Junior's Triple Chocolate Cheesecake

A couple of months ago my brother asked me if I could bring my mixer with me and come to his house to make him a cheesecake. He had purchased a copy of the Junior's (from NY) cheesecake cookbook. His reading of the book led him to believe it was best made with a stand mixer and he and his wife do not own one.

I told him that would not be possible as I cannot carry my mixer by myself. However, my sister can move hers and I would ask her to bring it to his house the next time I was up in DE. He considered this for awhile and then decided the best thing to do would be to send me the cookbook and have me make the cheesecake for him when he next time came to Richmond.

I got the book and shortly thereafter saw the recipe he wanted. The man has a serious chocolate habit! Junior's cheesecakes are made on a spongecake base. In this case, the base was a chocolate sponge.

The creamy center is also a chocolate base - 10 ounces of bittersweet chocolate, I might add! My brother was in charge of the chocolate chopping. He is an extremely good chopper. The top of the cake is covered in what Junior's refers to as a fudge mirror and then you make a web of chocolate strips across the top. We used a combination of dark and white chocolate for the webbing. More chopping for the brother! Our web was a little thick due to imprecise cutting of the piping baggie, but nevertheless, I think it looked quite pretty.

This is one massive cake. It says to use a nine inch pan. If you do, it better be at least four inches high. My pan is three inches high and our far cake surpassed that height. Eventually it would be only three inches high, but that was due to an unfortunate incident.

Junior's gives you very precise directions to obtain a perfectly smoothed top cake. I tried to follow those instructions precisely. However, the first oddity I noticed was the sponge itself. I found it to be extremely difficult to blend the chocolate half into the egg whites. I decided not to worry about it and baked the cake. All looked fine, until as the cake cooled it began to pull away from the sides. I knew that meant the bottom of the cake would be a bear to remove from the tray, but you can't fix that midstream.

I then mixed the main batter according to the game plan. All went well, except as I was filling the cake pan, I realized there was a lot of batter. Everything else had been so precise I decided this cake would not rise as most others do. I went ahead and put all the batter into the pan. I have been baking for over 40 years, by now I should know to trust my judgement, but no, I had to listen to the damn recipe. Curses upon my anal little head and its insistence to follow a recipe exactly on the first go-round.

Sure enough as the cake baked it began to rise far above the heights of the pan's sides. I watched through the window nervously for the batter to collapse over the side and fall into the water bath. It remained stable until the time came to test the cake for doneness. I gave it the Junior's test and it appeared to be baked.

Hah! Not so much. As I tried to remove the pan from the water bath without soaking my pot holders I tipped the pan - the layer of batter that had come over the top of the pan was in fact nicely baked. Unfortunately some two inches of it below the pan's sides were still molten liquid chocolate. Slosh over the side and into the water bath - thank God for the water bath - it captured the overflow. It looked disgusting, but at least the mess was contained.

I was quite dismayed about what this was going to do to our smooth cake, but felt I had no choice but to reinsert the cake into the oven. I sent it back to Hades for I believe another 20 minutes or so. With the mess the edges were now in, I knew that removing this cake from the pan was not going to be pleasant. In fact, it was not as horrible as I feared. There was a slight crust formed around the very top edge and I had to do some creative carving to get the cake to release, but overall it came out pretty nicely. The top had a slight indentation, but nothing a little swirl of whipped cream wouldn't cover. The indentation made application of the chocolate mirror slightly difficult, but considering the cavern I expected it was not too daunting.

We let the cake chill appropriately and then we cut into it. As you can see the slices looked quite delectable. Even I, who can chow down on an excessively rich dessert with the best of them, did not want a large slice of this cake. My brother gifted me with the cookbook because as he said, you'll be the one baking them for me! So, now I have this little gem in my hands. I told him I would be happy to make additional cakes for him, but I am not making the same cake every time he comes to visit. Then again, this is the first time he's been down in years, so who knows, maybe by his next visit I will be ready to try and defy death by chocolate once again!

Obviously the next time I bake a Junior's cake I will listen to my instincts and not overfill the pan. I think I will also use my own sponge cake recipe as I found theirs to be a tad dry. I'll do theirs one more time to ensure I did not mix it improperly, but it was much more time consuming than my old stand-by from the Good Housekeeping Illustrated Cookbook.

I also love that the Junior's cookbook has recipes for individual cakes, made in muffin tins, so I am going to try for them the next time. It will make sending home the extras so easy.

Gingered Carrot Cookies

Whipped these cookies up after I got home from work today. What an easy recipe to pull together. I agree with Paula, these are nothing like mini-carrot cakes. They are delicious but very different from a carrot cake.

I would not have said they were especially scone-like, but I can't come up with an alternative suggestion, either. I think they are far lighter in texture than the average scone - even my home made scones tend to be a bit drier than these are. I do love scones and make them often. I think my best description would be a cross between the texture of a scone and cake - a cake with the texture say of pound cake.

I quite like the taste - not exactly savory - but definitely not overly sweet. I prefer rich desserts to sweet ones, so that totally works for me. I got 36 cookies - I could have easily made them smaller and gotten closer to 60, but they are not gigantors - just a good size. Also I found them to be exactly as trustworthy as Dorie said - no massive spreading, so I could bake more on one sheet than I normally do.

Over all, an excellent choice by Natalia, she has posted the recipe here. Natlia - congratulations on the new job, it sounds so interesting.

Hah, almost forgot, you know I skipped the coconut, we don't need to keep beating that poor dead horse! I subbed about 1/2 cup of sunflower seeds for the missing coconut and added a few more nuts to as well. I used untoasted walnuts in these because I left them lying on the counter after baking last week and I was too darn lazy to get out the pecans! Of course, you already knew I was lazy the nuts were on the counter for a week!

Chewy, Chunky Blondies

So, I think I may have mentioned a time or ten thousand that I do not like coconut - so you know I substituted something else for that evil being! In this case I tossed some peanut butter chips in with the chocolate chips, heath bar pieces and nuts. May I just say this was not my brightest decision? I forgot how sweet the heath pieces would be and adding the peanut butter chips just gave it a bit too strong of a nudge into the overly sweet world.

It also hindered the baking process a bit as well. I tested the bars at 35 minutes - dead center and they registered totally baked. Out of the oven they came, a fifteen minute rest and flip - then splat as a third of the pan of brownies slid off the rack and onto the counter. I am grateful they hit there and not on the floor. What a doofus! I always check my baked goods in multiples spots - except of course - for the one time the darned things are underdone!

Oh, well, nothing a bench knife couldn't cure! Oddly enough the other end of the blondies was perfectly fine. Live and learn, live and learn. As you can see from this photo, they just collapsed onto themselves in a temporarily molten pile of hot cookie dough. They are now headed for the great big garbage dump in the sky!

I still prefer my bar cookies to be rich, dense, brownies, but these were fine. If I am baking for a non-chocolate addicted audience I could pull these into the fray. They were easily mixed up, took a fairly short time to bake and were enjoyed by all of my fellow knitters tonight at the community knitting group.

Nicole of Cookies on Friday chose this week's excellent recipe. Go to her blog to view the recipe or finally give in and buy the book!

Tarte Noire

I am so far behind in my posting, I am actually ashamed! I have been baking fairly regularly, but for some reason I just haven't felt like posting. I'm going to try and bring this blog up to date and stay focused, wish me luck.

I cheated a bit with the tarte noire. I used a store bought crust for this endeavor. I made a couple of mini-tarts and have the extra ganache in the fridge - I will be moving it to the freezer tomorrow.

This was such a delightfully easy treat to make. It would be divine with using one of Dorrie's crusts - but it was no slouch with the roll and bake version, either.

The ganache came together with no effort to speak of and the flavor was just luscious. This is an easy elegant desert, one I plan to remember for the chocoholics in my world. Great choice Dharmagirl.

Tender Shortcakes

These are fabulous. So easy to pull together and so tasty. They are truly tender and flaky. I loved them with a mix of berries. I used black raspberries, red raspberries and blueberries. Topped with some freshly whipped cream --- yummmm!

Everytime I eat a dessert like this I am shocked when I remember that Rosie O'Donnell used to say that if it had fruit in it she did not consider it a dessert - I pity her.

I made a half-batch of these lovelys. Expecting to get ten from a full batch, I insisted on making five. However, they were a tad on the large side - woe is me - I have to eat a bigger dessert. Boo Hoo. I am having tea with/for some friends on Sunday and I believe mini-versions will be making an appearance.

Go to Cathy's site, the Tortefeaser to view the recipe or make the leap and buy the book!

White Chocolate Brownies

Boring - at least to me. Now, I confess, I did slightly modify the recipe. First of all, I only made an 8 * 8 batch. I don't much care for white chocolate, so I failed to see the sense in baking a full batch. Secondly, I skipped the meringue. Instead, I made a glaze and coated the top with that. I flavored said glaze with orange juice to heighten the flavor obtained from the zest used with the sugar. Brilliant! Well, at least it was an adequate idea - no - it was scathing brilliant, if I do say so myself.

I baked the brownies for approximately 35 minutes and might have baked them just a few minutes too long. They were a touch brown around the edges, but at 24 minutes they looked like soup in the middle and I prefer to err on the side of well-done.

I found the raspberries to be a bit intrusive - not the flavor - my raspberries were as usual - fabulous (courtesy of my Agriberry fruit share - they taste like fruit on steroids - anyone in central VA should really join this CSA). Their intrusion took the form of serious dents in the batter. I had visions of a glaze similar to that on a Napolean. I was going to glaze the tops of the brownies and then draw a design with raspberry coulis.

But, then I glazed the brownies and the raspberry dents looked like nail heads poking out of drywall, so I skipped the coulis and just left them alone. I was a bit surprised by how thin the brownies were, but of course, mine were not enhanced by the meringue layer.

For some odd reason they were very moist on the bottom. I don't know if the rack they cooled on was too close to the counter top or if the fruit allowed excess juice to seep into the batter. I lean more towards condensation during cooling.

They did not taste soggy - but they were quite sticky on the bottom. I'm a traditionalist, as it turns out. For me, it isn't a brownie unless it is brown! I loved the ease with which these came together, but in the future I'll be using brown chocolate to make my brownies.

Thanks for picking this one Marthe - I wouldn't have tried it on my own. Find the recipe at Culinary Delights or in the book.

Sweet Cream Biscuits

Hands down this has to be the simpliest recipe of Dorie's that we have ever made. A fork and bowl were the only tools I needed (beyond my measuring cups/spoons). What did it take? Five minutes to pull the dough together? I love that in a recipe.

It seems that numerous people had some trouble with their biscuits not rising as much as expected. I don't know if I have lower expectations than others do or if I just got lucky, but I was quite pleased with how my biscuits looked and even more importantly, how they tasted.

I did not get a lot of biscuits from the dough, I think ten, but they were just fine for me. They were delicious hot - I had a couple with my potato soup - killer combo - and I had two for lunch today. The ones I ate today were stone cold and they were still damn good. These were a very light biscuit - I thought they might taste a tad more like scones than they did, but they were great just as they were.

I brushed the tops with a little of my left-over cream before baking them and I think that helped color the tops. I think I will add a touch more salt the next time I make them, but otherwise I was 100% happy with how these turned out.

These fantastic biscuits were selected for us by Melissa of Love at First Bite. You can find the recipe on her blog or you could be smart and buy the Book!