Cheese Archives - Baking With Unicorns

TURTLE! nom nom

August 30, 2016 by Baking Unicorn Leave a Comment

Bonjour!
Happy end of August! I don’t know about where you’re at, but apparently the end of August in St Louis is just a scorching, humid mess of a time…. so pretty much like the rest of the summer here. Granted, I cannot hate on the weather too much. I have been hard at work, training in this weather for various races, and I think that training in this weather has prepared me well. I ran in a Spartan Super (8 miles, 25 obstacles) in mid August in the Boston area. Local racers were complaining about the heat, but I felt like it was a beautiful day with little humidity. The race felt like a walk in a park… a walk that had alot of mud, heavy lifting, climbing, and fire, but a walk none the less. This race was SO much fun that I have since signed up for 2 more races, one in Seattle and another in Boston. If I successfully complete those two races, I have the Trifeca- 3 Spartan races, 1 year, 1 of each level (Sprint, Super, and Beast). Here’s hoping I don’t die (and if anyone wants to join me, all you have to do is ask!). My victory pose:

But since it is the end of August, it also means classes have started back up. Thankfully, I’m not really taking any classes. But I will be TA-ing for a neuroscience course. Poor kids. They have no idea how unhelpful I am likely to be with all their questions about action potentials, neuroanatomy, and reflexes. But I’ll do my best, and perhaps just bake them conciliatory cookies for after their exams.

The end of August also means that alot of people in my life have birthdays. Like, and oddly disproportionate amount. Surprisingly, I have managed to not bake at all for any of the birthdays that I have attended, however my friend asked me to help her bake for her friend’s birthday. Clearly, I had no choice but to oblige her. Any excuse to bake!! Plus, I had just been on Pintrest and seen a recipe for a Turtle Cheesecake. Now, I’m not much for Turtle anything, unless it’s the lil reptile sauntering around the dessert or careening through the sea, but it sounded interesting and the Pinterest post made it look pretty (I’m a sucker for shiny things).

I forwarded to recipe to Reshma (the friend in need), having not looked at it at all. She wrote backing asking if she needed to get all the stuff, and at first I thought “F^!@, did I send a really hard recipe?” Luckily, it’s not too difficult of a recipe, and doesn’t actually require you to do too much to make it a “Turtle” cheesecake. Just buy some sauce and some nuts and BAM! insta-turtle! So, the following is the recipe, and how it all went down. All photos of food are courtesy of Miss Reshma herself (and all alcohol imbibed during the baking is courtesy of Mr. Vitaly, Reshma’s manfriend and my teammate for an upcoming Bike MS 100 mile ride)

TURTLE TURTLE TURTLE CHEESECAKE!
graciously snatched from here!

Ingredients:
CRUST
1 1/2 packages of graham crackers (We used regular)
1/3 cup melted butter

FILLING
24oz cream cheese (room temp)
14oz (1 can) sweetened condensed milk
1/2 cup sugar
3 eggs
Juice from 1 lemon
1 tbsp vanilla
6oz chocolate chips

TOPPING
1/4 cup mini chocolate chips
1/2 cup caramel ice cream topping
1/2 cup hot fudge ice cream topping
1/4 cup chopped pecans

Preheat oven to 300 degrees and prepare your cheesecake pan (9″ spring form pan is what we used). By “prepare” I mean maybe throw down some parchment paper like we did so that it was easier to slide out of the pan when done.
Crush, mangle and crumble the graham crackers into a semi-fine powder. We had some chunks in ours still. This probably can be done in a food processor, but it’s messier if you do it by hand. Then add in the melted butter and stir it all around. Press the crumbled crackers into the prepared pan, forming the base as well as the wall, ~ 1 1/2 inches up the sides. I think ours was ~ 1/4 inch thick. Once done, place the crust in the fridge to let it cool down and solidify a bit.
Stir cream cheese with condensed milk, sugar, eggs, and vanilla. Try to make it as smooth and creamy as possible. We had a few tiny chunks (pea sized?) in our batter. It doesn’t have to be perfect. Then add in the lemon juice and stir some more!
Melt the chocolate chips (we used milk chocolate, but I would suggest dark or semisweet in the future). Remove 1 cup of the cream cheese batter and add to the melted chocolate (removed from heat). Stir, stir, stir.
Take your cooled crust out of the fridge. Pour about 1/2 the remaining cream cheese batter into the crust. Then add the chocolate batter. Gently, without tearing up the crust underneath, swirl the two batters together (this isn’t necessary, and let’s be honest, no one is looking at the swirl pattern when their stuffing their faces with cheesecake). Then add on the rest of the cream cheese batter. I admit, for this step, we cut it pretty damn close. Our crust was barely high enough to contain the batter.
Gently place the pan into your preheated oven and bake for 75-90 minutes. We took about 93 minutes. Because we were still enjoying Vitaly’s beverages, once the cake was finished, we turned the oven off, but left the cake in the oven to cook a lil bit more.
Next, Reshma took the cake home because it was for the next day and I have no idea what she did with it after, but here’s what I suspect happened:
Place cake in fridge until you’re ready to serve. Take it out. Drizzle chocolate sauce on the cake. Drizzle caramel sauce on the cake. Sprinkle chocolate chips and pecans on cake. Take cake to party, remove from pan. Let birthday boy eat a large portion and share the rest with everyone else at the party. WOOT!

P.S. MUSIC! How could I forget until the end to add in my musical joys of the current moment? Near epic fail on my part. But here’s what I’m jamming to these days;

Hold Each Other- by A Great Big World
Adorable! ugh!

Bombshell- by Ashley Monroe
I love her voice. Love it. And I like the video interpretation.

The Evolution of Apple Stuff

October 15, 2013 by Baking Unicorn Leave a Comment

I have very strong memories of “Apple Stuff” from childhood. I thought it was delicious!!! (or that’s my memory of it. Perhaps my mom remembers otherwise). If I recall correctly, then Apple Stuff was a recipe that my mom modified from something she found in the newspaper. Quite simply, Apple Stuff is the combination of granny smith apples, raw cashews, and a bit of lemon juice. Throw it all into a food processor to chop it all up, and PRESTO! Apple Stuff!
I made a batch a few weeks ago. Delicious as always and just as I remembered it. As I was munching on my apple stuff, I got to thinking of how this could be incorporated into a baking delight. I started out with thinking of making it into a cheese cake kind of thing, where instead of peanut butter, one uses cashew butter and then adds some caramelized apples on top. This still may happen, but will require a touch more planning and though on my part.
But last Wednesday, we had out weekly lab meeting and there was brie, crackers and grapes. yum! And then it hit me, brie and apples are great together… right? That’s a thing? Maybe? From there, I decided granny smith apples and brie would be excellent together. But a brie cheesecake does not sound delicious to me. That actually sounds terrible and no unicorn in the world would endorse such a thing. So how could I combine brie and apples into a baked good? Course I next went to scone! But I just made a savory scone… Then it hit me, BISCUITS! They’re totally different from scones because they aren’t triangular shaped, right?
So that’s what I have concocted. Brie and Apple Biscuits.
Unfortunately, the brie was super strong, and the apple was not so strong. So they were mostly Brie Biscuits. When I remake these, and I’m sure I will sometime soonish, I’ll probably double my apple and half the brie amount. But what follows below is the recipe that I just used to make this first batch of biscuits!

Brie and Apple Biscuits
modified from J.P.’s Big Daddy Biscuits

Ingredients:
1 medium sized granny smith apple
1/2 lb brie (cold)
2 cups flour + extra for kneading
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons butter (cold)
1/2 cup milk

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Heavily grease cups of a 12 count cupcake pan. May want to also flour the insides.

2. Place brie on a flour dusted cutting board and have extra flour near by to throw onto brie as you cut it. This helps to separate the brie into distinct cubes as you cut it. Cut the brie into small cubes (~1 cubic centimeter). Place brie cubes, fully separated from one another into a bowl and place back into fridge.

3. Place flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and butter (cut into ~6 pieces) into food processor and pulse for 20-30 seconds. This will cut up the butter, yielding a coarse cornmeal texture. Transfer to a large bowl and set aside.

4. Peel granny smith apple, cut into ~8 sections, removing core and seeds. Place this in the food processor and pulse for 20-30 seconds. The consistency of the apple should be like that of a cole slaw. Add apples to the butter/flour mixture. Add in the chilled brie cubes and mix everything together. Slowly add most of the milk. Combine until ball of dough forms. This should be somewhat sticky, but not impossible to handle. If it seems too dry, then add in a little more milk.

5. Turn dough out onto a heavily floured surface and knead for 1-2 minutes. The dough should still be sticky, but not clinging to your fingers and unmanageable. Form dough into a ball and then gently flatten the dough out into a circle that’s 3/4 inch thick. Using a knife, cut the dough into 12 even sections. I did this by first cutting into 4 sections (perpendicular cuts), and then divided each of these 4 quadrants into 3 pieces. Take each wedge and form into a ball. Plop the ball into one of the well greased cupcake cups.

6. Bake for 13-15 minutes. Take out of oven and let cool. I’m not entirely sure how long one should let these cool for. I let them cool for ~5 minutes and then started to take them out of the pan. This was very difficult as the cheese was causing the biscuits to stick to the sides. I’m not sure if this would have been easier if the cheese had cooled. As an alternative, try using cupcake papers next time? Not sure if that would help.

7. Serve warm! Or as my friends Mik and Vani did, serve with pasta topped with eggplant and tomato sauce.

(nom nom… munch)

Cheesy and Spicy

September 22, 2013 by Baking Unicorn Leave a Comment

Before I forget, I would like to thank my dad for pointing out that “baking with Unicorns” can be re-scrambled to “Scrub A Thinking Wino.” Not only do I find that to be a hilarious image, but also rather appropriate considering how much I love my wines. In fact, this blog was almost named “confections of an alcoholic” but then realized I’m not actually an alcoholic, so didn’t want anyone getting any ideas.

Anywho, this past summer I went on a small scone baking binge. I was originally inspired by a post from The Moon In My Kitchen where she posted a delicious recipe for blueberry scones. I made those, varying it a bit and adding an icing. And then I made some peanut butter chocolate chip ones, then some orange chocolate chip ones and then some…. I made tons of scones. I found them quick and satisfying to make. But the whole time I was on this baking binge, I really wanted to make a savory scone, but never remembered to buy the ingredients (generally I was making these scones at night after about 4-5 hours of GRE studying, so my brain was a bit fried). The other day, I remembered my binge, and quickly flipped through various recipes for scones, gathering a general “scone formula” of flour, baking powder, salt, sugar, butter, milk and flavor. From there, I pieced together my savory scone recipe. A Cheesy, Jalapeno, Broccoli Scone.

I have to admit that these babies were a hit. At least, they seemed to be with my roommates and those who work in the psychology lab I’m an RA at. HOOOOOOORAY! I personally loved them. Hint of jalapeno so that you get a small kick in the mouth, but the cheese helps to calm the burn. And the broccoli adds great texture and delicious flavor. I was rather sad that I only made 8 scones, but I suppose I could always make more….

Before I get to the actual recipe, I should note that when I was making these, I was all sorts of in the mood to be precise and measure things out perfectly. I have a small kitchen scale that goes from ounces to grams and seems to work pretty well…. And it did… for half of the measuring and then the batteries died. So you will notice that the recipe is in several systems of measurement. I apologize for that, but…. it’s all I got for you now. If you need to convert to a single system, google it.

Cheesy, Jalapeno, Broccoli Scones
(original recipe)

375 grams (3 cups) Flour
1 1/2 Tablespoons Sugar
1/2 Teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon Baking Powder
1 stick of Butter (extra cold)
~0.6 lbs Extra Sharp Cheddar Cheese
~.25 lbs Asiago Cheese
35 grams diced Jalapenos (~two 2″ peppers)
75 grams Broccoli Florets
1 cup Half and Half (plus extra for brushing)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Dice the jalapenos and broccoli and set aside.

Sift flour, baking powder, sugar and salt in a large bowl (I’ve really been enjoying sifting my dry ingredients together lately, even though it creates more dishes). Take about half the flour mixture and place in a food processor. Cut the cold stick of butter into 4-6 pieces and place into food processor as well. Pulse the processor until the mixture resembles a rather course mixture (see picture).

Combine the butter/flour mixture with rest of flour mixture. Grate the cheese (watch your fingers) and combine with flour mixture. The flour should coat the cheese bits and help to separate them so they’re not all clumped together. Toss the jalapenos and broccoli in with the flour mixture, distributing broccoli and jalapenos throughout the mixture as evenly as possible.

Add 1 cup of half and half to flour mixture and combine, using wooden spoon. The dough should be somewhat sticky, but not too sticky. If it’s completely sticking to the sides, add a bit more flour. If it’s completely dry, add just a touch more half and half. Turn dough onto prepared floured surface. I like to put a no-stick silpat sheet on an 18×12 jellyroll pan. Kneed your dough for 2-3 minutes, adding a bit of flour if needed such that dough sticks together, but is not sticking to everything. Then shape into a sphere and flatten out till about 1″thick.

Slice the round of dough into 8 pieces (like a pie) or however you wish to form your scones. Evenly spread the scones out on pan (they don’t spread out much except for the cheese part melting). Brush the tops of the scones with a bit of half and half and then place in oven.

Bake for 26 minutes or until toothpick comes out slightly or completely clean. I went with slightly, giving me a much more moist scone, more biscuit like. Allow the scones to cool on pan for about 5 minutes and then transfer to wire rack to cool completely. I served them as is, but if you feel you need a touch more butter, salt, and/or pepper, go for it!