New Website LIVE!

Howdy!
I finally have my website LIVE!  Here's the link to it: http://dessertsbydecker.com.  Well, here's to desserts!  See you at the new site!

peace and laters,
Decker

Moving my blog

Howdy All!
I'm moving my blog to the domain I bought a few years ago.  I'll post the link when the website is live.
peace and laters!

Adventures in Cheesecake, pt. 2

Cheesecake Attempt #2 -- May 8, 2011

Yep, I did try making cheesecake again.  This time I didn't follow the filling recipe exactly.  I did some research into substituting plain nonfat yogurt for sour cream.  Apparently, you need to make cheese out of the yogurt first (i.e., drain the whey out of the yogurt), so I got out my yogurt cheese maker and put 3 cups of yogurt in it (the cheesecake recipe calls for 24 oz (3 cups) of sour cream, and that made too much filling).  Yes, I have a yogurt cheese maker.  A yogurt cheese maker is a fine mesh strainer that allows the whey (the liquid that appears when you let yogurt sit in the fridge for awhile) to separate from the curds (milk solids) in the yogurt.  [So, all of y'all thinking that Little Miss Muffet was eating cottage cheese, she might have been eating yogurt instead.]  Anyway, you let the yogurt drain at least 2 hours to thicken it (refrigerated and sealed up).  I had put the yogurt in the maker a couple of days before (the longer the yogurt's in the strainer, the thicker it gets; however, it maxes out after about 24 hours).  The result was about 1 cup of yogurt cheese.

I followed the recipe for all the other filling ingredients, except I substituted the 1 cup of yogurt cheese for the 3 cups of sour cream.  I also didn't try to put all of the filling I made into the 9 inch by 3 inch springform pan.  I had to throw away about 2 cups of filling.  Here's the result:

I had the YAVs from the Tool Shed over to taste test it.  They enjoyed it.  It wasn't the best cheesecake I'd ever tasted, but I was proud that it didn't turn out to be the disaster that the first attempt was.  I've decided that the recipe was meant for a larger springform pan than 9x3.

Red Velvet Cake

I'm baking a Red Velvet Cake for a friend's birthday today.  Let's just say that red velvet is the only cake that makes me wince every time I bake it.  Why?  Because it looks like I've pureed a small animal in my mixer.

I've always been skeptical of red velvet.  I think it's the "red headed step child" of chocolate cake and yellow cake.  My personal belief about the origin of red velvet is this:

Once upon a time, there was a baker.  This baker was making a chocolate cake, but realized while measuring the ingredients, that there was only a quarter of the cocoa that was needed.  "Oh No!" the baker cried, "I've already put in that cocoa, and I don't have time to get some more!"  Frantic, the baker tore through the kitchen and found red food coloring.  "Maybe this will mask the color of the cocoa so people won't think I've skimped on the cocoa.  I've got it, I'll put in the same amount of food coloring as the cocoa.   That'll definitely mask the color of the cocoa."  So, the baker finished the cake, and when the cake came out of the oven, the texture reminded the baker of the way velvet looks, thus calling it "Red Velvet Cake."  The End.

You're probably wondering why I think it's the "red headed step child" of chocolate cake and yellow cake. One:  You add a little cocoa to a yellow cake recipe.  Two:  You add the same volume of red food coloring as the cocoa.  Yeah, now you know the dirty little secret.

Maybe I should try a red velvet cake recipe that uses beets instead.

Gingerbread Update

Just a little mishap when it came out of the pan.  Planning on cutting it up into triangles anyway.

Treacle Anyone?

'Tis the season for Harry Potter, and I've been invited to a themed birthday party.  But what to make to fit in with the theme?  I don't have time to make an elegantly sculpted cake or to research "genuine" Harry Potter treats.  Then inspiration struck me:  treacle.  Yes, good ol' treacle, known as molasses on this side of the pond, at least I think they're the same, not certain, but for the purposes of this entry, treacle is molasses and molasses is treacle.

Random fact about molasses:  When visiting the Booker T. Washington National Monument in Franklin County, VA, the guide told us (I think I was in 4th grade when my class went) that when Booker T. Washington would be given a little bit of molasses as a treat as a child, he would let it spread all over his plate to make it appear to be more than it really was.  That's how special molasses is.

No, I didn't make treacle tarts, which I think are similar to chess pies (even though I am a proud Southerner, I do not like chess pie).  What else has molasses in it?  Gingerbread!

Ah, I remember going to Colonial Williamsburg's Raleigh Tavern Bakery and gobbling up their "ginger cakes."  When I saw that they had a cookbook, I snatched it up, only to find that the modern adaption for the recipe turned out to be gingerbread cookies, not little cakes.  Disappointing.

Okay, so I did some tweaking to a recipe from the cookbook mentioned in the cheesecake post.  Channeling the "Ginger Ninja" (a friend from undergrad) I doubled the ginger.  It just didn't look like enough, if it's "ginger" bread, it should have more ginger than cinnamon (the recipe called for equal amounts of each).  Also, I used dark brown sugar instead of regular sugar, since this is all about the molasses.  I am waiting for it to cool down for the final inspection.  Will it be as good as the colonial ginger cakes?  We'll see.

Adventures in Cheesecake, pt. 1

On the 23rd of April in the year 2011, I attempted my first cheesecake.  It was my worst dessert failure of all time.  Two things about the "finished" product:  undercooked & on fire.  Not promising.

My mother never liked cheesecake, so unlike many of the other desserts in my repertoire, I was never exposed to the creation process while growing up.  Of course, I wasn't exposed to carrot cakes either, but that turned out well.  So, using the success of the carrot cake recipe I base my current recipe on, I turned to the all-new ultimate Southern Living Cookbook (copyright 2006), and followed the recipe for "Deluxe Cheesecake" in there.  Well, I didn't follow it exactly, but that wasn't the problem.

Why didn't I follow the recipe exactly?  I've always had trouble with making regular graham cracker crusts using crushed store-bought graham crackers, butter, and sugar.  I can't make them stick to the sides of the pan.  So, I had found a graham cracker recipe (more about that in another post) that I modified to my liking and tried to make a graham cracker crust out of it (plus extra butter & sugar to the original cracker recipe to make it more "crusty").  Well, it's easier to get that dough to stick to the sides of the pan, but it's still difficult to do.

The filling, I followed the recipe exactly.  Thirty-two ounces of cream cheese & 24 ounces of sour cream go into the mixer bowl, & I think to myself, "That certainly is a lot of filling and I haven't gotten the 7 eggs in yet.  Hmm."  I used the 9-inch springform pan with 3 inch sides like the recipe says, and the filling is almost overflowing out of the pan.  I couldn't scrape the bowl out because of all the filling: not a good sign.

The picture of the cheesecake in the cookbook shows that the finished cheesecake is approximately 2.5 inches taller than the crust.  Also, the recipe doesn't say how far up the sides of the pan the crust needs to go.  So, I think that the finished cake will rise around 2 inches out of the pan, since the crust is all the way to the top of the edges of the pan.  So, it goes into the oven.

I start to notice smoke coming from the oven after a while.  I had forgotten to set the timer and now the overflowing cheesecake batter had caught fire on the elements of my oven.  Thinking that it was done, I turn off the oven and wait the 4 hours with it in the off oven that it says to in the cookbook.  After finishing the waiting game, I took the cheesecake out.  I poured (yes, POURED) it into the trash.

Cleaning the oven was no fun (every window in the house was open, every ceiling fan set on high, and the exhaust fans sucking air out as hard as they could).  I felt like my eyes burning for a couple of days every time I walked into my house.

Was I scared to try again?  Well, yes, yes I was, but I was ready for the challenge.

How did the next attempt go?  Stay tuned, and the next installment will let you know more.