Vanillicious.com – Easy Desserts

Cheesecake with Crumble Topping

In Israel we have a holiday that is being traditionally celebrated by serving dairy foods. I call it the Cheesecake holiday,whereas the official name is Shavuot. I’m really not into religious at all, so I’ll spare you the story behind this holiday. If you really want to know what it’s about, you can always waste your time reading the wikipedia article. I’m more into the foods, and if there’s a cheesecake holiday, then hey, I’m in! Even if the explanation for it is too religious. Also, being able to say “In Israel we have a cheese cake holiday” sounds pretty cool for a middle eastern country.

I’ve been wanting to make this cake for a while now, but never really got to it. Now that Shavuot is approaching, I figured it’s time!  It literally takes a few minutes to prepare the base and crumbs (plus 15 minutes baking), and a couple more to assemble the filling ingredients and whip the cream. So don’t feel intimidated by the relatively lengthy looking instructions.

Some tips before you start:

• The most efficient way to line the dough in the tin: I suggest you line the tin in baking paper, plce the dough on top of it, cover with another baking paper and roll into the tin shape using a rolling pin
• Full fat cream cheese should have 20-30% fats; Low fat cream cheese should have up to 6% fats.
• Using icing sugar while whipping the cream will thicken the whipped cream even more. I would highly recommend not to substitute it with a normal sugar.
• Before spreading the filling, attach stripe(s) of baking paper to the rim of the tin, so the mixture won’t attach to the it. This might destroy the perfect edges of your cake, though I guarantee it will taste the same. The hight of the stripe(s) should be the hight of the tin rim, and in order to attach it to the rim, just wet your hand, move them over the inside of the rim. The the baking paper will then stick to the rim with the help of the water.
• The cake has to stabilize overnight in your fridge. You could also freeze it, but you will have to transfer it to the fridge 3-4 hours before serving. Alternatively, you could leave it on the kitchen counter for 2 hours if the weather allows. It is not recommended for summer days, though.
• Once the crumble has cooled completely, it is advised to keep it in an airtight container and scatter it right before serving. That way the crumble won’t become moisty from the fridge. However, having the leftovers in my fridge for 2 more night didn’t seem to have a negative effect on its freshness.

Happy Cheesecake Holiday!

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Berries Cheesecake

Sometimes it seems like my blog is all about the wonderful creations can be done with berries. Yes, I love berries almost as much as I love vanilla based desserts. I think I still have to make it up for the all the years blueberries were only in the movies, raspberry was only a kind of artificial juice and a name of a famous bunny, starring in a children’s book that used to be very famous somewhere in the Mediterranean. Other berries, by the way, simply didn’t exist. Well, were never known (not to mention grown) in that tiny Mediterranean state. We did have strawberries, though, during our very short wintertime.

I hope this explains all about my berries obsession. There’s another reason the only fruits I bake are berries – hubby. He’s very high-maintenance when it comes to baked fruits, and berries are probably the only acceptable

Today’s dessert is my favourite cake, cheesecake, of course, with an obsessed twist – the berries.

I usually just love the cookies crust. However, when baking this cake I used sweet shortcrust pastry instead, just because I ran out of cookies…  And I say, do whatever you can to have the best possible crust! Oh, and you can add a little bit of melted white chocolate to the crust mixture. Makes thins even more interesting. Can you imagine?! Click here to read up this recipe!

No bake cheesecake

As a young teenager, no bake cheesecakes were a shocking discovery! I got so used to my mom’s amazing (baked) classic cheesecake and couldn’t understand how it was possible not to bake a cheesecake. Not to mention how surprised I was to discover how good they taste.

My first try (at my early teenage years) was a big failure. When I tried to cut the cake into slices, it all collapsed. When I grew older I understood I had to either add gelatine or use fat cream cheese. Back there and then, 9% fat considered to be a very fat cheese. Funny, huh? I had to relocate to Ireland in order to discover 9% fat is very slim; not to mention there was no such thing as mascarpone cheese available!

So now, 15 years older and wiser, I’m sharing another delicious, vanillicious recipe.

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White Chocolate and Mascarpone tartlets

This dessert is very easy to prepare, the outcome looks impressivly sophisticated and tastes wonderful!

There are two phases when preparing the White Chocolate and Mascarpone tarts: 1. preparing the pastry cases 2. preparing the filling

The cases will be baked without the filling and this is called Blind Baking. When baking blind, we need to put some weight over the pastry base, so it won’t puff or rise. This is where the baking beans come for our rescue. You should line the pastry base with baking paper and fill it with baking beans. Baking beans can be either ceramic or dried ones. I usually use red kidney beans as they seem to be the haviest available, relatively cheap and are re-useable.

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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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