March 28, 2012

Eggless Chocolate Cake with Strawberry+Cream Filling

Believe it or not, this is an egg-less cake. No egg, no butter yet the cake is still so moist and delicious. :) The recipe is adapted from Passionate About Baking. TQ Deeba for sharing this lovely recipe!
Oh please excuse the messy look. I didn't trim the cake edges...why waste it?  Home made are supposed to look like that :P
Bought two quarts of strawberry and I used all of it for the filling. Love the strawberry compote to bits! {no pic..sorry}
To date, I believed this is the most delicious chocolate layer cake I've ever made. The strawberry filling really took this cake to the whole new level. 
 We didn't eat cake a lot, but we loved this cake so much and had two or three slices at one go. Even Adam had it twice (Read: He's not into chocolate).
 I had great time making this cake. And there's still half of it in the fridge ;) 

March 21, 2012

Eggless No Baked Mango Cheesecake


Yerp..I bought more mangoes and most desserts I made recently are based on them. You name it, mango pudding, god knows how many rounds of Thai sticky rice with mango, mango pound cake, and mango custard.. If it wasn't the cough I'm having right now, I would have turned some to mango sorbet. (I'm this close (showing a small gap between my thumb and index finger) to make them) 

I'd to admit that I'm not the biggest fan of cheesecake, but I do eat them once in a while, and that's why I took such a long time to make one. The last cheesecake I did was the Mahattan cheesecake, and they lasted like forever in my fridge. 

I browsed Foodgawker and stumbled on this pretty mango cheesecake in a cup by Edible Garden. The recipe is based on hers, but I made 'zebra patterns' on the middle part. Okay, barely a zebra pattern. I made one big 8' cheesecake with a nice thought of distributing some to my neighbors. Everything was smooth until I sliced the cake. The crust. It crumbled :( Cit. The thought of passing this 5/10 rated cheesecake to my neighbors has to hold.

You see, sigh.. I wanted to make a thick base, so I added more Marie biscuits. And of course I added more melted butter. Apparently the butter is not enough...hmmm I always had no luck with the base part. Sobs. It was either too hard or too crumbly. I never got it right... Yet.

Anyway, it still good and most importantly, edible..(throwing a cheesecake? are you nuts?) The top and middle layer is really really tasty...top notch. The mango flavor is very prominent and I must say anything with mango is two thumbs up! :D


Eggless No-Bake Mango Cheesecake Recipe
Based on Edible Garden's recipe

What you'll need:
Cream cheese - 1 block (250gm, Philadelphia Cream Cheese)
Cream - 170 gm (I used Nestle)
Sugar - Half a cup
Mango puree - 3/4 of a cup
Gelatine - 1 Tbsp
Hot Water - 1/4 cup
Graham cracker crumbs - 1.5 to 2 cups (Depending on how thick you want the base to be)
Unsalted butter, melted - 75 gm (about 1/3 of a cup)

Way to do it:

1. Whiz the graham crackers in a food processor. Add melted butter and whiz again until the mixture comes together. Press into the bottom of an 8" springform pan that's lined with aluminium foil or use individual glasses. Refrigerate while preparing the rest of the cheesecake.

2. Mix the cream cheese, cream, and sugar in a bowl until well combined. You can do it by hand or use low speed on your Kitchenaid. An electric beater is not needed.

3. Add the gelatine to the hot water and stir till it completely dissolves. Add the mango puree and stir well. Keep half of this mixture aside and add the rest to the cream cheese mixture. Stir gently until well combined.

4. Pour on top of the graham cracker base. Return to fridge for another 10-30 mins. (RC Note: As for my case, I divided the gelatine and the cheese mixture into two. Pour half of the mango puree on one side and stir in the half gelatine. Add the rest of the gelatine into the next mixture. Alternate them to get the so called zebra pattern hihi)

5. Pour the mango mixture as the third layer. Do this gently so that the layers don't combine. If you use a springform pan, the top layer will be much thinner, as it should be.

6. Refrigerate overnight and get ready to serve a yummy dessert at your party that can be prepared well in advance!

March 9, 2012

Random Friday

Just a short update to keep this blog alive he he 
Have a nice weekend folks!