Caramel apple cheesecake

Cheesecake is basically my favourite dessert, and also one of my favourite things to bake.

Over the years I’ve been making this recipe, I’ve adapted and tweaked it to what I think is cheesecake perfection – although of course that depends on your personal cheesecake preference!

I know most people prefer a biscuit base, but I like a sponge base and that’s what I’ve used here. It’s an easy recipe, but quite time consuming – it’s best done over 2 days if you have the time.

The basic cheesecake will suit any number of toppings, and is equally delicious plain, but as I had a large bag of apples waiting to be used, I went for caramel apple.

It’s insanely calorific, and a bit pricey to make, but well worth it for a special occasion, or just if you need some indulgence!

Caramel Apple Cheesecake:

For the sponge base:

• 65g butter
• 65g caster sugar
• 4tbsp cornflour
• 1 egg
• 65g self raising flour
• 1tsp baking powder

Line a 9″ springform tin with baking paper, and grease the paper and sides of the tin. Beat together the butter and sugar until creamy, then beat in the egg and fold in the flour and baking powder until combined. Spread into the tin and bake at 180 for about 20 minutes, until golden and springy.

For the cheesecake:

• 900g full-fat cream cheese
• 150g caster sugar
• 3 medium eggs
• zest and juice of a lemon
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 375ml double cream

Beat the cream cheese to soften, then add in the sugar and cornflour and beat until well combined. Add in the eggs one at a time, then add the lemon zest, juice and vanilla extract. Finally, fold in the cream, until it’s mixed in well. It should be a fairly liquid consistency.

Remove the sponge from the tin when cooled, grease the sides of the tin and put the sponge back (with the paper still on the bottom). Pour the cheesecake mixture on top, and bake at 180 degrees for 15 minutes. When you are pre-heating the oven, leave a baking tray at the bottom to heat up, then when you put the cheesecake in pour a couple of centimetres of hot water into the tray, to make the oven nice and steamy.

After the first 15 minutes of baking, turn the heat down to 110 degrees, and bake for a further hour and a half. When the time is up, the cheesecake should be set but still have a bit of a wobble in the centre. Turn the heat off, but leave the cheesecake in the oven to cool for at least 3 hours, when it can be transferred to the fridge to chill overnight.

For the caramel apples:

• 3-4 apples, peeled, cored and chopped into wedges
• 1tbsp butter
• 1/3 cup caster sugar
• 1/3 cup brown or muscovado sugar

Heat the butter in a saucepan until melted, then add in the sugars. Stir until dissolved and bubbling, then add in the apples. When the apples are starting to soften, remove from the saucepan and set aside. Keep cooking the sugar and butter mix until it becomes a thick syrup, then stir into the apples.

To assemble the cheesecake, run a knife around the edge of the cheesecake and remove the side of the tin. Cover a plate with clingfilm, then turn the cheesecake upside down on to it. Take the paper of the bottom of the sponge, then flip back onto a cake board or whatever you want to serve it on. When the apples are cooled, spoon on top of the cheesecake and serve!

Cinnamon rolls – Fresh From the Oven

As much as I love to bake, yeasted products are not my forte.

I’ve only started baking my own bread in the past year, and to be honest I just don’t find it as exciting as sweet baking so I don’t do it as often.

I’ve decided that in order to be a more rounded baker, I need to focus a little more effort on breads and yeasted goods. For that reason, this month I joined Fresh From The Oven, a blogging group baking their way through the world of breads, one loaf at a time.

The October challenge was cinnamon rolls – a nice easy one to ease me into it!?!

I don’t have a clue what I’m doing with sweet yeasted rolls, so I followed the recipe to the letter, apart from substituting sultanas for apples as i had a glut to use up.

Every stage of the process was completely new to me, and as with all breads it was rather time consuming – but well worth the effort!

The icing on top is a stroke of genius – they make the rolls sticky, sweet and moist, and help to keep them fresher for longer.

All in all, I think that for my first Fresh From The Oven challenge I did a pretty good job – the photos don’t do them justice!

You can find the original recipe for cinnamon rolls at Things We Make - give it a go!

No-bake chocolate oat bars

I don’t know if it shows from reading this blog, but a lot of things I make involve  ’bars’, chocolate and/or oats.

The reason for this is the friendly pony’s need for sustenance at work, in the form of something sweet, easy to eat, and that won’t get destroyed by being carried around in a bag all day.

These bars are absolutely perfect for that, as in addition to having everything mentioned above, they are also unbelievably simple to make!

Essentially, they are flapjacks that don’t need baking, with a nutty chocolate mixture spread on top – laden with calories, just what the greedy friendly pony likes.

No bake chocolate oat bars (adapted from Gingerbread Bagels):

• 1/2 cup packed muscovado sugar
• 3/4 cup butter
• 3 cups rolled oats
• 75g dark chocolate
• 1/3 cup peanut butter
• 1/3 cup Nutella

Line an 8×8″ square tin with baking paper, no need to grease. Heat the butter and sugar together over a low heat until the butter has melted. Stir in the oats and cook for a further 4-5 minutes. Spread the mixture into the tin and flatten down with a wooden spoon or bottom of a measuring cup.

Break up the chocolate and place in a bowl with the peanut butter and Nutella (the original recipe uses just peanut butter, but I didn’t have enough which is why I went for half and half – peanut butter on it’s own or Nutella on it’s own would both work fine!) Microwave in 15 second bursts, stirring in between, until the chocolate has just melted – be careful not to let it burn! Pour onto the oaty base, then chill in the fridge for at least 3 hours before slicing into bars.

Chilli-chocolate-orange torte

I had quite a lot of difficulty deciding what to name this cake. Firstly, the ingredients – chilli-chocolate-orange? chilli-orange-chocolate? chocolate-chilli-orange? Such dilemmas.

Then there’s the fact that what started out as a truffle torte deviated from the recipe quite a bit – my slightly over enthusiastic whipping of the cream turned the texture more mouse-like, and my fears about it setting prompted me to make a sponge base so I knew I’d actually be able to serve it.

I’m sticking with torte, as ‘chilli-chocolate-orange-sort-of-torte-mouse-cake’ would be a bit too much of a mouthful – but forget that, because what really matters here is the flavour.

This month’s We Should Cocoa challenge, hosted by Choclette at the Chocolate Log Blog, features chilli, and was the push I needed to experiment with the classic combination.

I considered quite a few options, but didn’t really fancy a sponge cake so settled on a torte. Although chilli and chocolate is great as a flavour combination on it’s own, I decided to add orange to try and recreate the ‘Mayan’ flavour of a certain brand of chocolate bar – and it really worked!

Seriously, I cannot recommend strongly enough that you try this recipe – it’s one of the best chocolate recipes I’ve made in ages!

Chilli-chocolate-orange torte (loosely based on this one):

For the base:

• 60g butter
• 60g caster sugar
• 1 egg
• 50g self raising flour
• 10g cocoa powder

Beat together all the ingredients then spread into a greased and lined 9″ round tin. Bake at 180 degreed for about 15 minutes, then remove the sponge from the tin and leave to cool.

For the filling:

• 250g dark chocolate
• 2tbsp golden syrup
• 568ml double cream
• 1tsp chilli powder
• zest of 1 orange

Put the sponge base back in the tin, upside down with the baking paper removed. Gently heat the chocolate, golden syrup and a quarter of the cream over a pan of hot water, the once the chocolate has melted remove from the heat and leave to cool.

Whisk the cream, chilli powder and orange zest with a balloon whisk until thick but not stiff. This is where I went wrong as I was so excited that I’d managed to whisk it by hand that I went a bit too far and ended up with thick cream – oh well!

Fold the cooled chocolate mixture into the cream until well combined and no white streaks are left. Spread onto the base and leave to chill overnight. Dust with cocoa powder and serve, in very small slices!

Apple and blackberry frangipane tart

This is my entry for Kate’s Autumnal Baking Challenge – an amazing idea as I think autumn may be my favourite season for baking!

I’ve made quite a few things recently that probably could have been entered for the challenge, but I wanted to make something especially with autumn in mind, and I’m glad I did as this was delicious!

I adapted a recipe from Delicious magazine for an apple frangipane tart, used Mary Berry’s sweet pastry recipe, and added in blackberries for extra autumnalness (yes, that is a word).

The blackberries were all picked within 3 minutes of my house and the apples came from my bosses tree, which in my mind makes this extra tasty!

Can’t wait to see the round up of everyone else’s Autumnal Baking!

Apple and blackberry frangipane tart:

For the pastry:

• 100g butter, at room temperature
• 175g plain flour
• 25g icing sugar
• 1 egg yolk
• 1tbsp water

Chop the butter into small chunks and blend in a food processor with the flour and sugar until it has a breadcrumb texture. Add in the egg yolk and water and blend again, until it just comes together as a ball. Chill for about half an hour, then roll out to line a 10″ flan tin, and chill again for 10 minutes. Blind bake for 10 minutes at 180 degrees, then return to the oven for a couple more minutes until golden.

For the filling:

• 125g butter
• 125g caster sugar
• 2 eggs
• 125g ground almonds
• 1 tbsp plain flour
• 3-4 small apples, peeled, cored and thinly sliced
• 100g(ish) blackberries

While the pastry is baking, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then fold in the ground almonds and flour. Once the pastry case is done, pour the almond mixture in and spread level. Arrange the fruit in a pretty pattern (you probably don’t need to spend quite as long doing this as I did), then return to the oven and bake for about 30 minutes.

Heat 2tbsp apricot jam, then brush this over the tart and return to the oven for a final 10 minutes of baking. This amount of baking will make the top of the crust go quite brown, but the filling should be golden and shiny. Serve warm or cold.

Triple chocolate muffins for National Chocolate Week

I love ‘weeks’. Pretty much every week now has a theme, but it seems like the autumn is dominated by baking – Cupcake Week, Cake Week, Baking Week, and this week, Chocolate Week.

I think most people (if they’re anything like me and the pony) express their love for chocolate all year round, but it’s nice to have an extra excuse to eat more.

These muffins are chocolatey baking at it’s best – chocolate, with more chocolate, and little bit more chocolate for good luck. Moist chocolate sponge, milk chocolate chips, and white chocolate chips, all in a bite sized (sort of!) package.

I gave half of these to my aunt and uncle as a gift, and found this great cheap and cheerful cupcake box at the supermarket to help them survive a 3 hour car journey – it worked!

I didn’t actually get to eat any of these, but I’ve been assured they were good, so I may have to try them again some time!

Triple chocolate muffins (recipe from 1001 Cupcakes, Cookies and Other Tempting Treats):

Makes 12

• 250g plain flour
• 25g cocoa powder
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 85g light muscovado sugar
• 100g milk chocolate chunks
• 100g white chocolate chunks
• 85g melted mutter
• 300ml low fat fromage frais
• 2 eggs

Line a 12 hole muffin tin with papers cases. Sieve the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and cocoa powder into a large mixing bowl then stir in the sugar and chocolate chunks.

In another bowl mix together the eggs, melted butter and fromage frais. Add this liquid mixture into the dry ingredients and stir until just combined.

Line a 12 hole muffin tin with paper cases and divide the mixture between them. Bake at 200 degrees for about 20 minutes, until risen and a skewer comes out clean.

Turtle shortbread biscuits

A couple of months ago now, I saw a turtle shaped cookie cutter on ebay and obviously bought straight away, full of excitement for turtle shaped biscuits.

When it arrived however, I knew that it wouldn’t really be right to use it until I’d be able to decorate the biscuits in the manner they deserved – which meant waiting until I had green food colouring.

Last week I finally got around to buying the green paste colouring, and these biscuits are the result!

Unforunately I couldn’t find a good light that really showed the colour of the turtles, this is the best I could do, although the picture isn’t great:

I was really happy with how they looked though – super cute! And well worth the effort of icing.

Turtle shortbread biscuits:

• 50g caster sugar
• 100g butter
• 150g plain flour
• 1tsp vanilla extract
• 140g white chocolate
• green food colouring paste
• splash of milk

Rub together the butter and flour until it forms breadcrumbs. Mix in the sugar and vanilla extract and work the dough until it comes together into a ball.

On a floured surface, roll out the dough to about half a centimeter thick, then cut out the biscuits and place onto a silicon baking mat. Bake at 180 degrees for about 10 minutes, or until just starting to turn golden brown.

While the biscuits are cooling, melt the chocolate over a pan of simmering water, an add in a little of the green paste to make a light minty green colour. Spread a layer of chocolate on top of each biscuit, remembering to save some of the chocolate for the decoration. Put the biscuits in the fridge for the chocolate to set.

Once the first layer of chocolate is set, re-heat the melted chocolate and add in more of the colouring paste to make a darker green icing. I found that the amount I needed to use to make it dark enough thickened the chocolate too much, but mixing in a splash of milk fixed this. Spoon the dark green icing into a piping bag and pipe on the round shell, pentagon pattern and eyes. Leave to set.

Makes about 32 biscuits.

As this made over 30 biscuits, I gave some to my boss to take home for his two young boys, as one of them has been housebound since breaking his leg and ending up in a full leg cast. I don’t know much about children, but who wouldn’t be cheered up by these cute little turtles?! For that reason, even though I’m about a month late, I’m going to enter these for Vanessa’s Random Bakes of Kindness – an inspired and generous idea that has got lots of people baking for a good cause this autumn!

Caramel crumble bars

Continuing with the recent crumb/crumble theme, I introduce these caramel crumble bars. Essentially millionaires shortbread, but with a crumble topping rather than chocolate.

I found the recipe on Baked Perfection, and pretty much kept it the same apart from adding a drizzle of dark chocolate on top. I should have just stuck with the original, as the chocolate didn’t really stick to the crumb topping and fell off quite easily…

I won’t bother re-typing the original as it’s perfectly well explained here, but I would definitely recommend trying it as they were pretty tasty!