I {HEART} Baking

We finally found a place :) it just needs some touch ups and we'll be moving in a couple of weeks.
Being back in the city has his ups, like I can go back to baking and posting recipes, YAY!
It was my mother in law's birthday and I decided to make her something special: Caramel Chocolate Macadamian Cheesecake!
Warning: Food Porn Ahead... Dont say I didnt warn you!

First get yourself some Oreos because we are making a crust...


I used 36 Oreos.


Crush them :) you could use a close ziploc bag or a potato masher like I did!



Go ahead and melt one stick of butter.

And add to the crushed Oreos...

use those hands like I did... dont forget to clean them first!

Press the Oreo-butter mix to your pan.
I did 3 small, but you can also do 1 large!

Measure 14oz of wrapped caramel.
it is a little bit less than one pound.

Put in a saucepan, and melt this babies, with 2 tablespoon of milk.

At this point you want to lick that spoon but DONT, it is HOT!

Trust me I know this... I tried :p
You can buy premade Caramel sauce, but this stuff taste wayyyy better!

Go find some Macadamia Nuts Brittle, if you cant find it use plain macadamia.

Crush them a little.

Add them to your Oreo crust, but save a little for deco.

And pour some caramel.I know you feel like you can eat them just like that, they look yummy, but wait, it gets better and better!

Let's make the cheesecake batter.You'll need two 8oz. Cream Cheese.Mix well.

Add two eggs.

Two tablespoons of lemon juice.

1 cup of sugar.

1 tablespoon of vanilla and 1 teaspoon of almond extract.

When it is well combined pour batter over your crust.

Bake in preheated oven for 30 minutes at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Let them cool inside your turned off oven, without opening the door until the oven is completly cooled down. This is the key for smooth looking cheesecakes.

While they are cooling, get some milk chocolate chips.
Melt them in a waterbath.


Pour caramel and melted chocolate over your cheesecakes.

For deco I did one with crushed Macadamia Nuts Brittle...

And the other two with crushed Oreos.

This were like heaven on a bite. SOOOOO GOOD!!!!Everyone loved them!

Go make some and thank me latter :) ENJOY!

Cheesecake Deco!!

If, like me, you have 0% art in you (because God decided it was better to throw all those good genes to your sister), and you want to decorate a cheesecake, FOLLOW ME!!

If you CAN make BEAUTIFUL creations with your food, just ignore the rest of the post, move on and lets pretend that this never happened!

So for the follower :) I did some cheesecakes two days ago and decided I'd try making it "pretty", I just used my always to go to cheesecake recipe, and did two normal size ones.

To make sure you can take your cake out of the pan without loosing its shape, just line the inside of your pie pan with some aluminium foil and it wont get stuck, it works great. For the first one I jut put some Cherry pie filling on top.

For the second one I went out of my comfort zone and decided to make the toping (jam), I bought some beautiful fresh strawberries :)

The recipe is really simple:

2 pounds fresh strawberries
4 cups white sugar
1/4 cup lemon juice

Crush strawberries until you have 4 cups of mashed berry. Mix together the strawberries, sugar, and lemon juice. Stir over low heat until the sugar is dissolved. Increase heat to high, and bring the mixture to a full boil. Boil, stirring often, until the mixture reaches a jam consistency.

I saved the top part (with the leaves), to use as deco, I also sliced a couple of them to use as deco too :)

This is how it turned out:Bayo though it was cute, not like he has a choice, lol, but some other people said the same, you can have a way better looking result than this one, so again, this is for the non artsy ones :)
You can also do the same for the Mini Cheesecakes, in my opinion they look even better!!

I {HEART} Cooking - Mini Cheesecakes

I dont want to turn this into a food/recipe blog, but I just realized that I've found my passion, allow me to explain, everytime someone would ask me: what's your hobby or what do you like doing?, I would end up with a bunch of answers that are things I like but not THAT much; for some time now I've notice how much I LOVE cooking and trying out new recipes, and now that I think about I've always had, I just didnt know how much :)

This blog is a journey of our life together, but everytime I try or think of some good recipe you bet it will be here :)

Now about the actual recipe, I've always wanted to do cheesecakes, but I was afraid of them, silly I know, I found this recipe and was finally brave enough to give it a try, plus they are small and cute and nothing is better than that ;P

My mother in law is a cheesecake junkie, so I decided to make this for her, and when she saw them she was so happy, but even more after she tried them; my brother in law who is very picky also loved them; this is a keeper for me, they are beautiful and yummy!!! I will be making them a LOT!!!!

Ingredients
12 vanilla wafers
2 (8 ounce) packages cream cheese, softened
2 eggs
2 tablespoons lemon juice
3/4 cup white sugar
1 (21 ounce) can of pie filling
Directions
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
2. Line muffin tins with 12 paper baking cups. Place a vanilla wafer in each one.
3. In a medium mixing bowl beat cream cheese until fluffy. Add eggs, lemon juice, and sugar. Beat until smooth and thoroughly combined.
4. Fill each baking cup with cream cheese mixture.
5. Bake in preheated oven for 15 to 17 minutes. Let them cool. Top with fruit pie filling just prior to serving.

I wanted to do it with strawberries so I bought 1 can of strawberries in syrup, and blended them with half the liquid and 1 tablespoon of sugar (next time I will leave some of the fruits for deco).

When I saw this colorful baking cups I knew I HAD to have them :) I took the picture with one without the topping so you would know how they look like.