Easy cheesecake :D

4 comments   |   Category: Baking, Desserts, Home Cooking   |   Posted by: evane

Cheesecake is my mum’s favourite cake so we researched a few recipes and combined the ones we liked best (the one on the Philly cream cheese box and the one from King Arthur Flour). We wanted something that was easy and fool-proof. Here’s the result.

CRUST

200g (half a box, or about 13 biscuits) McVitie’s digestive biscuits, crushed.
65g butter, melted.

FILLING

375g (one and a half 250g blocks) cream cheese, softened.
3 large eggs
9/10 cup castor sugar
1.5 teaspoons vanilla extract (very optional)

TOPPING
Anything you want! For example:

• 1 can of blueberries, drained.
• 300g frozen berries, defrosted. If using raspberries, sweeten with 2-3 tbs of sugar. If using fresh raspberries, top with a shower of icing sugar.
• Can also be topped with drizzles of melted dark chocolate or sprigs of mint

1. Combine biscuit crumbs with butter then press into a 9″ flan pan (I used a Pyrex flan pan, great for serving in) or tin. Chill.

2. Beat the cream cheese with the sugar till smooth, then add eggs. Pour into prepared base and bake at 170 degrees for 40 minutes.

3. Top with fruit, pushing it slightly into the still hot cheesecake. Cool and serve. Alternatively, you could top the filling with the fruit before baking to cook the fruit through.

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General Tso's Chicken

4 comments   |   Category: Home Cooking   |   Posted by: evane

I was thinking of a Szechuan style spicy dish for my Chinese shebang dinner for Father’s Day. My mother (who has awesome timing) sent me a link for a recipe for General Tso’s Chicken shortly after. This recipe is based on that recipe, which originally appeared in The Chinese Kitchen by Eileen Yin-Fei Lo.

I’ve added Szechuan peppers, which are wonderfully piquant and give a nice zing, as well as cashews. I also didn’t have hoisin sauce so I just used a mixture of 50/50 oyster sauce and plum sauce. It worked out well. It was sooooooooooo good. I was especially impressed by the cornstarch marinade. It helped to seal in the moisture in the meat wonderfully, and displayed impressive sticking power to the breadcrumbs. More stuckage = less random burnt breadcrumbs floating in your oil!

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Buttery fan bread

4 comments   |   Category: Baking, Home Cooking   |   Posted by: evane

Some time ago, I twittered a photo of some freshly baked butter bread. A Twitter user requested the recipe (sorry I can’t remember your name, and I can’t seem to find your tweet). So here it is!

This is a great recipe because a) the dough is sweet and buttery and yummy and b)The slices peel easily off the ‘muffin’ which is very convenient and pretty cool too.

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