Mini Oreo Cheesecakes

I'm always coming across recipes and thinking how perfect they would be for people in my life but then their birthday comes around and I struggle to remember which winning dish I was going to make for them. Well yesterday was one of my *little* brother's birthdays and I remembered the winning recipe. Oreo cheesecakes! My brother loves cheesecake, enjoys an Oreo or two and I love making clever little things that I haven't tried before. So it was a winner before it even began. 

Mini Oreo cheesecakes with the standard size ones behind

This recipe was simple and worked really well. The result was delicious (birthday boy's opinion not just my own!). I'm so glad it did as my brother has been extra important this year. After Leo was born in April, he popped in nearly every day to cuddle Leo and say hi. It was so good to have his company when I was getting used to being home with a baby. Not to mention how good it was to know that he was happy to hang out with Leo for a few minutes if there was something I needed to get done. That certainly deserves a special recipe in my book. 

Oreo Cheesecakes 

Source: 3 Square Chef. Originally from Martha Stewart Cupcakes.
Makes 15

21 Oreos, 15 left whole, and 6 coarsely chopped (or you can use a combination of mini Oreos and standard size ones like I did. I made 12 standard and about 20 mini)
450 grams cream cheese, room temperature
1/2 cup caster sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla bean paste (or vanilla essence)
2 large eggs, room temperature, lightly beaten
1/2 cup sour cream
Pinch of salt

Preheat oven to 135 celsius. Line standard muffin tins with paper liners. Use mini muffin tins if you are using the mini Oreos. Spray liners with non-stick spray. Place 1 whole cookie in the bottom of each lined cup.

With an electric mixer on medium high speed, beat cream cheese until smooth, scraping down sides of bowl as needed. Gradually add sugar, and beat until combined. Beat in vanilla. Drizzle in eggs, a bit at a time, beating to combine and scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed. Beat in sour cream and salt. Stir in chopped cookies by hand.

Divide batter evenly among cookie-lined cups, filling each almost to the top. Bake, rotating pan halfway through, until filling is set, about 22 minutes. The mini ones take less cooking, about 15 minutes. Transfer to wire racks to cool completely. Refrigerate at least 4 hours (or up to overnight). Remove from tins just before serving.

Note: the standard size cheesecakes look great turned onto a plate for serving. The mini size are tiny bite size cheesecakes and they don't look as neat when turned out of the paper liner. I recommend baking in thin white liners so you can see the Oreo through the bottom when served in the liner. Unfortunately, I only had mini brown liners at home and I couldn't see the Oreo imprint through it. 

* Disclaimer. My brother is 24, not that little really, but once a little brother, always a little brother. Right?!

Celebrating 30 with a few of my favourite things

I turned 30 in February and decided to celebrate with a few of my favourite things. Mostly I wanted an excuse to have a dessert table! As a sucker for all things French, it was easy to draw inspiration from Marie Antoinette and her supposed cry to "let them eat cake". Planning the little touches of an event is half the fun and I've been keen to share them, it's just taken me awhile. So here we go...

An invitation totally sets the scene for any bash, so I knew there was only one designer for the job. My super talented cousin Amy of Saint Gertrude Design and Letterpress totally got the look I was going for. She nailed the design first time with a decadent, vintage typography cake. Apart from having to edit my own schoolgirl French (or at least try to), it was ready to print. Amy used a gorgeous aqua on white cotton card and printed my initials and address on the back of a pale pink envelope. Heart Saint Gertrude.

The invitation reads:

30

Bon Anniversaire Ellise

Please join me to enjoy

a few of my favourite things

Gateaux, fromage, vin, et toi!

18 Fevrier 2012

5.30-10.30pm

Elceed Cafe

610 Queensberry Street, North Melbourne

Respondez s’il vous plait: 10 Fevrier 2012

0428 000 000 (Ellise) or 0407 000 000 (Justin) 

The 'piece de resistance' - my Elceed dessert table with birthday cake centrepiece made by my mum and mum-in-law. 

For the venue I chose Elceed, a favourite cafe in North Melbourne. I wanted to start the party in the late afternoon to suit the 'high tea' style menu, and Elceed provided the perfect backdrop with the natural afternoon sun that filters into their back room and courtyard. The whitewashed walls were the perfect neutral backdrop needed for the dessert table to shine and the location is central (convenient for guests) but leaning west (so I can claim it as my stomping ground). Most importantly though, the Elceed team were willing to hold a private evening function (not what they normally do) and create a customised menu with both desserts and finger food in a slightly French vein. Here is what we decided on and then devoured:

Rosewater meringues with Persian fairy floss

Profiteroles with mocha cream
Lavender cupcakes
Pistachio cupcakes
Raspberry custard tarts (and variations with blueberries and kiwi fruit)

Chocolate coated strawberries

Vanilla bean cupcakes with white chocolate icing decorated with a mix of amazing, large roses and white chocolate shoes and handbags (a very kind and delicious gift from my talented workmate Mish).

French cheese platters

Mini chicken and mushroom pies
Mini Leek and Meredith's goats cheese tarts
Garlic prawn baguettes

Poached chicken, chive and mayonnaise sandwiches

Cucumber sandwiches

Salmon and cream cheese crepes

Ham and cheese croissants

My friend Sally used the fonts from the invitation to make labels for all the food printed on a mix of pink and aqua paper. Not sure why but I love cute labels on plates of food! 

Sadly, I did not get photos of the savouries (the night flew by) but all the guests shared happy food memories well after the event. Hannah, Bill and the Elceed team did an amazing job and worked so hard to serve everyone. Anyone with a dietary requirement was made to feel like a king or queen with special food delivered to them. With both sweet and savoury options, there weren't any of the food shortages that you sometimes find at a finger food function. In fact, we sent lots of guests home with little bags of cake that we couldn't possibly fit in.

Speaking of cake, I had seen this beautiful two-tier pale pink cake with a white silhouette motif online and couldn't take my mind off it even when I was quoted several hundred dollars for it. I kept staring at it longingly on the Pinterest board I created for the party (click here to view the board with all my inspiration pics) until it finally dawned on me that I knew two excellent bakers who might just agree to the challenge - my mum and mum-in-law! Even though they live almost two hours away from us, a couple of years ago they happened to move only ten minutes apart. Perfect for a joint cake challenge. My mother in law iced and decorate many a fruit cake for weddings back in Birchip but never enjoyed making the actual cake. My mum, on the other hand, is less decorator more baker, so it was the perfect combo. Most importantly, they agreed to the challenge. My mum whipped up a large and a small round white chocolate mud cake, iced them with white chocolate ganache (the icing alone contained 1kg of chocolate!) and delivered them to my MIL who covered them perfectly in fondant icing and  piped the little dots all around the bottom of each layer and around the white circle that the silhouette attached to. My mum took a piece of the pink fondant icing and cut out it into the shape of my silhouette using a photo as a guide. It looked wonderful and created the perfect centrepiece for my dessert take. Both the icing and the cake tasted amazing for days (I LOVE that sickly fondant icing!).

So much food, you must be thinking, didn't the guests need something to wash everything down? Indeed they did. As a welcome drink, I made a version of one of my favourite cocktails, the French martini served in Elceed's glass jars. From memory, I think I used 30ml Chambord raspberry liquor per drink with 15ml vodka and 120ml pineapple juice (much more juice than normal but safer to serve, more palatable and less expensive). Each drink was topped with frozen raspberries and served with with Emerald + Ella striped pink paper straws. I love these straws and was thrilled to have an excuse to buy these online and use.

After the welcome drink,  the drink options were:

 Grandin Methode Traditionnelle Brut (coz it's French and a nice, affordable sparkling)

Toi Toi Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc (coz they make the best Sauv in NZ, it was recommended by the wine guy in Dan Murphy's and 'toi toi' sounds French!)

Kronenbourg 1664 lager (coz it's French and the Mister approved)

Pipsqueak Cider (coz I like it)

San Pellegrino sparkling natural mineral water (again, coz I like it)

The French beer Kronenbourg is not hugely popular here in Australia so lucky the Mister is up for adventures of the beer finding variety. Most bottle shops, including big ones like Dan Murphy's and First Choice, only had one or two boxes/slabs in stock, so even with a smallish guest list of about 50 people it took us a couple of trips over a few weekends just to buy the beer! Speaking of the guest list, we have huge extended families and with limited space and budget, I had to make the tough decision to only invite immediate family and some friends.

But back to the drinks, the service was so good that in the next few days I was hearing from everyone how it great it was that the staff remembered what they were drinking and made sure they always had what they wanted.

You may just be able to make out in the photo below that I tried to dress the part in a pink dress. I found pink satin shoes to match with a black peep toe. Over the toe is a little raised netting feature so I made a fascinator for my hair with a piece of black netting from Lincraft. I had a fantastic night as you would expect when surrounded by all my favourite things. As is usually the case with a celebration, the day after the party was equally fun, devouring leftover food, opening presents (so many divine cookbooks) and generally enjoying the company of family and friends from out of town. My heart was really singing in true Charles Whyte style. For me, turning 30 was about embracing what I love and doing things in life that make me happy. I think the party achieved that - it's just trying to do what I love every day that is a little harder at times. 

Finally, I mustered up all my (very limited) design skills to create this 'Merci beaucoup' thank you note. I've tried to give them out as I've seen people but somehow this year is just slipping through my fingers so there are a few outstanding. If any of my lovely guests are reading this and thinking 'where's mine?' I am very sorry. I love you! Thanks for sharing my special celebration. You make the days between the celebrations better too! If you helped me in any way, hopefully I've mentioned you above and/or you know how much that means to me. Thank you to Nina, my darling, crazy, little sister who travelled from Brisbane for the occasion (not sure if she will read this but I forgot to thank her on the night and she is my only favourite sister so I must show her the love). Lastly, thank you for reading if you made it this far! Celebrate birthdays! And eat cake for breakfast! Xxx

Sweet, squid Sunday

Usual programming of Sartorial Sunday is being interrupted to bring you the latest creation from the Charles Whyte kitchen. This squid is not one to share the limelight.

Yes, I made a squid cake. It's almost ghastly, isn't it?! So much icing, so little cake. Why a squid?

Not long after starting my job last year and revealing my interest in baking, Rhona told me of her obsession with squids and a long-held dream for a squid cake. After exclaiming that I couldn't make anything of the sort, I went to my old friend Google for some advice. Google had, of course, seen and done this sort of thing before and he basically told me that making a squid cake would really make my new colleague's heart sing. So I saved a few images and waited for her birthday to roll around to take on the challenge.

Fast forward a few months to last Sunday night when I spent an evening with a cake, two boxes of Orchard ready made icing and a lot of food dye. The cake needed to be something dense to withstand the weight of the icing so I went with a pound cake. I chose the recipe for purely selfish reasons as I wanted to make use of a birthday gift from my big brother - Mastering the Art of French Cooking Volume 2 by Julia Child and Simone Beck. To ice the cake and create a base for the squid, I decided on a fluffy meringue icing that I have used and written about previously (click here for recipe). When dyed blue and spooned on in peaks, this created an ocean for our little sea creature!

Then the work of manipulating the ready made icing began. I sprinkled red Queen food colouring into the icing and kneaded away, adding more and more colouring to reduce the pink look. Eventually I had to stop adding colouring as it was making the icing too moist and hard to roll (I'll have to try food colouring pastes). To create the squid's head, I secured a rounded, upturned dip bowl onto a small, round cake (make by cooking some of the pound cake batter in a ramekin) with icing, then covered it in the rolled icing and placed it in the centre of the 'ocean' (larger cake). The eye is a large white chocolate covered in uncoloured meringue icing with a mini M&M as the eyeball. The tentacles are pure sugar! Just rolled logs of ready made icing shaped at the ends and dangled over the cake.

To cut a long story short, Rhona's birthday at work was made a little sweeter with a very heavy squid. It was more a sugar sculpture than a cake given the overwhelming proportion of icing but the birthday girl seemed to love it. It was so nice for me to make a cake that made someone else so excited. Two singing hearts!

Layered chocolate cake (she did ask for chocolate...)

It's not a new obsession, my fondness for a layer cake (remember previous posts on dreamy vanilla cake and black forest?) 

Even on a Sunday night after my high school reunion and a week working interstate, I couldn't resist making a version of the Donna Hay layered chocolate cake from her book Simple Essentials Chocolate. After all, it was to celebrate my new boss' birthday and her only hint on the cake front was CHOCOLATE. She said it, I listened. Weary as I was, a deep enthusiasm for these decadent layers kept me going as the clock ticked again and again to remind me of the late hour.

In the end, I had to give up on icing it and resume in the morning due to the warm weather we are getting in Melbourne right now. The truffle icing was very runny and needed longer to cool. Here's what it looked like after pulling it from the fridge in the morning...

Then after the icing was complete (I love the height of two cakes on top of one another in four layers - so grand. Please excuse the smears on the plate)...

And ready to be eaten...

I'm usually an advocate of following a recipe closely for the first time and making my own "improvements" and variations the second time around, but not this time. The recipe called for 750 grams of mascarpone and as much as I like like the stuff, I swapped this for 500g of light cream cheese beaten in the MixMaster because my local supermarket was selling 250 gram tubs of mascarpone for more than $6 a pop... nearly $20 right there before you even think of the other ingredients including 400 grams of chocolate. I also omitted the liquer and I would like to say that was a conscious thrifty move on my part but the truth is I've only just re-read the recipe and realised I forgot it! Oops. This is what happens when you bake so late and before work (unfortunately, this is when I mostly have to do it). The good news is that it didn't seem to stop my workmates hoeing in and that's the main thing.

Birthday Bliss

 

Sketch inside my birthday card by Leezette Chapman

For a child raised in a family of six children, a birthday is a rare chance to eat, do and receive all your favourite things, or at least some of them. While I may not be able to get away with calling myself a child anymore, I most definitely take the opportunity to indulge on my birthday. Age has never worried me, but then I haven't reached 30 so I guess there are plenty of '0' birthdays ahead to have me slinking under a rock come February.

As you may have guessed, I have just celebrated my birthday and I can confidently say that my heart was singing. Not that there was any hunt involved. The thrill of a birthday is not in the chase, it is in sitting back and seeing what comes your way. Having friends and family that know just what to give and/or bake you is one of life's blessings. Somehow, it surprises me each year and I find myself practically humming like my sister. It's a cinch to tell when she's happy because she hums, and hums, and hums. Almost like a tweeting bird.

I love birds and I love birdcages but not together. I'm not much for pets. I know, I know, it's a little odd and cold-hearted, I've been told. I like birds soaring above or hopping along branches. One of the things I miss most about the country is waking to the sound of birds then opening the curtains and jumping back into bed to gaze up at the huge expanse of sky punctured only by treetops. What does this have to do with my birthday? Well...

My artist mother finally finished a painting for my birthday. It has been a long time in the making but that just makes it all the sweeter. Birds swoop across the canvas, a birdcage dangles from a streetlamp, old buildings hide in the background and French words are scrawled over the scene. It's a calming aqua for our bedroom with touches of pink and chocolate. For an abstract painter, it's very whimsical but exactly what I asked for. I couldn't be happier. Photo to come.

This lantern from my gastro friend is shaped like a birdcage too and satisfies my white, French country slant.

More birds swooped in on greeting cards and affirmation cards, then some bicyles started rolling in.

This kikki.k notepad and pen is a slice of pedal pushing perfection from my cycling idol. 'A Box of Birds' contains the little wooden stand and 24 uplifting messages from my work mates. They had no idea but I am a fan of Little Affirmations and have another set in this range called 'A Little Bird Told Me'. One for work, one for home! All with difference messages and illustrations by Kate Knapp.

I loved too many things about my birthday to mention them all before you fall asleep, but I cannot sign off without mentioning my beautiful yellow Cruz bag from iboutique.com.au courtesy of Charles himself. It was top of my wish list and I cannot fault it. I even love the smell, mmm leather. I wish I could get me five bags from that site but I have been too spoilt already this year.

My mystery birthday dinner turned into a real surprise with a trip to see A Midsummer Night's Dream in Melbourne's Royal Botanic Gardens. I'm not sure if it was the celebratory Pimm's at Madame Brussels with friends earlier, the genius of Shakespeare or the skill of the actors, but it was hilarious and I thoroughly enjoyed the evening. Not to mention the hamper from the Botanical which we nibbled on throughout.

I was so lucky to have several cakes and other culinery delights whipped up for my special day. So many that I can't possibly squeeze them all into this post so stay tuned for my next post on birthday food with recipes and a lowdown on the Botanical hamper.

Markets, Manicures, Cocktails, Tapas and Hedges

It's not often I have such a low key day but we got more excited than anticipated at our cocktails and tapas evening last night. Our friends rode over on their bikes now that we have moved into their neighbourhood, but they were in no condition to ride home. Very funny until we woke up with sore heads. Needless to say, there are no gastronomic delights to report on today as the Mister's delivery of fried chicken and chips to my perch on the couch was hardly worthy of a photo even if it did perk me up. Apart from the fried delights, he also picked up a hedge trimmer and proceeded to do wonders to the overgrown hedges in our courtyard. I was in charge of raking up afterwards, filling our green waste bin and getting some therapeutic fresh air in the process.

One of the hedges - before

So many leaves...

The after shot taken on our digital camera rather than the iPhone.

 

I was much more energetic yesterday and our first trip to the Footscray market as locals inspired an afternoon of tapas preparation (lamb,pinenut and mint meatballs, sweet and sour vege sticks and tandoori chicken drummettes, mmm!).

It's not all about food though, as there was also my dear friend's birthday to celebrate with a visit to Jade Finger Tips in Yarraville for a spa pedicure for her ($35) and manicure for me ($20).

The gorgeous SJ enjoying her birthday treat

Getting an appointment without simply walking in last week caused me some angst due to their almost non-existent web presence. Just finding their phone number was a challenge, even being told they had moved when I called what I thought was their number. Maybe my profession makes me harsh on small businesses and I do admit that critiquing marketing and PR tactics is a little pleasure of mine. In the case of Jade Finger Tips, I should be grateful that they don't invest heavily in marketing because it may be the reason that their prices remain reasonable. They always seem busy regardless, and most customers just walk in off the street. I definitely recommend sharing the experience with a friend; it’s a great girly indulgence. The cocktails and tapas at home with the boys afterwards rounded off a nice day of celebrations.

Jade Finger Tips: Nail and Spa: 38 Anderson Street, Yarraville VIC 3013. Phone: 03 9687 0881
Footscray Market: Cnr Hopkins Street and Leeds Street, Footscray. Phone: 03 9687 1205