helblonde | Mmm... cheesecake (Reply)

I tried the cheesecake recipe from the Cake Bible that I got for 12th night (thanks guys) for

shutt3rg33k's party. This definitely falls into the "why did I think this would be harder?" category. The recipe has a good flavor (enhanced by my raspberry sauce: raspberries, sugar, water; simmer, strain), but wasn't as firm as I would like. Some experimentation is clearly called for. I'll probably start by cutting the sour cream and adding an egg.

Other baking didn't go quite as planned. I tried to make the wheat free chocolate cake that I made for

callistotoni's birthday a couple of years ago (the bears fishing in the river cake), but it ended up as a molten lava cake. I know what went wrong, but it was frustrating to have a recipe that I have made successfully before fail completely. I ended up making a wheaten chocolate cake instead. Put together with the cheesecake and with a frosting Firefly space ship and viola: Serenity flies away from a moon. I always suspected space was made out of dark chocolate. Once again, I failed to get a picture of the cake.

Also in the realm of why did I think this would be harder, I made baklava. That was good fun. And yummy.

Other things to do again:
+ Baked brie, of course. It's always a favorite, and I had just enough filo left from the baklava that I didn't need to make a crust.
+ The warm meat and cheese wraps - easy to make ahead: lavash bread from TJ's, sliced provalone or jarlsberg, sliced ham or turkey - roll up, wrap in foil, (refrigerate,) bake 15 min at 400F, slice and serve.
+ Smoked salmon en croute. Rediculously easy, but this earns tons of extra credit with folks.
+ Kiwi stars - I don't know that anyone noticed, but I thought they were fun and kept with the Firefly theme (yes, strawberries would have been appropriate, too). Also easy: peel the kiwi, run a small star cookie cutter through the fruit, slice crosswise.
+ fruit, veggies, cheese, blah, blah, blah...

The true sign of successful party cooking: I never had to refill the chip bowl. Not even with the blue ones.