Chocolate Birthday Cheesecake

Always wanted to make a cake and decorate it with frosting. So today, decided to make one to celebrate my birthday. Instead of making a cake, I thought of making something light and I stumble upon this chocolate 3 layer cheese cake from Happy Homebaking made with yoghurt and decided to give it a try. I run out of cream cheese so wasn't able to used the exact amount called for in the recipe, so I think that's why the cake came up to be a little too soft and tasted more like chocolate moouse rather then chocolate cheesecake and I think I added too little sugar as well as the sour taste of the yoghurt was a little too strong and covered the taste of the chocolate. Luckily, I was able to find this chocolate buttercream frosting which tasted really really yummy. So all in all I quite like this cake and I think I almost ate the entire one myself as my husband and kid don't really fancy the sourish taste. Here's my final product:

Chocolate Cheese Cake

Ingredient and Directions

The Cheesecake
(makes one 6 inch cheesecake)

for the base:
100g digestive biscuits, crushed into fine crumbs
60g butter, melted

for filling:
250g cream cheese, soften at room temperature
80g caster sugar
200g non-fat plain yogurt
2 teaspoons gelatin powder
3 tablespoon water
80g white chocolate, melted

Method:

1. Mix biscuit crumbs; melted butter together and press firmly with the help of a spoon onto the base of a 6 inch round pan. Chill for 30 minutes.


2. Place gelatin powder and water in a bowl. Heat a pot filled with some water until just simmering and place the bowl inside the pot. Dissolve gelatin and water in the bowl. Keep warm.


3. With a whisk, beat cream cheese till soft. Add in sugar and whisk until smooth and creamy.


4. Add in yogurt and continue to beat till smooth. Blend in gelatin solution and mix well.


5. Divide cheese mixture into 2 equal portions.Pour half into the biscuit base and spread evenly. Chill in the fridge for a while.
   


6. For the 2nd portion, stir in mixture of 80g melted dark chocolate Spread over the 1st layer. Chill for 3 to 4 hours before serving.

The Chocolate Frosting
(original recipe here)

• 6 tablespoons butter, softened
• Cocoa powder, see below
• 2 2/3 cups powdered sugar
• 1/3 cup milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1. For light chocolate frosting use 1/3 cup cocoa powder For medium chocolate frosting use 1/2 cup cocoa powder for dark chocolate frosting use 3/4 cup cocoa powder.
2. In mixer bowl cream the butter. Add the cocoa and powdered sugar alternately with milk. Beat to spreading consistency adding more milk if needed. Blend in vanilla.

Lollipop Cookies

Was trying to find some interesting cake to bake to celebrate my mother's day, but ended finding this interesting play dough cookies. Was trying to get my boy to help making but ended up having to stop him from destroying my creation. It's actually quite easy to make and quite tasty. Really happy with the result.


Fun Cookie Suckers (or Playdough Cookies or Lollipop Cookies)
(original recipe here)

Ingredients and Directions

• 3/4 cup butter, softened
• 3 ounces cream cheese
• 1 cup white sugar (I used about just slightly more then 1/2 a cup and it's sweet enough)
  
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour (I used unbleached flour and replaced 3/4 of the flour with wholemeal flour and 2 tbs of wheat germ just to add in some healthy stuff into the cookies)
  
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• assorted colors of paste food coloring
• 24 lollipop sticks (as I don't have lollipop stick, I used those disposable chopsticks instead, but think it's a tad too long)
  

1. In a bowl cream butter, cream cheese and sugar until fluffy. Add egg and vanilla; beat until smooth
2. In a medium bowl combine flour, baking powder and salt. Add dry ingredients to the creamed mixture. Stir till soft dough forms. Divide dough into fourths. Tint each with a different food color. Wrap in plastic wrap and chill for 2 hours.
3. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Working with each color, shape dough into 3/4 inch balls. For each cookie place 1 pink, 1 green, 1 blue and 1 orange ball together to make 1 large rainbow colored ball. Shape into a 12 inch long roll (like a snake); starting at one end, coil roll to make a 2 3/4 inch round cookie. Place cookies 3 inches apart on lightly greased baking sheet. Carefully insert lollipop sticks into bottoms of cookie
4. Bake cookies for 8 minutes or until lightly browned. Cool and store in an airtight container.

Snail Pretzel

Suddenly in the mood to bake some bread, so decided to make some milk pretzel from my earlier post. Half way through making the pretzel shape, decided to make it into a snail shape instead, so here's the final product.