Friday, September 23, 2011

Triple Chocolate Cheesecake

I've been a bit out of commission lately, and so have been a bit sporadic with my updating here - sorry! Unfortunately sometimes life gets in the way of itself. The last week hasn't been as busy, but I had my five (yes, five) wisdom teeth removed last Thursday so eating hasn't been so easy.



Mum was telling me that the art of invalid cooking has been lost, but after she recommended I eat junket and I looked it up we realised the so called "dairy food" I was consuming is basically the same as junket, so perhaps it's just a rebranding thing - ambiguous as "dairy food" is I know which I'd rather eat!

Until yesterday I was still mostly veering towards soft things, as the stitches (sorry if that's too much info for a food blog!) only came out yesterday, so I was subsisiting in yoghurt and dairy food, Up&Go, soup, sieved mash - and last Friday I had KFC potato and gravy for dinner and it felt like the best meal I'd ever eaten - judge me as you will...

I've gotten a bit more adventurous now but my mouth is still pretty sensitive to anything that's a bit hard - I can't wait to eat crunchy things!


It was my birthday on Wednesday (poor planning to have teeth out the week before a birthday, I know, but it was that or risk jeopardising some of Wellington on a Plate!) and I still had my stitches, so I was trying to decide whether to make a cake and watch everyone at work eat it for me, or delay. Until it occurred to me: there are cakes without crumbs! Ice-cream cake, while it would be wonderful, is a tad impractical for the workplace, but cheesecake is a word I've been hearing a lot of lately and the filling - which constitutes about 95% of the cake anyway - is squidgy enough to be eaten by invalids like me. ;-)


This is a cheesecake I've made (and written about) before, but I wanted to reprise it - for one, the photos last time were terrible, and I thought it might be possible to make it prettier. And hey, chocolate and cheesecake together, how can that go wrong?


This is a pretty easy recipe to make, so long as you have lots of bowls, either a very strong arm or an electric beater or stand mixer, and can overlook the whopping 900g of cream cheese (hey, no-one said it was supposed to be good for you!). ;-)

Last time I made it I went for the zebra effect, which is done by scooping 1 cup quantities of the alternate batters into the tin (i.e. 1 cup dark choc, 1 cup milk choc, 1 cup white choc, repeat), but the OCD in me wanted a neater (though less cool) result this time so I did simple layers. The flavours of the different layers are more distinguishable this way though it doesn't have the same crowd-pleasing effect so it's up to you how you want to do yours.


I forgot to cover it with tinfoil, which just means the top was darker than it should have been, but I think it looks caramelly and alluring anyway so wasn't too worried. I also ran out of cooking time (I will never learn, always start baking too late in the evening!) so instead of baking at 160 for 1.5 hours I turned the oven off after an hour, went to bed, and woke up in the morning to a pretty spot-on cheesecake. Last time I made it I baked it the proper way so I know that works, but it's good to know what you can get away with. ;-)

It was a pretty good substitute for normal birthday cake - though I'm definitely looking forward to fully normal eating again. I should have known better than to schedule an appointment so close to my birthday, too - when I was 9 I had a tooth extracted (I've now had three bonus teeth grow in that one spot - the first one was a baby tooth so fell out on its own) on the day of my birthday party, so I've already suffered through an invalid-food birthday! Have you had your wisdom teeth out? What did you subsist on?


Triple Chocolate Cheesecake
Ingredients
200g gingernuts
1/4 cup brown sugar
115g butter
1 Tbsp cocoa
900g cream cheese
4 eggs
1 1/4 cups caster sugar
1 cup cream
1 Tbsp lemon juice
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp salt
100g 70% dark chocolate
100g milk chocolate
100g white chocolate

Preheat the oven to 160 C. Prepare a 22.5cm springform tin by greasing, cutting a round of baking paper to fit the bottom of it, and a strip to line the edge (so the edges are smooth when you unmold it), and firmly wrapping in tin foil. The tin foil is to prevent water from leaking in when baking in a water bath.

Crush the gingernuts and mix with brown sugar, cocoa and melted butter to make the crust. Press into your prepared tin, evenly coating the base.

In a large bowl, beat the cream cheese until smooth. Add the sugar and beat well, then gradually add the eggs, beating between each addition. Add the lemon juice, vanilla and salt and mix just to combine.

Melt the chocolate in separate bowls and allow to cool slightly. Separate the filling mixture into three even portions and mix in the chocolate.

Spread the dark chocolate mixture evenly onto the crust, followed by the milk then white chocolate mixtures. Cover with tin foil, place in a roasting dish of boiling water, and bake for 1 hour 15 minutes to 1 hour 30 minutes, until the mixture is mostly set but slightly wobbly in the middle. Cool, then chill overnight or for 8-12 hours before serving.

Sunday, September 11, 2011

Bordeaux Bakery: Scrumptious Temptations

I've been so busy lately time seems to be flying by - the whole year seems like a bit of a blur, really (how is it September???) but the last couple of months in particular. I love being busy but there's a balance somewhere that I haven't quite hit. Anyway, this event was a few weeks ago, as part of Wellington on a Plate - so apologies for my tardy informing.


Scrumptious Temptations was hosted by Feast and Vine, and all I needed to hear were the words "watch their acclaimed pâtissier demonstrate a scrumptious chocolate temptation" and I was scrambling to book my spot (that we'd get to take a chocolate treat home with us helped too!).

Bordeaux Bakery was set up with a demonstration table when we arrived, and we were welcomed warmly by Donna of Feast and Vine. Once everyone was assembled (there were perhaps 15 of us) Jean-Louis let us into his inner sanctum - the kitchen!


Jean-Louis is an extraordinary man who is clearly passionate about what he does, and he starts baking at 1am (before some people I know go to bed!) each morning to ensure his product is fresh each day for all his bakeries. Most of his equipment is imported from France, and as you can see he has some fairly impressive machines - you could sit in that mixer bowl if you wanted to! I was amused by the baguette shaping machine - it had never occurred to me such a thing would exist, but I daresay shaping them by hand gets tiresome when you make hundreds at a time.

There were dozens of racks of croissants proving, taunting us with their buttery goodness (he showed us a box of the butter he uses - a box weighs 25kg. The glory!). I was a little gobsmacked that some of the ladies attending didn't know how to keep their hands to themselves, and prodded at the pastry - a bit disappointing but I guess there are greater crimes.


Once we'd seen the kitchen we moved back into the cafe area, where Nicola Belsham (owner of the Wineseeker shop) talked to us about wine and food matching while we sipped on Bordeaux Bakery's sauterne and munched on a (well-matched!) mini fruit tart. I really enjoyed Nicola's explanations, and in particular liked her attitude that everyone has different tastes, and that really it's what we enjoy that we should drink. That said, there are general guidelines - you should try to pick wines that balance and complement flavours in a given dish. The sauterne is very sweet, which offset the tartness of the blueberries - perfect!
You can get both from Bordeaux Bakery on Thorndon Quay if you want to try for yourself. ;-)


The final element of the evening was for Jean-Louis to show us how he makes his duchess cake, which is his most popular cake. He starts by making meringue, which is cooked very slowly into discs, then a rich chocolate mousse is piped into the centre, they're chilled, then finally more mousse is spread over each cake and they're coated in chocolate flakes. Enough chocolate? Just right, I reckon. ;-)


It was a lovely evening and very interesting to get the behind-the-scenes view - it was a bit shorter than advertised, but it didn't feel rushed - Jean-Louis does speak quite quickly though! Feast and Vine do similar things from time to time and have a Christmas high tea event coming up in November, which sounds like a fun afternoon out.

Sadly, the duchess cake didn't last long after I got home - that's a common problem with chocolate things in the Cake household - they don't stick around. For that reason I've decided to abstain from chocolate for the rest of the month. Every once in a while I realise it's becoming more a dependency than a treat, and a period of chocolate famine resets my cravings to a more managable level. ;-) So if I seem a little grouchier than usual in the next wee while, you'll know why! Do you ever withhold specific treats from yourself to blitz cravings or am I the only one with this problem?



Mrs Cake attended Scrumptious Temptations as a guest of Feast and Vine. Bordeaux Bakery is located at 220 Thorndon Quay, Wellington, ph 04 499 8334. For info on similar events check out Feast and Vine's website.

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Grandma Cake's 80th Birthday Rainbow Cake

I've spent the last few days in Christchurch as my Grandma turned 80 last week so had her birthday party on Sunday. I am often on cake duty for family birthdays, and try to make something that suits the person - however I can work that in. Grandma Cake is a very sunny, happy person and loves bright and cheerful things, and she also loves the garden and flowers (which kind of fit into the bright-and-cheerful category, but stay with me here).


I remembered seeing somewhere in the universe of the internet a rainbow cake - actually, in the realm of Pinterest (which is scarily addictive - don't click through unless you have too much time on your hands!) there are a huge number of rainbow foods. I'm not a huge fan of excessive food colouring, but sometimes the occasion calls for it, and using gel colours you don't need all that much to get a pretty intense colour. You can get gel colours from most cake decorating stores (like Kiwi Cakes) and a pottle will last ages.

To produce a rainbow of cake, choose a light-coloured batter (I made an orange cake recipe, though I thought it was too dry cooked in thin layers so I won't share the recipe - lemon yoghurt cake would work well). Work out how much batter you need - each layer should be a couple of centimetres thick - and divide it into seven. I made such a large cake (and actually I made a second cake, as there were 150 people at the birthday party) that I made a batch for each layer. Then use gel colours to dye the batter before baking - start with a little and add more until you like the colour. You only need red, yellow and blue colour - red and yellow make orange; blue and yellow make green (though I had green colour so used that) and blue and purple make indigo.

Because the layers are quite thin they cook quickly. The layers for my 30cm cake took about 15 minutes each - the smaller 25cm cake only took about 10. Once cooked and cooled you'll want to trim the tops to make each layer nice and flat. You'll end up with a very colourful bowl of cake scraps. Which you can then feed to your six-month-old nephew, though I can't guarantee they'll impress him:



(also: don't do this unless you're prepared to clean up a lot of mess!)


When the layers are flattish spread a thin layer of icing (anything firm enough to hold - I used a basic buttercream) on each - you don't want too much as it'll detract from the colour, just enough to hold the layers of cake together. I think it looks better with the darker colours at the bottom, so started with violet, building all the way up to red. When they're stacked apply some pressure on top to ensure they're nicely stuck together (sort of smush them down, but not too heavily!) and then ice around the sides, filling in any gaps. I did a thin coat of icing and then covered the cake in these cool (and amazingly easy) roses (you use the Wilton 1M/large open star tip and just pipe swirls from the inside out - I'll write more about this sometime, but I didn't get pictures as by the time I got to this part I was pressed for time!).   


I was going for the ultimate deception - see how grown-up it looks? And sort of fits with the whole garden thing for Grandma. The most suspicious thing about the cake was its height - you can see below that it swallowed the whole blade of the knife when cut - those layers do add up!


Grandma was a little confused when we told her she had to cut a wedge - I think she thought we were going to make her eat a huge piece of it! It had the desired effect, though - see her face in the photo on the right! And the whole room gasped with delight when she lifted the slice - audible appreciation definitely massages the ego of the baker, and on the impressing-the-audience scale it possibly even beats my uncle's party trick of eating birthday candles to amuse small children. ;-) 

So; a great cake to make to impress; reasonably low effort, just takes a while to bake the layers. Grandma loved it, and had a ball at her party too - many family and friends, and lots of little children to liven things up. It was a stunning day (I guess the weather was trying to live up to Grandpa's party back in February, when it got to 36 degrees!) and it was nice catching up with everyone and gorging on sugar.

What's the best birthday party trick you've seen?

Sunday, September 4, 2011

Feast of Canterbury and She Chocolat, Governors Bay

Okay, so you know how obsessed I am with chocolate, so it's hardly going to be a surprise that dining at a chocolate cafe is something I'd enjoy. I've been to She Chocolat in Governors Bay a couple of times, the latest being yesterday, coinciding with the start of Feast of Canterbury.



Feast of Canterbury is a great intiative to showcase Canterbury's finest food and drink, but was a bit thwarted last year by the shaking of the ground and interruption of service for restaurants and other event venues. Some things went ahead but this year is shaping up to be bigger and better and there are lots of cool things happening. There are events (check out the website for these - my picks are Dining with the Stars and Stop and Smell the Macarons) and Dine restaurants, who are offering special menus starting at $15 for cafes and $25 for restaurants. My sister and I visited She Chocolat in Governors Bay yesterday to test out the Dine menu there - at $39 it's at the pricey end of the Dine offers for lunch, but includes two courses and a glass of wine and the dessert (because seriously, would you go to a chocolate shop and not have dessert?) is a stunning array of their chocolates which is quite excellent.


As I mentioned I've eaten at She before, and they have a delightful habit which I can completely get on board with - incorporating chocolate into their mains. Not all mains - usually just one or two - but the option is there if you want it (and I do!). Last time we visited I had the molĂ© short ribs, which were fantastic, and I was pleased to see that the duck on the Dine menu was accompanied by a chocolate chutney. Sister Cake opted for the duck, though, so I went with the interesting-sounding beetroot cured salmon. 

The confit duck was absolutely divine - beautifully cooked, with lovely greens, parsnip mash and the aforementioned chutney, which was exceptionally good. I commented to the waiter when he cleared our plates that I'd done the chocolate tour last year and there were rumours of the chef bottling his chutney and offering it for sale, and asked if that had come about, and though sadly it's not available to buy, the chef kindly gave me some in little pottles to take home! How lovely is that? 

My salmon was pretty good, lovely and tender and not strongly beetrooty, though the caramelised beetroot pieces served with it were, and were sweet and delicious. I found the watercress a little too strong for the dish and slightly awkward to eat (you know that moment when you realise you have too much salad on your fork to get it gracefully into your mouth at once, but you're committed to the mouthful?), but the croquette was lovely, crunchy and delicious, and not overpoweringly goats cheesy (actually, I love goats cheese and wouldn't have minded more of it, but it was still a yummy croquette and would still suit folk who are not so keen on the strong cheeses). Overall the food was great, though I was a little jealous of my sister's delicious duck so that's my pick of the two. ;-) 


We were basking in the sun outside - though there are plenty of inside seats on a sunny day it's glorious outdoors and the views are spectacular. What a lovely way to enjoy your chocolate! The dessert tasting platter has several of their chocolates (which I've raved about before), as well as a florentine, a meringue, some chocolate-rolled cacao beans and a wee piece of brownie - it takes sustenance to get through it all but it's worth it because every bite will be delicious. My favourite is the "She" - white chocolate with a dark chocolate and rosewater centre, it's very tasty. If you need to take a break sit back and admire the surroundings - if you're lucky you might be able to spy the Kereru in the trees down below:


We had a lovely meal, and I wish I was in Christchurch longer to check out some of the other venues on offer but sadly work awaits me in Wellington - if you're in Christchurch, though, have a look at the Feast website and make some eating plans. I'll live vicariously through you. ;-)




She Chocolat is located at 79 Main Road, Governors Bay, Lyttelton, Christchurch, ph 03 329 9222, www.shechocolat.com. Mrs Cake and Sister Cake dined courtesy of She Chocolat and Feast of Canterbury.
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