Vanillicious.com – Easy Desserts

Classic Cheesecake

Ever since I can remember, my mom used to make her famous cheesecake and this is the very first cake I’ve ever had. Our whole family is crazy about cheesecakes in general and hers in particular. My friends used to come over the weekends, asking whether my mom baked a cheesecake, or whether we have some cheesecake left from the weekend (Yeah, I sometime had the feeling I wasn’t the main reason for their visit, haha).

Few months ago my mom invited some of my (childhood) friends for dinner. They agreed to come only if she’s going to prepare her famous cheesecake for dessert.

The following recipe is not her famous cheesecake, but a very similar one. Though the texture of my cake and hers are completely different, since we live in different countries hence different cheeses. I was using low fat (6%) cream cheese while preparing the cake, available in almost every supermarket across europe (Philadelphia type of cheese). The texture of the cake is very creamy inside. Divine!

Back to my childhood cheesecakes, I remember sometimes the cake just sank after taken out of the oven. Before I baked my first cheesecake, I was searching for tips on how to keep my cheesecake tall and firm and prevent it from sinking. Here are the 2 tricks I put into practice and I must say I was very happy to discover they did the job:

(1) Place a tin with hot water at the bottom of the oven or place the cake tin inside a wider round tin (such as 28c one)

(2) Bake the cake in 220c for the first 5 minutes, then lower the temperature to 160c and bake for another hour.

Good luck!

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Berries Purée

To my opinion, Berries Purée can be a great addition to almost any dessert and it’s super easy to prepare. You also get to choose your favourite berries to star it. For this recipe, I think the blackberries, raspberries, blackcurrant and redcurrants blend very well together. Strawberries can be a dded as well.

In order to prepare the berries purée I use a food processor. If you don’t have one, you can use a stick blender. Otherwise, purée fruits by hand or fork (though it’ll take a little more effort and time). The following recipe will make approximately 200ml purée. I recommend to gradually add the sugar, to taste.

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Raspberry Blondies

Basically, Blondies are white chocolate brownies. So why not adding some raspberries, another favourite ingredient of mine, and have a feast of tastes?

I learned that this is the ultimate potluck solution, everybody’s satisfaction is guarantied! This is no surprise, though, knowing how perfectly the sweetness of the white chocolate and sourness of the raspberries combine.

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Chocolate cake

I never really liked milk and dark chocolate (you already know I’m a white chocolate person), so chocolate cakes were never my thing. Until I tried my mom’s chocolate cake for the first time two months ago. Everybody were enjoying her chocolate cake that afternoon. Everybody except me, the cake lover. As you know, difficult times call for difficult measures, so I decided the least I could do is try. I loved it! It was surprisingly delicious and very easy to prepare.

I baked the cake last friday for the first time and it was a big success. By monday morning there was non left! This is a 2-persons household and we had no guests this weekend. Now you do the math.

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