Strawberry Cheesecake

Gaby had been sending me pictures of the strawberry cheesecakes she made lately for various occasions, making my mouth water, so in the end I asked her for the recipe and made a strawberry cheesecake myself. Mine is a lighter version of the original and it was a great success with husband and son, so I'm writing down the recipe, as I improvised it yesterday:

INGREDIENTS:

For the biscuit layer 

• 150 g biscuits
• 75 g melted butter 

For the cheese cream layer 

• 100 g cheese cream
• 400 g sour cream
• 50 g milk 
• 120 g sugar
• 2 eggs
• a pinch of salt

For the strawberry layer 

• 500 g strawberries
• 1 pack red cake glaze
• 30 g sugar
• 200 g water 

PREPARATION:

Grind the biscuits, stir in the melted butter and transfer the biscuit mixture into a cake form. Compact the biscuit layer with the bottom of a glass and leave to cool in the fridge for a few minutes.

Meanwhile prepare the batter for the cheese cream layer. Pour it over the biscuit layer and place the cake form in a preheated oven and bake at 175C for one hour. After the cake is baked, leave it to cool completely for a couple of  hours. 

Cut the strawberries into slices and arrange them tile-like on top of the cake. Prepare the cake glaze - mix the powder glaze with the sugar, add the water and cook on the hot plate until it thickens. Leave it to rest for one minute, then spread it on top of the strawberries with the help of a silicon brush. 

Leave the cake to cool in the fridge for a couple of hours or overnight. Serve with coffee and enjoy!

Sewing and Cooking

Yesterday I made my first cheesecake. I've made many cakes and muffins and such but I had never tried my hands at cheesecakes. I followed the recipe of one of my favourite food youtubers - Benedetta. It was a lot of work but quite a success at home and I'll probably make it again, maybe with some modifications (this one came a bit big for my cake dish.)

And my latest finished object - the Burda # 124 3/2013 linen shirt. Back in May 2013 I bought this issue of Burda and planned on sewing a hundred things from it and never got to actually doing it until last week.
The fabric is some fairly thick linen which I had bought with the idea for this shirt last year, together with some suitable thread. The pattern is of average difficulty, with sleeves, patches, a collar with neck facing and it even requires buttonholes.

Because standard Burda patterns are designed for height 168 cm and I'm only 156 cm, I had to modify the pattern. I traced it on transparent kitchen paper, measured myself and calculated that I needed to shorted the shirt above the waist with about 2 cm and 3 cm below the waist. Instructions on Burda site recommend removing 1/3 of the excess length at the level of the sleeve and 2/3 below the sleeve and above the waist:

Then I transferred the modified pieces on brown paper.

This is one of the elements that troubled me most - attaching a collar with neck facing. Burda patterns have very short instructions (the fact that my issue is in German and I don't speak German is another matter :), but I couldn't find any youtube videos for such collars, so I improvised. I think it turned alright, but I wish I knew the right sequence of steps, as it was  a bit tricky.

The elements that I like most about this shirt - the arrow patches.

Although my fabric is not delicate, it is very loosely woven and subject to raveling, so I finished most of my seams as French seams. I also added a button on the inside of the side seams to hide the arrow patch for when I want to wear the shirt straight. And I made all of my buttonholes myself on my sewing machine! I was quite afraid and did have to undo two of them, but they turned OK in the end. Sorry for the crinkles on my shirt, but this linen fabric is impossible to keep ironed.

And a final bite of my strawberry cheesecake :)

Spinach Cake

There's been much talk on a popular Bulgarian forum about a spinach cake and I've been planning to try it for ages. Now, that the season of strawberries is at its peak, seemed just the right time. The amazing thing about this spinach cake, is that it is a sweet cake and the spinach adds the unusual color, but no taste. These are the ingredients I used for my Shrek colored cake:

Ingredients:

• 4 eggs
• 280 g sugar
• 230 g flour
• 10 g baking powder
• 200 g frozen spinach
• 100 g olive oil
• For the filling: 800 sour cream + 80 g sugar
• strawberries

Blend the spinach with the oil. Beat the eggs with the sugar, add the blended spinach and the flour, mixed with the baking powder. Bake in a cake form at 180 C until ready.

Wait for the baked cake to cool down and cut it in half. Remove a handful of crumbs for top decoration (optional).

Spread half of the sweetened sour cream, add halved strawberries (I wish I had added more instead of letting Gaby eat 2/3 of them in advance :)

Decorate the top with the crumbs, imitating grass, and the  strawberries:

Best served cooled after at least 4-6 hours of refrigeration:

These pictures were taken in the evening right after I assembled the cake and the cream was still too wet. The cake held much better form in the morning, as the dampness from the cream had permeated the layers. It's a fairly light, fresh summer cake, but I don't  think I'll be repeating the experiment - though interesting, the green color is actually not so appetizing and I prefer milk based cream fillings such as custard.

Strawberry Muffins

Last night I came up with this idea for a new variety of muffins - to replace the sugar with a jar of strawberry jam and to add a pack of strawberry pudding to the flour for stronger strawberry taste and flavor. Experimenting with muffin recipes turned out to be such fun, now I want to make a new portion with sour creme, lots of cocoa and croquant, just to see what will come out of the oven :)))
But first we have to finish these off :)

The ingredients:

• 120 g flour + a pack of  strawberry pudding (40 g)
• 220 g strawberry jam
• 120 g milk
• 50 g vegetable oil
• 1 pouch of baking powder (10 g)
• 2 eggs
• 80 g raisins

Preparation instructions:

• Stir the eggs, add the oil and the milk.
• Mix the flour with the strawberry  pudding and the baking powder.
• Add the flour mixture to the egg mixture and stir. 
• Add the strawberry jam and the raisins and stir some more.
• Preheat the oven at 180C, while distributing the mixture into the muffin molds.
• Bake for 20-25 min at 180 C.

Serve with milk or coffee and enjoy!