettable. My sister, on the other hand, was TERRIFIED by Bambi. What made it even more comical was the fact that she thought that the bad guy in the movie was The Thicket. Not Man, who shoots Bambi’s mother in another rather heartless move by the Walt Disney Company, but The Thicket. No matter how many times we tried to convince her that The Thicket wasn’t even a person and was in fact where Bambi lived with his mother, she couldn’t be persuaded and lived in fear of the movie until the day that I made her rewatch it with me as an adult.

Now the only thing that’s scary is how boring that movie is. Honestly, the “camera shots” are boring, the songs are dull and can lull you to sleep, and Bambi’s so dumb that you wish that the hunter had shot him instead of the mother. But enough about that. Instead of really giving you my opinions on this film, I will instead describe what watching it with my family was like.

My mom, sister, and I settled in to watch Bambi after basking in the triumph that was Dumbo a few hours previously. About 30 seconds in, it was declared, “This movie is BORING.” That should set the tone for you. We had some extensive conversation about the deadbeat deer dad and whether or not Flower was a boy or girl. Then we got to the scene where Bambi is introduced to the meadow. At this point my sister started cowering a little bit because she’s hearing about how dangerous the meadow is and clearly thinks this is where things start to get real. Maybe the meadow is the real enemy!

Nope, just some deer frolicking around.

My mom had wandered out for some reason and wandered back in just about when Bambi is sliding around on ice. Her contribution: “Jeez, this movie is slow moving. Bambi’s mother is still alive, there still hasn’t been the fire…” “WHAT?? THERE’S A FIRE???” is my sister’s response. She legit had no idea there was a fire in this movie. This then led to my mom telling her “Oh yeah, Bambi gets shot too.” “WHAAAAAT? WHAT IS THIS MOVIE?” When she asked if he lived though, that was my turn to feel a little stupid. I could not at all remember if Bambi lived or died after being shot. And I didn’t care. I don’t much feel like discussing Bambi any further except to note a couple of things. One is that he continues the great circle of deadbeat deer dads which annoyed us. Another is that it’s nonsensical for him to be a prince when his father is a prince. A third is that Faline (Bambi’s girlfriend) should learn to stay put in the thicket where it’s safe until Bambi gets back a split second later. That’s so annoying. Also, there were several moments that Lion King ripped off of Bambi, the most noticeable of which was when the dogs are leaping at Faline when she’s on a ledge. Pretty much the hyenas leaping at Simba in the elephant graveyard. Lastly, where the hell did Bambi get shot? One second he’s lying as if dead on a rock and the next, his father shows up and is all “We have to go! Get up!” and Bambi just wobbles to his feet and runs away with his father. There’s no blood and there’s no indication that Bambi was anything but surprised by the noise of the gun. Dumb. Overall, the movie just annoys me and holds no entertainment value. Definitely the worst of the first five Disney films. 

Can I Call in a Substitute?

Well hello, loyal readers! There has been a delay in baking activity lately and I would love to say that it was because I was working hard academically but actually, it's because I went home for the weekend and watched a lot of movies instead. More on that in a bit. So, as I've been up since 5 am and didn't want to go to the store, I again picked a recipe that only used ingredients I have in my house. Or so I thought. Tonight's adventure is Mini Brownie Cups from the Bake Sale cookbook (the pictures really do heavily influence the decision) and it also includes a recipe for a Mocha Glaze. I've been wanting to do something besides cookies so I was leaning towards cupcakes. These aren't exactly cupcakes and are more like brownies in mini muffin cups but it'll do.

Lucky for me, the last time I went shopping for cooking tools, they had mini muffin pans on sale for like $2.99. Obviously I couldn't pass such a good deal up. So I have a mini muffin pan and I have mini muffin paper cups that my mommy got me and they have polka dots and stripes and they're cute. Looks like I'm all set! Oh wait. The first ingredient here is 1/4 cup "light corn oil spread". Hmm. I guess I didn't read the original recipe quite carefully enough when I decided that I had everything to make these. The reason I know I don't have light corn oil spread is because I don't know what that is. Google to the rescue! Sort of. And yes, I googled "What is light corn oil spread?" After actually going through several web pages, I found out that it's basically margarine. Which I don't have. I then spent like, 20 minutes searching online for a light corn oil spread substitute. I found one person on one web page that was like "whatever, just use butter". That didn't give me a lot of confidence so I pulled out the good ol' Joy of Cooking and looked in the "Know Your Ingredients" section. Didn't find anything so I flipped through about a hundred pages in the baking section of the cookbook. Nothing. So I gave up and substituted butter and if these taste like crap, that'll be why.

Since I'm making mini brownie cups, I finally got to use the small bowl of my mixer. I was pretty excited about that because I'm sick of cleaning the big bowl. If someone wants to offer to come over and clean all of my bowls after I bake, I'd happily accept. The first thing to do was "in a saucepan over low heat, melt corn oil spread". Hahaha. Well, I'm already substituting butter, so I'll just substitute a stove and a saucepan with a bowl and a microwave, k? Beautiful. So I melted half a stick of butter. I've been melting butter since I was old enough to make popcorn by myself so I'm an old pro at it. Next, I had to beat two egg whites and one egg. I actually really enjoy separating egg whites from the yolks. Some people need tools to accomplish this (yes, they do sell an egg separating tool that looks kinda like a spiral funnel) but I separate the old-fashioned way, passing the yolk from one half of the egg shell to the other until all the whites have separated out, just like my daddy taught me. I smoothly separated the eggs and beat until "foamy" as the recipe directed. Then I beat in some sugar and mixed in the flour, cocoa, baking powder and salt.

Mixing in the flour and other dry stuff was kinda funny. When I started the mixer, a small cloud of powdery ingredients flew up out of the mixer. Yay! It wasn't too terrible though and then the problem was fully solved once the ingredients got a little blended. Then I mixed in the corn oil spread butter and voila! All done! Pretty easy recipe really. All that was left was to fill the muffin cups 2/3 full with the batter. The batter was a little thick and kinda sticky so it didn't like being transferred to the muffin cups. As a result, my hands were once again covered in chocolate (well, cocoa batter but still). Also, I'm a bad judge of volume so for me to decide where 2/3 full is in a mini muffin cup is completely absurd. I did the best I could though.

The supposed yield for this recipe was 24 mini brownie cups. I made 34. Whatever. During the baking time for the first batch, I mixed together the dry ingredients for the Mocha Glaze. Allow me to explain. As if mini brownies in polka dotted paper cups weren't cute enough, I am supposed to drizzle Mocha Glaze over these brownies in an adorable fashion. My intuition says that this will be more difficult than it looks. Regardless, I decided to wait to make the glaze until after all the brownies were baked to give them adequate time to cool. Fun fact: after the first batch of brownie cups were done, I had to transfer them to a wire rack to finish cooling (and to free up the pan for the 2nd batch) and I was almost really stupid. My hand was about 8/9 of the distance to the pan before I realized that I shouldn't stick my hand on a hot pan to remove hot brownie cups. I may be more tired than I thought. Possibly instead of just substitute ingredients I could've used a substitute baker. Regardless, after staring at the hot pan like an idiot for approximately a full minute and rejecting several absurd methods of removing the brownie cups, I decided on just using a fork to fish them out. It worked and I didn't burn myself. I have a pretty low bar for success tonight.

And now the glaze. Umm, WTF Mr. Mocha Glaze? Mocha glaze was a huge disappointment. All it is is cocoa, powdered sugar, hot water, instant coffee and vanilla. How hard could that be? And I swear I didn't screw this up. I triple checked the recipe. Anyway, the glaze turned out a lot thinner than I expected. Then I was supposed to "drizzle" the glaze decoratively on the mini brownie cups. In the picture it looks more like piped icing than the gloppy mess I ended up with. I wasn't really sure of the best drizzle method but I just used a spoon because it was so thin to begin with. I kid you not, the glaze ROLLED OFF the brownies. Rolled off. I don't even know what else to say about it. It was like raindrops rolling down a window pane and I was powerless to stop it. So, instead of the cute drizzle stripes I was planning, they're more like ugly drizzle splotches that just rolled to the edge and then soaked into the brownies. Hmm. I swear I didn't make a mistake in the recipe. What a mess. Blah. Here's what they look like in the end:

As far as taste goes, they're terrible. The brownies are extremely dense, the mocha glaze is bitter, and it's a lot of awful in one place. I'm really tempted to throw them all out. Maybe I'll bring them to school Thursday with a note that says "Eat At Your Own Risk" and then run and hide. Nightmare. Sorry folks, I guess this was the first dramatic baking fail.

Critical Reception:
The pinwheel icebox cookies were a hit. I thought they were only ok but people liked them. The colloquium speaker even deemed them "outstanding" which I think is an exaggeration (especially since he's Italian and is probably used to way better cookies) but it was a nice compliment either way. All 40 cookies were gone within an hour which was good for me because I didn't really want them. Yayness!

A Disney Moment:
This is the latest feature of my blog which is completely irrelevant to baking or statistics. In anticipation of my upcoming trip to Disney World ::cough (in May) cough:: I decided to watch all of the Disney animated features in order. Why, you ask? Because I felt like it. And there's no better reason than that. Now, I'm no movie critic but I'll share my insights into these films which will sometimes not extend beyond "I don't like this one and I don't feel I need to provide a reason". This past weekend I watched the first five Disney animated feature films with my sister (Snow White, Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo, Bambi) and I am stalled on the next six because I don't have them yet. This post has gotten somewhat long though (plus I'm depressed about the fail brownies) so I'll wait to talk about Snow White until next time. I'll leave you with this thought though: it is a beautifully nostalgic feeling to see the old Walt Disney Classics logo and the bright red FBI warning on the old VHS copies of classic Disney films.

How to Make Cheesecake Without a Springform Pan

[Edit: This has been my most popular blog post due to what I presume is people googling "How to make cheesecake without a springform pan". If that is how you got here, welcome. While I don't know of any way to make a round cheesecake without a springform pan, I do know how to make Chocolate Cheesecake Triangles which are pretty delicious and I imagine could be made without the chocolate. I talk about them below with a few tips for baking them but the recipe can be found here. If this link was helpful to you, I only ask that you pick another of my posts and read it and decide if this blog is worth your time. Thanks and happy baking!]

Hello all! For this week's project, I decided to deviate a bit from the cookies. I've been craving some cheesecake lately but alas, I have no springform pan. Plus it's harder to bring a cheesecake into the office to share with people. Then I'd have to worry about plates and utensils and that's currently beyond the scope of things I care about. Fortunately for me, the Bake Sale cookbook came through for me. In the bar cookie section (yes, that is a specific section) I found "Swirl of Chocolate Cheesecake Triangles" which was exactly perfect.

So, naturally, after choosing this recipe I had to head over to my friendly neighborhood Big Y to pick up some things, namely, graham crackers, cream cheese, and evaporated milk (the recipe called for the brand name Carnation but I bought the cheap Big Y brand). By the way, does anyone else find evaporated milk kind of odd? It kinda creeps me out that all you have to do is add water and then it's supposedly the equivalent of fresh milk. Weird. Anyway, while I was picking up the creepy milk, a box next to it caught my eye. This magical box read: "Graham Cracker Crumbs".  Yes, they actually sell graham cracker crumbs for budding bakers like myself. So, I was immediately faced with a decision to make. Should I do things the old fashioned way and crush up 2 cups of graham cracker crumbs? Or should I pay a slightly higher unit price and save myself the time? While trying to decide, I was reminded of the last time I made cheesecake. In that instance, the person designated to crush the graham crackers took approximately 45 minutes to do so. While I certainly would have gotten it done faster than that, I decided that the time and effort saved would be better spent working on my probability homework. So I took the easy way out and went off to the kitchen.

The first step was to make the graham cracker crust. I know from experience that this is super easy so I felt good about that. I melted some butter and mixed it up with the graham cracker crumbs and sugar and it was a piece of (cheese)cake. The next direction was to press the crust into the bottom of a 13x9 inch baking pan. Who's betting at this moment that I don't have one of those? Well, you'd be WRONG! I have one rectangle baking pan and it is exactly 13x9! How exciting! This recipe seems to be going flawlessly for me.

Spoke too soon. The filling was easy, just combining cream cheese, sugar, flour, evaporated milk, eggs, and vanilla. On a related note, I hit a milestone in my baking. I finally finished my first bottle of vanilla extract! I feel like that means I actually have accumulated some experience by now. Speaking of experience, you know how I have to melt chocolate for pretty much every recipe I bake? Well, I should have used my experience in that area and deviated from the recipe. The recipe told me to microwave the Nestle Toll House semi-sweet chocolate morsels (Hey, a brand name I did use!) and it gave me specific microwaving directions. I followed them and ended up with a lumpy, congealed mass of chocolate in my bowl. After trying unsuccessfully to melt the chocolate further, I threw my hands up and used the tried and true bowl of hot water technique. In a couple of minutes, I successfully melted my chocolate and vowed not to microwave chocolate anymore. Oh, and lest you think something went smoothly, in the process of stirring my chocolate, I managed to splash extremely hot water all over my shirt. Yay.

So, the swirl of chocolate aspect comes into this recipe in this way: I was supposed to combine one cup of the cream cheese mixture with the chocolate, pour the remaining cream cheese mixture into the pan, pour the chocolate/cream cheese mixture on top, and then use a spoon to pull the plain cream cheese mixture over the chocolate mixture. Whew. It seemed needlessly complicated but I guess I did get a nice marble-y swirl. And now, into the oven for 45 minutes. I used the baking and cooling time to watch a couple of episodes of Say Yes to the Dress. Yep, I unashamedly watch bad tv.

One note on the baking: by the time I pulled the pan out of the oven it had risen to slightly above the rim of the pan. But by the time I went back to it after the cooling time, imagine my surprise when I found it had all sunk down back to the original level! Regardless, it still smells delicious. Unfortunately, I have to wait a bit for the cheesecake to chill in the fridge before I can eat it.

::twiddles thumbs::

Yay, they're chilled! Cutting these was a bit of a challenge. Not because they were hard to cut but because the triangles were really big and for some reason the graham cracker crust was really really crumbly. I'm not sure why that is but the crust definitely leaves something to be desired. As far as look goes, you be the judge:

I think they look cute. As far as taste goes, the graham cracker crust is a bit too dry and crumbly for my taste so maybe the graham cracker to butter ratio was off (though I swear I followed the recipe!) and it's actually a bit too chocolatey for me. I guess I'm more of a cheesecake purist and like it the plain way. Also, due to the crumbly crust, this is best eaten with a fork. That should get interesting when I bring these to colloquium.

Critical Reception:


Well, the peanut butter cup cookies were here one second and gone the next. I put them out at colloquium and many of them were gone before I even showed up to get my cup of tea. Overall positive reviews though. One ambiguous review: one person (that I know of) did not realize that they were eating peanut butter cookies. After reading the blog entry, this person wanted to try one, not realizing that he/she had eaten a couple of the cookies two days earlier. Maybe I should start labeling what I put out?