Last week, we did a major kitchen reorganize and finally re-opened a pantry cabinet that we had painted shut a few months ago (oops!). Rediscovering a slew of baking pans, and not to be outdone by Ed’s tiny cinnamon loaves, I decided to welcome the springform pan back into the family with cheesecake.
I’ve never actually made cheesecake before. Edit: I have only actually made cheesecake once before, a lemon ricotta recipe years ago that was alarming terrible. I scanned a few recipes with good reviews, but they all seemed to make strange substitutions like “challenge butter” (what is this???) or questionable no-bake options (why?). Eventually, I landed on a Serious Eats recipe that I used with a few quick alterations.
The night before our baking marathon, we celebrated four years of hanging together and went a little too hard. Waking up to discarded champagne bottles and a half eaten box of Birthday Cake Oreos, I figured I’d salvage some of the destruction an replace the graham cracker crust with chocolate. A lot of the recipes are all for using the entire cookie, but not wanting to mar the beauty of fresh berries with Birthday Cake frosting, I scooped it out before pulsing the chocolate wafers in the blender. We only ate a few scoops of Oreo centers before burying them in the garbage with the rest of our self respect.
My springform pan is a little guy, so I halved the Serious Eats recipe from the get go. I replaced half of the cream cheese with neufchatel, which I want to say was for health reasons, but if we’re being honest we had already planned on baking enough sweets to feed 12 with only two of us around. Really, it just seems more exotic and is half the price of cream cheese at our grocery store. I ditched the cream for buttermilk, which we picked up for the swirly bread.
The preparation takes a little more massaging than “toss in all ingredients and mix on high” but is fairly straightforward. I was a little hesitant to try my hand at the marbled top, but after scrolling through a few youtube videos I mustered up the courage to go for it. I dosed dots along the top of the poured cheesecake mixture from a plastic squeeze bottle, and swirled through the center of each dot with a skewer, moving from the center toward the outer edge in a semi random pattern.
For my (almost) first stab at cheesecake, it went pretty smoothly aside from some cracking along the swirl pattern. The texture was dense and creamy and melded well with a dollop of berry puree and chocolate crust.
Blackberry Neufchatel Cheesecake with Chocolate Crust
A dense cheesecake with a summer berry swirl and a dark chocolate crust. This recipe uses a 7" springform pan
Recipe type: Dessert
Ingredients
For the crust:
The shells of 25 Oreo cookies
Pinch of salt
5 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
For the cheescake:
1 8 oz. box of cream cheese
1 8 oz. box of neufchatel
½ cup sugar
½ teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
2 large eggs, at room temperature
¾ cups buttermilk
For the blackberry swirl:
Blackberries
Granulated sugar
Instructions
To make the crust:
Pulse the chocolate wafers of roughly 25 Oreos in a food processor until you reach your desired texture. I chose to pulse until the Oreos resembled a heavy sand.
Melt 5 tablespoons of butter and pour over cookie mixture. Pulse until well blended.
Add salt and pulse until combined.
Center a rack in the oven, preheat the oven to 350°F and place the springform on a baking sheet. Bake for 10 minutes. Set the crust aside to cool on a rack while you make the cheesecake.
Reduce the oven temperature to 325°F.
To make the puree:
Blend blackberries and granulated sugar until smooth.
Pour mixture into a plastic squeeze bottle or pasty bag. Reserve the leftover to serve with finished cheesecake.
To make the cheesecake:
Put a kettle of water on to boil.
Using a stand mixer with a paddle attachment, beat the cream cheese at medium speed until soft. Leave your mixer running and add sugar and salt. Continue to beat another 4 minutes or so, until the cream cheese is light. Beat in the vanilla. Add the eggs one by one, beating for a full minute after each addition—you want a well-aerated batter. Reduce the mixer speed to low and stir in the buttermilk.
Put the foil-wrapped springform pan in the roaster pan.
Give the batter a few stirs with a rubber spatula, just to make sure that nothing has been left unmixed at the bottom of the bowl, and scrape the batter into the springform pan. The batter will reach the brim of the pan. (If you have a pan with lower sides and have leftover batter, you can bake the batter in a buttered ramekin or small soufflé mold.) Put the roasting pan in the oven and pour enough boiling water into the roaster to come halfway up the sides of the springform pan.
Dot the top of the cheesecake surface with your berry puree. Using a skewer or toothpick, trace lines through the center of each dot, connecting one dot to the next, to create your marbled surface.
Bake the cheesecake for 1 hour and 30 minutes. To prevent browning, rest a sheet of foil over the surface of the cheesecake. Some cracking may occur during baking. Turn off the oven's heat and leave cheesecake to slightly cool with the oven door propped open for one hour.
Carefully pull the setup out of the oven, lift the springform pan out of the roaster. Remove the foil, taking care not to burn yourself with any water that may have seeped into the foil. Let the cheesecake cool to room temperature on a cooling rack.
Once the cake is cool, cover the top and chill the cake overnight.
½ tsp ground nutmeg, to taste (I used freshly grated)
½ tsp salt
2⅔ cups all-purpose flour
For Glaze
2 cups confectioner’s sugar
maple syrup for thinning
Instructions
Set oven to 350F
Melt the butter. Beat in the oil, sugar, eggs, buttermilk, and vanilla until everything is well mixed.
Sift in the dry ingredients and mix until just blended. Do not over mix.
Grease donut pan and spoon batter into a large ziplock baggie, and cut off a ½ inch tip from one corner and pipe the batter into the pan.
Bake for about 15 minutes until risen and cooked through, you can use a toothpick to check. They will still be pale, so don’t judge by the color.
Let the doughnuts cool for a couple of minutes before removing them to a cooling rack.
Make the glaze by slowly adding maple syrup to the sugar to achieve a thick glaze texture. You can always adjust the glaze by adding more sugar or more syrup. Add the extract and stir well.
While the doughnuts are still slightly warm, dip them into the glace, headfirst, and give them a little twist as you raise them up out of the bowl. Set them, glaze side up, on the rack to dry.
Enjoy quickly, these beauties are best the day of!
We’ve made a tradition of staying in on Valentine’s Day, avoiding the crowds and lousy pre fixe menus and using the day as an excuse to splurge on food we ordinarily wouldn’t buy. This year we spotted a few pounds of duck breast at Wild Purveyors and decided to keep it simple with a recipe that left ample time to enjoy a couple ChefSteps chocolate soufflés.
I used the cook time and temp that Polyscience recommended for the duck breast. Once we pulled it from the bath, Ed crosscut the thick fat layer and seared it on high for a few minutes rendering out some of the fat. We tossed the dried sour cherries in the duck fat with a bit of balsamic and used that as a glaze for sliced duck. Please note: a little goes a long way with the cherry glaze, but sure not to go overboard and mask the great flavor in texture of the duck. We also plated the dish with a few leaves of baby arugula and a sprinkle of goat cheese for added depth.
The duck was great, but the real star of the night were the soufflés we made from a favorite ChefSteps recipes. I recommend that you if you haven’t tried these, you make them immediately (again and again and again). Some of the commenters seemed to take issue with the amount of salt used in the original recipe, but I’m sticking with the experts on this one and vouch for the original ingredients.
A simple preparation that lets the natural flavor and texture of the duck breast shine. The sour cherry glaze provides a great contrast to the tender duck. A decadent meal for a night in.
Author: Disturbing the Peas
Recipe type: Entree
Serves: 2 servings
Ingredients
1 duck breast
1 pinch salt
1 pinch pepper
2 tbls dried sour cherries
2 tbls balsamic vinegar
1 tblsp goat cheese
1 handful baby arugula
Instructions
Set immersion circulator to 57C
Once water bath is up to temperature, salt and pepper duck breast, seal in a vaccuum bag, and cook for 45 minutes
After duck breast has been submerged for 45
In the dripping from the turkey breast, combine cherries and balsmic and reduce slightly
Slice breast into ¼" slices, top with cherry glaze and sprinkle with goat cheese
As a lady, Maggie is very fond of seasonal drinks and food. We thought we’d try something with pumpkin. A pumpkin booze milkshake. That’ll get the traffic rolling. We’ll also use $10 ice cream from Jeni’s Ice cream. This post is not sponsored by them. We paid the ten bucks.
I called this guy a ghost pumpkin, but it’s a casper pumpkin. I’m not gonna lie and say that we planned to get a casper, it just looked good at the store. I read that they’re a bit sweeter than normal pumpkin. I donno. We split it in half and scooped out the seeds and strings and broiled the pumpkin for about a half hour.
Then we took the skin off and vac bagged it with cinnamon, star anise, mace, nutmeg, and a bit of maple syrup. It cooked at 85C for an hour and a half.
Freeze the pumpkin and blend, add Jeni’s Whiskey pecan ice cream. Eat the pecans or they’ll make it gritty, unless you blend a lot. Add booze. We did 12oz pumpkin, 6oz ice cream and 3oz bourbon.
I still remember the tune of the Ice Cream man back in my hometown of Des Moines Iowa. We’d tumble down the grassy hill from the pool or sprinkler once the do-da do-das hit our ears. Uncle Al made the treats on his farm, with the milk of his cows and the help of his wife Sue. This isn’t one of his recipes, but I still think of him each time I make them. His deep hearty chuckle, white moustache, round belly, and disgusting yellow teeth. He knew all of us by name, and would save our favorites if he was running low.
