Luscious Lemon Cheesecake

Happy December, 9th.

Today was my work pot-luck party! Can you say food baby? There were sooo many good dishes there, I ate way too much (couldn't help myself).... and we also exchanged secret santa presents! Emily, my GEM partner in crime, got me and obviously bought me some beautiful ornaments that match my "christmas tree scheme" I've been ranting about to her for weeks. They're these pretty glass balls with white feathers inside and silver snowflakes on the outside. SO. PERFECT.

But back to the food. After careful contemplation, and changing my mind about eight times, I decided on cheesecake as the best plate to bring. What kind of cheesecake? Lemon. The sweetness of the custardy cheese filling with the tart lemon curd are a match made in heaven. Believe me.... I had two pieces, and am STILL eating it (there's not much left) so if anyone wants a fail-proof perfect cheesecake recipe for the holidays, this is it.

Ingredients

Crust
1 1/3 cup graham crumbs
1/3 cup sugar
6 tbsp butter, melted
1/8 tsp salt

Filling
3 eight-oz packages cream cheese, softened
1 cup sugar
3 large eggs
3/4 cup sour cream
1 tsp vanilla
about 1 cup lemon curd (this you can make homemade or buy it in the store- i bought it this time)


Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350*F. Mix crumbs, sugar, salt, and melted butter in a bowl, and press into a 9-inch spring-form pan. Bake for 10 minutes. Remove and set on a wire rack to cool, and lower the oven temperature to 300*F.

2. Beat cream cheese and sugar together in a large mixing bowl.
3. Add the eggs, one at a time, until all are incorporated into the cream cheese mixture.
4. Mix in sour cream and vanilla.
5. Pour filling into the pan on top of the prepared crust.
6. Using a spoon, dollop the lemon curd all over the top of the filling, and use a knife to swirl it around until its spread out well.
7. Bake (in oven which has been turned down to 300*F) for 50-60 minutes. The centre may still be a bit wobbly when you take it out, but it will firm up.
8. Set on cooling rack to cool for 30 minutes before placing in the fridge. Serve cool.

Strawberry Whipped Cream

Speaking of uses for pomegranates....

Whipped cream, whipped with strawberry Nesquick powder :) Sprinkled with pomegranates. Yum.

White Veggie Lasagna

Ever feel like the comfort food that is lasagna?

Make one up. No need for a recipe. Be creative. Layer noodles...or zucchini or eggplant as the noodles, add a tomato sauce (or another kind if you'd prefer! Pesto? White sauce?), add any of your favourite chopped up veggies, spices, and a ton of cheese, and you've got yourself a perfect dish.

In this, I used a homemade white sauce with garlic and extra old cheese, spinach, chopped onions, mushrooms, zucchini and roasted red peppers and lots of basil.

Pomegranates

Long time no post.

It's been the longest ever since a post, and I have to say, I'm blaming this one on applications. The work for grad school starts in your application, I swear. But, I'm almost done!

Five schools.
Four in the USA.
One in Canada.
Zero motivation left. :) Just kidding, there's a little.

As busy as they've kept me, I've also been kept busy by a new job. It ain't easy working ~50 hours a week, but I like being busy. I've also started hitting a gym a few times a week and I'm HALF done my christmas shopping, I am happy to report. But, aside from all of this overwhelming news, I'm happy to report I have been cooking and baking just as much as always (just not reporting it as often, evidently.)

I made my first cupcake order and I brought cupcakes in for my first staff meeting at the new job (which I love, by the way, you girls are the best). So on this snowy, frigid (ok I'm exaggerating... freezing for November) Saturday, I thought it was about time I gave you all an update, as well as this lil' blog.

I hope to continue posting recipes, more often than not. Stay tuned for Christmas cooking/baking/brewing.... (yes, brewing)... and in the meantime, here's a beautiful fall food to tie you over...

Pomegranates are in season.

 Ever thought about how to remove those seeds? I saw a contraption today that somehow helped you de-seed them? It cost $10.00. You could try that, or you could try this trick for free...

 Pomegranate seeds sink. The pulp floats. Nice coincidence eh?

 What you're left with, from only one pomegranate.

 And what, you ask, do you do with pomegranate? Well, besides the countless toppings you could use it for (think: mouse, cheesecake), and the smoothies you could blend it into, or just eating it plain, you can make salad. Pomegranate is perfect because it gives you these little bursts of sweetness in an otherwise savoury dish.

Voila. This contains: Quinoa, spinach, roasted butternut squash, pomegranate seeds, sunflower seeds, crumbled feta cheese & pear and blue cheese dressing.

Happy cooking.

Apple Chimichangas

Good evening, blog readers. This one is from Thanksgiving weekend, so I'm a bit late posting it, as usual. The past couple years I've attempted to bring a unique desert to Thanksgiving dinner. Last year I brought carrot cake cupcakes with cream cheese icing (they were SO good), and this year I was a little braver. I decided to make apple chimichangas. I hear you asking "apple-what?".. well, a chimichanga is a Mexican dish that is essentially a deep fried burrito. So you can only imagine what an apple chimichanga is like. Filled with apples, deep fried. My pal, Kirk, suggested adding a maple cream cheese inside, which I did. Thus... apple pie filling (homemade), maple syrup beat with cream cheese, deep fried in small flour tortillas, rolled in cinnamon and sugar, and then drizzled with caramel.

RECIPE!!
I found the original recipe here. I added a twist with cream cheese & maple syrup.

Apple Filling

4 apples, chopped (I used macintosh)
1 1/2 cups water
1/4 cup cornstarch
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
1 tbsp lemon juice

Chimichangas
8-10 small tortillas
1/2 cup sugar
1 tbsp sugar
oil for frying (I used vegetable oil)

Optional:
1 brick cream cheese
1/3 cup maple syrup

Combine the water, cornstarch, sugar, cinnamon, salt and lemon juice in a medium saucepan and bring to a boil. Cook for approximately 3 min, or til the mixture becomes very thick (this is key.... may want to sprinkle a bit more cornstarch in if its not very thick)

Add the chopped apples and reduce to a simmer. Allow to simmer until apples become tender (about 10 min)... then allow to cool (also pretty crucial, could even do it the night before)

Mix the sugar and cinnamon together in a shallow large dish. Spoon apple pie filling (& cream cheese mixture) onto a tortilla (the bottom 1/3 of the tortilla), then..fold the end over the mixture, fold in both sides, and roll up the rest, being careful not to let much seep out the sides.

Meanwhile, heat a skillet with about 1/2 an inch of oil for frying. Once the oil is hot (test by dropping something in to simmer, such as a piece of tortilla or apple piece), start frying the pre-cooked chimichangas. Cook until golden brown (approx. 30 seconds on each side)

Once fried, remove and immediately roll the chimichanga in the sugar & cinnamon mixture. Set aside.

If serving immediately: drizzle with caramel sauce (homemade or in my case, store-bought) and ice cream :)

If serving later: re-heat in oven for about 5 minutes at 300*F.

Veggie Pot Pies

This post should have been up a week ago! But it's not too late! I've been craving a lot of vegetables lately. I wanted some sort of comfort food like veggie pot pie or some sort of veggie version of shepherds pie. I went with the pot pie option, since it's something I've never done. It's relatively simple, especially if you use puff pastry!

Here's what I did:

Ingredients
A good giant pot full of:
Leeks
Celery
Carrots
Potatoes
Onion
2 cups of veggie stock
Dash of cream (optional)
3 tbp flour]
1 pckg of frozen puff pastry

4 small-to-medium sized ramekins

Preheat oven to 400*F.
In a large pot, cook the leeks and onion until they become fragrant and transparent, add in the rest of the chopped veggies you selected. Cook over medium heat for about 6 minutes.  Sprinkle with the flour, and stir to coat. Cook for another 2-3 minutes. Add the stock (and cream) and bring to a simmer for another 5-10 minutes.

Roll out defrosted puff pastry and cut out little circles/squares. Fill each ramekin with veggies and seal it all in with the puff pastry dough! Bake for about 15 minutes, or until pastry is golden brown. Yummers.

Autumn Quinoa Salad

Man, I'm getting lazy with these posts. I've made so much but haven't documented it! Tonight I was feeling a bit ambitious and decided to rip off Bridgehead's roasted squash quinoa salad (plus I made it better). It's really good, but could use some more squash! Next time, I double the amount.


Ingredients
A package of cooked quinoa
Chopped & roasted butternut squash
Fried apple chunks
A good dose of dried cranberries
Feta cheese
Ribbons of basil
A shake of thyme
Handful of sunflower seeds
A bit of caramelized onion
Drizzle of olive oil
...Love.

Mix all that good shit up.