Assam Mandarine Cheesecake with Caramel Sauce for the DBs

Apparently, April is cheesecake month for the DBs since last year we made cheesecake lollipops. The April 2009 challenge is hosted by Jenny from Jenny Bakes. She has chosen Abbey's Infamous Cheesecake as the challenge.
As soon as this went up, I decided I was going to make a saffron and honey cheesecake because I wanted to make something that reminded me of Persian food and growing up in an Iranian household, but by the time I was up against the deadline we were out of saffron (something which rarely but evidently does happen and, with a little one around, getting to the store isn't what it used to be) so I turned to other flavors from my childhood.
Iranians consume several things without moderation, one of them being tea and another citrus fruit. The caramel sauce, while seeming odd, actually came out of the fact that at the end of Iranian meals, one will often be presented with tea and little pieces of caramel to finish the meal. In this instance, the caramel is simply sugar cooked to hard-stage caramel. One is meant to put the piece of caramel in his/her mouth (usually holding it between the teeth) and drink the tea which melts the caramel as it washes over it. Since hard caramel is a little hard to incorporate in a cake of any kind, I chose to go with a caramel sauce instead.
Major Variation: There was only one 200g (7 oz.) container of cream cheese left at the market so I used one container of light cream cheese and a container of mascarpone cheese to balance the fat content and ensure that the cheesecake wouldn't be too thin. It turned out just fine.
The flavor was very subtle so I might try using more tea bags next time and/or letting them steep longer in the cream. The slight mandarine flavor was lovely.

Unfortunately, now that the picture of the whole cheesecake is posted (you should see the time acrobatics involved just to get these pictures up), I'm not sure I have time to do a picture of a slice with the caramel sauce, but I will try. The caramel sauce is in a rather unphotogenic container at the moment so I won't bother taking a picture of that just to have a picture of it.

I'll definitely make the saffron-honey cheesecake, just not right now. Recipe with my variations below. Big thanks to Jenny for choosing something I could somehow manage with my mini-me.

Mes excuses aux lecteurs Français qui ne lisent pas l'Anglais couramment mais j'ai tout juste le temps de publier des billets en une seule langue. Si vous avez des questions sur la recette, n'hésitez pas à m'envoyer un message.

Abbey's Infamous Cheesecake (original recipe - my variations in blue):

Crust:
2 cups / 180 g graham cracker crumbs
1 stick / 4 oz / 115g butter, melted
2 tbsp. / 24 g sugar (Omitted)
1 tsp. vanilla extract (Omitted)

Cheesecake:
3 sticks of cream cheese, 8 oz each (total of 24 oz or 680g) room temperature
1 cup / 210 g sugar (I used about 190g instead)
3 large eggs
1 cup / 8 oz / 250ml heavy cream
4 good quality Assam Tea bags to infuse the cream
3 tbsp. Mandarine juice
Zest of 1 Mandarine
1 tbsp. lemon juice (Omitted)
1 tbsp. vanilla extract (or the innards of a vanilla bean) (Omitted)
1 tbsp liqueur, optional, but choose what will work well with your cheesecake (Omitted)

DIRECTIONS:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (Gas Mark 4 = 180C = Moderate heat). Begin to boil a large pot of water for the water bath.

2. Mix together the crust ingredients and press into your preferred pan. You can press the crust just into the bottom, or up the sides of the pan too - baker's choice. Set crust aside.

3. Combine cream cheese and sugar in the bowl of a stand-mixer (or in a large bowl if using a hand-mixer) and cream together until smooth. Add eggs, one at a time, fully incorporating each before adding the next. Make sure to scrape down the bowl in between each egg. Add heavy cream, vanilla, lemon juice, and alcohol and blend until smooth and creamy.

4. Pour batter into prepared crust and tap the pan on the counter a few times to bring all air bubbles to the surface. Place pan into a larger pan and pour boiling water into the larger pan until halfway up the side of the cheesecake pan. If cheesecake pan is not airtight, cover bottom securely with foil before adding water.

5. Bake 45 to 55 minutes, until it is almost done - this can be hard to judge, but you're looking for the cake to hold together, but still have a lot of jiggle to it in the center. You don't want it to be completely firm at this stage. Close the oven door, turn the heat off, and let rest in the cooling oven for one hour. This lets the cake finish cooking and cool down gently enough so that it won't crack on the top. After one hour, remove cheesecake from oven and lift carefully out of water bath. Let it finish cooling on the counter, and then cover and put in the fridge to chill. Once fully chilled, it is ready to serve.

Pan note: The creator of this recipe used to use a springform pan, but no matter how well she wrapped the thing in tin foil, water would always seep in and make the crust soggy. Now she uses one of those 1-use foil "casserole" shaped pans from the grocery store. They're 8 or 9 inches wide and really deep, and best of all, water-tight. When it comes time to serve, just cut the foil away.

Prep notes: While the actual making of this cheesecake is a minimal time commitment, it does need to bake for almost an hour, cool in the oven for an hour, and chill overnight before it is served. Please plan accordingly!

Homemade with Love - Fait Maison avec Amour

Baby Saffron was born a week ago on the 21st. She's the best thing I've ever made, the whole family is delighted by her arrival, and we all fall a little more in love with her every day. Meanwhile, I am able to eat anything I want again, which is so exciting, and am really looking forward to introducing her to all the foods we eat on a regular basis in this house what with all of our origins mixing together, East and West.
I'm hoping to be back blogging soon, I just have to figure out how to put her down first because I just want to hold her close to me all the time.

A Chocolate Valentine for the DBs

This is going to be short because I don't tend to spend a lot of time at the computer these days since it's not very comfortable for me. I've been neglecting this space mostly because I haven't been eating anything exciting since pretty much everything that I eat is very healthy and very plain so as to minimize common digestive misfortunes of pregnancy which, I'm happy to say, is working pretty well right now. But no matter how much I neglect this place, I usually come back for the last hurrah of the month also known as the Daring Bakers' Challenge.

Fortunately for me and my current fatigue, the challenge this month was very simple. A chocolate Valentino cake and an ice cream of our choice (we were given vanilla ice cream recipes just in case). I can't eat either of those things at the moment, but other souls in this house are happy to partake. Originally, I had all sorts of ideas for what I would do with this challenge since we were free to choose shapes and flavors and things (we were left free to pick the chocolate we would use since this recipe consists simply of chocolate, eggs and butter and the resulting cake would taste exactly like the kind of chocolate we picked), but when push came to shove I was too tired to go with the whole shebang and the little one is getting to feel quite heavy now, so outside of my walks, I minimize the standing around when I can, thus the very simple and very plain endeavors you see here.

I made the cake twice, once for my beloved A.'s birthday a few days ago and then again yesterday. The first time the cake came out quite dense so I decided to make chocolate bars out of it with the help of a little melted chocolate and some cocoa powder, the second time the cake rose and then never deflated in the little cupcake containers I'd decided to bake it in. Both times I made pistachio ice cream to go with it, although the pistachio ice cream that went with the chocolate bar is a middle eastern version which is made without eggs and with mastica which gives it a slightly chewy texture that I just love because that is the texture of Persian ice cream, whereas the ice cream with the little chocolate valentino cupcakes is a normal Western custard recipe. When it's a little more comfortable to hang out here, I will give you the recipe for the Middle Eastern ice cream.
Anyway, that's about all I have to say about that. I apologize for the pictures, even with a tripod it's hard to maneuver around with a big watermelon in front of you, especially when you forget to take your pictures in the daytime! Only 4 more weeks...

The February 2009 challenge is hosted by Wendy of WMPE's blog and Dharm of Dad ~ Baker & Chef.
We have chosen a Chocolate Valentino cake by Chef Wan; a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Dharm and a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Wendy as the challenge.

Chocolate Valentino
Preparation Time: 20 minutes
16 ounces (1 pound) (454 grams) of semisweet chocolate, roughly chopped
½ cup (1 stick) plus 2 tablespoons (146 grams total) of unsalted butter
5 large eggs separated

1. Put chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl and set over a pan of simmering water (the bottom of the bowl should not touch the water) and melt, stirring often.
2. While your chocolate butter mixture is cooling. Butter your pan and line with a parchment circle then butter the parchment.
3. Separate the egg yolks from the egg whites and put into two medium/large bowls.
4. Whip the egg whites in a medium/large grease free bowl until stiff peaks are formed (do not over-whip or the cake will be dry).
5. With the same beater beat the egg yolks together.
6. Add the egg yolks to the cooled chocolate.
7. Fold in 1/3 of the egg whites into the chocolate mixture and follow with remaining 2/3rds. Fold until no white remains without deflating the batter. {link of folding demonstration}
8. Pour batter into prepared pan, the batter should fill the pan 3/4 of the way full, and bake at 375F/190C
9. Bake for 25 minutes until an instant read thermometer reads 140F/60C.
Note – If you do not have an instant read thermometer, the top of the cake will look similar to a brownie and a cake tester will appear wet.
10. Cool cake on a rack for 10 minutes then unmold.

Missed DB Challenge January

Nope, I didn't get around to making tuiles this month.

I'm getting quite big with the little person and having some stomach problems, so food is not my friend at the moment, and since I've made tuiles before, I knew I wouldn't be happy standing in the kitchen burning my fingers shaping them, although I do love them so.

I will definitely make next month's challenge and add some tuiles in there somehow.

For now you can go to our hostesses' blogs, Karen of Bake My Day and Zorra of 1x Umrühren Bitte to see what they've done and all the other Daring Bakers.

Gaston Lenôtre est Mort - Gaston Lenôtre has Died

Sur lemonde.fr: Le Pâtissier Gaston Lenôtre est Mort =(


EN: I just saw this. He died today the 8th of January, 2009, at the age of 88. Obviously, this was going to happen at some point, but I thought I would mention it because for years growing up the best pastries and desserts you could get in Paris were at Lenôtre (his shops were eponymous) and if I remember correctly, when I was little there was only one Lenôtre pastry shop in all of Paris and now there are about twelve or fourteen I think.
Anyway, when I was little, because there was only one shop, it was a rare treat to get a pastry from Lenôtre, and as a teenager my favorite cake and the one I would always ask for for my birthday was his Charlotte Cécile which is a chocolate and vanilla Charlotte. I'm going to find a copy of his original book and make it as a tribute (I'd love to get my hands on the original book anyway as it went in print in 1975 - when I was born - and as you can imagine, has become quite difficult to find). He changed the face of French pastry by favoring lighter fillings and mousses and great chefs such as Pierre Hermé and Alain Ducasse were trained in his kitchen.

R.I.P. Gaston Lenôtre: 1920-2008. Thank you for making all of our lives infinitely sweeter.