Oreo Cheesecake Cookies

Hiya lovelies,

Apologies for the silence since June. I have gotten to the point where i have so much stuff to write up on here I'm rather overwhelmed by it all, so have been employing my usual strategy of avoiding the issue, whilst feeling like a total blog-based failure and stressing about it at the same time. But today, I've decided to take a step forward and do a post from last night. I'm going to hope to make up the gap at some point, because i have loads to share with you, but i need to start somewhere, and here it is.

One of my favourite websites to browse on my lunch break is www.foodbeast.com. Although it has loads of stuff that isn't really relevant to us in the UK, it shares my obsessions of bacon and peanut butter and always has some bizarre food stories on that make me laugh.

Little balls of cheesecakey goodness ready for the oven

Today we've had a World's Biggest Coffee Morning at work, so I thought this would be a good opportunity to try something new. I've never been consistently good at cookies or biscuits, so I thought I'd make some cookies. Well, when I saw a recipe for Oreo Cheesecake Cookies on foodbeast, I just had to give these bad boys a go. I stuck to the recipe pretty much exactly, and oh my, what a result. Gooey, chewy, and really sweet, these are a real American style treat.

The finished product. Loooooovely.

They were pretty well received at our Macmillan Coffee Morning, and help to contribute to our pretty decent takings for the day- so far we've counted £73.50, which is pretty good considering there were quite a few people who couldn't make it today, and also that we have some people who haven't yet paid up.

Speak soon,

Hayley xxx

Sticky toffee + Cheesecake= "The Best Cheesecake Ever"

Well really, who knew that such a wondrous thing existed in the world. A recipe for a sticky toffee cheesecake.

Obviously, this needed to be attempted. I had sort of assumed, however, that it would all go horribly wrong, following the same rules as my Gin & Tonic Cake Theory- that through combining wonderful things into one baked good, a wormhole of awesomeness would open in the fabric of the universe, therefore mother nature intervenes to ruin any attempts at baking perfection.

The base of this cheesecake was made of crumbled shortbread, which was a concept i'd never come across before. Then we placed little bits of fudge all over the base:

Recently, I haven't had a huge amount of success when it comes to baked cheesecakes, but it came out of the oven in all its glory and begged to be smothered in a thick layer of caramel, with a dusting of grated chocolate.

Well, we were understandably eager to stuff our faces with some of this delight. And we were most definitely not disappointed. The only thing was that the shortbread biscuit base was rather soggy, but this seemed to be remedied the next day, after it had been left in the fridge for a while. Boyf and i seriously loved this cheesecake, and boyf's housemate also gave it his seal of approval, branding it "the best cheesecake ever". We just used a ready made caramel sauce for the top, but i think this would be even better with a home made caramel, if you have the time.

The Baked Cheesecake Challenge

a.k.a. The Great Cheesecake Disaster.

So The Boyf and i decided to do another baking challenge after the success of the focaccia competition. This time we each had to make a baked cheesecake of some description.

I decided to make an apple crumble cheesecake. I was going to assemble the recipe myself- ie make a plain baked cheesecake, top with a spiced apple compote, then crumble topping, but instead i decided to go with this recipe, and to be honest, it didn't go to plan at all. Nothing in particular went wrong, when i was making it, but i think my springform tin leaked a bit (so i ended up with melted butter all over my oven,which then created an alarming amount of smoke), then the mixture rose more than expected around the outside and burnt a bit, while the middle didn't do much at all.

Anyway, after it has been left in the fridge overnight i was hoping that a miracle may have occurred or a little emergency cheesecake fairy had appeared to make it look prettier, but alas, there it was, looking sad and forlorn and very, very ugly.

i am a very ugly cheesecake. that is all.

I've had a little taste today for my sunday lunch dessert and i'm pleased to report that it doesn't taste as bad as it looks, it's actually quite nice. It looks much better inside than it does on the outside, which is probably a lot like myself (beauty comes from within, right, and in my head i am Lily Cole) I do think that just making a plain cheesecake with an apple crumble topping will work better though, maybe this is something to try sometime in the future.

Meanwhile, he made a double chocolate cheesecake which looks A-mezzing. It really does look lovely:

Last time we took great steps to ensure an independent judge and appropriate blinding. This time I can't bring myself to waste such effort as he is the clear winner. Even my mother, who should be heavily biased towards me, has said that he has won. Her exact words when she saw mine: "oh dear, what on earth is that?"

All of this means, dear people, that i have lost a cheesecake baking competition to someone who had to ring me to clarify what cream cheese is. I hang my head in shame and crawl into a corner to cry gently for many hours.

The score is now 1:1. And this is before proper judging.

UPDATE: Well of course he won. I mean, no contest at all really.