Now that I'm free of the tethers of The Haven and commercial baking, with the occasional exception like the wedding in the previous post, my posts will primarily focus on the individual cheesecakes that I make for family and friend events. I hope that this more personal level of post will be enjoyable. Personally I like it better because I get to focus on developing flavors rather than the rigors of commercial baking in quantity.
Our friends Emily and Adam throw a 4th of July party every year, and as is typical with me, I wanted to take a cheesecake. I was trying to decide on which flavor of cheesecake I would like to take. When it isn't a requested flavor I prefer to try things that I haven't tried before... to experiment. In the past I had taken a "banana split" cheesecake to this party (banana cheesecake with I think an Oreo crust, and topped with strawberry, hot fudge, whipped cream, and nuts) and I wanted a fun, summer-y flavor for this time as well.
I decided to do a cheesecake interpretation of Strawberry Shortcake. I consulted my favorite source for recipes, the cookbook from Cook's Illustrated/America's Test Kitchen and found a good recipe for shortcake. I made the shortcake pressed into a 9" springform and baked it. It pulled away from the sides and had a domed top, but I cut the top off and it made a pretty good crust. I then made a crust-less vanilla-bean cheesecake (this is my favorite and "signature" flavor) using my standard recipe. I sliced up a bunch of strawberries and sweetened them with raw sugar. Personally for berries I like the more caramel flavor of sugar in the raw to table sugar. I put a layer of sliced strawberries down on the shortcake crust, put the cheesecake on top of that, covered the top of the cheesecake with berries and the juice and finished it off by using the top of the shortbread that we had cut off as a topper!
I think it turned out looking great and even better, everyone loved it! The slices we cut were a little much, but I think that by spooning more berries on top and adding some whipped cream (sorry, I cheated and used a can!) it balanced everything out. Once again, most of the plates were left nice and clean !
I'll try to keep up the cheesecake tips as much as I can. In this case I have a tip that pertains to this story. When the shortbread came out of the oven I noted that it had pulled away from the sides of the pan, making it slightly smaller than the cheesecake round that would go on top of it. Some may have wanted to re-bake it or something, but when making a cheesecake in pieces, things like this are going to happen, and in the end as you can see, it looks just fine. Actually, the slight differences in the sizes made it look a bit more rustic and home-made which I think is perfect for the 4th of July!
Tonight I'm baking up my cheesecake for Thanksgiving so stay tuned for the next post!
Our friends Emily and Adam throw a 4th of July party every year, and as is typical with me, I wanted to take a cheesecake. I was trying to decide on which flavor of cheesecake I would like to take. When it isn't a requested flavor I prefer to try things that I haven't tried before... to experiment. In the past I had taken a "banana split" cheesecake to this party (banana cheesecake with I think an Oreo crust, and topped with strawberry, hot fudge, whipped cream, and nuts) and I wanted a fun, summer-y flavor for this time as well.
I decided to do a cheesecake interpretation of Strawberry Shortcake. I consulted my favorite source for recipes, the cookbook from Cook's Illustrated/America's Test Kitchen and found a good recipe for shortcake. I made the shortcake pressed into a 9" springform and baked it. It pulled away from the sides and had a domed top, but I cut the top off and it made a pretty good crust. I then made a crust-less vanilla-bean cheesecake (this is my favorite and "signature" flavor) using my standard recipe. I sliced up a bunch of strawberries and sweetened them with raw sugar. Personally for berries I like the more caramel flavor of sugar in the raw to table sugar. I put a layer of sliced strawberries down on the shortcake crust, put the cheesecake on top of that, covered the top of the cheesecake with berries and the juice and finished it off by using the top of the shortbread that we had cut off as a topper!
 |
| Strawberry Short-Cheesecake |
I'll try to keep up the cheesecake tips as much as I can. In this case I have a tip that pertains to this story. When the shortbread came out of the oven I noted that it had pulled away from the sides of the pan, making it slightly smaller than the cheesecake round that would go on top of it. Some may have wanted to re-bake it or something, but when making a cheesecake in pieces, things like this are going to happen, and in the end as you can see, it looks just fine. Actually, the slight differences in the sizes made it look a bit more rustic and home-made which I think is perfect for the 4th of July!
Tonight I'm baking up my cheesecake for Thanksgiving so stay tuned for the next post!
No comments:
Post a Comment