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Monday 2 January 2017

Chocolate, Brandy, & Ginger Cheesecake

BAKE #4: CHOCOLATE, BRANDY & GINGER CHEESECAKE



Happy new year everyone! Welcome 2017! Another year has flown by... I guess they all do to some extent :) This year has been a year of ups and downs, but has given me lots of room to grow and try new things - such as this blog and my very own baking challenge! I am excited to see how all of these baking adventures will unfold in the new year.

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas. I wanted to include a picture of my own Christmas Cake, which I had made last Christmas (2015). My Mum and Grandma's recipe. I had so much fun decorating the first Christmas cake I had ever made, and so I wanted to share it with you.





Anways, this time around, I am extremely late with my latest blog entry. Due... probably over around a good two weeks I would imagine? I had actually made a few more batches of Mary's Gingerbread Men recipe for family and friends, and my Mum had made a Christmas cake, so I hadn't really had the gumption to try any new recipes during the holiday season.  

But, new year, new start! So, I am now "hopefully" getting back on track!

Well, for new year's day my sister cooked my family a wonderful meal, crown pork roast, and it was so delicious. We were spoiled! As agreed, I was responsible for bringing the dessert. I have been wanting to try this cheesecake recipe for quite some time now, and thought new year's day was the perfect opportunity. After all, it did have a small helping of liqueur in, which is always needed to ring in the new year! I had such high hopes for this cheesecake... but I am sorry to say that it was not my favourite, Mary Berry! I will explain why... and I am pretty sure I mucked up in the recipe somewhere along the way. So it hadn't been a great start to my baking challenge of the new year, but I knew the further I got into this book, the more challenges I would face! I guess that is why I have called it a baking challenge. :) I felt very, very flustered throughout this recipe, and I didn't even have to bake it! It was a no-bake recipe! :) Anways, here is how it went...

I should have read through all the steps in my recipe first. Read the whole thing through, so that is another rule I learned in baking! For me anyways! You must read the ingredients, AND all the steps start to finish. #1- so you know what you're getting into, and #2 So you can prepare things ahead of time. Lesson learned. :) This recipe is featured in Mary Berry's Baking Bible, pages 374-375.

So I probably went wrong with her first step in the book - use an 8" loose-bottomed/springform tin. I didn't have one, so I used a 10" springform tin. "This will be fine..." Uh-huh. My cake would have been much denser, and had much more height if I had listened. So I'm hoping in the new year I will be able to buy myself an 8" cake tin. Hint- I looked ahead in her book and she does use 8" tins quite frequently. 

The base turned out wonderfully, ginger snaps, butter, and demerara sugar. I melted the butter, sugar, and combined the crushed ginger snaps in a small saucepan, and pressed into my cake tin, which I had to spread out finely, so it made for a very thin base layer really. My fault! :)




Letting it cool, and set in the pan, I moved onto melting the chocolate in a glass bowl, over boiling water in a pan. I used baking chocolate squares which had 54% cocoa. Stirring regularly, it melted quite nicely. So far so good, I thought! Next, I needed to prepare the gelatine for my cheesecake mixture. This was where I fell apart... still not sure what the right quantity would be. Maybe there is a difference in gelatine between Canada and England.

I won't include Mary's measurements, as I worry about copyright laws, etc... but I originally had added 3 packets of gelatine, as I figured this weighed up on the scale to the measurement of gelatine she had called for. This is what it looked like when I had dissolved it in the cold water...



Mary said it was supposed to take 10 mins to "sponge," but it looked like this right away! So I knew it wasn't right. So I decided to try only 1 packet of the gelatine and it looked like this after 10 mins...



It definitely looked more airy and spongey, so I took this as a good sign. Next step was to position the gelatine over a pan of simmering water until it completely dissolved, or I thought of it as 'melted' again. Leaving the melted chocolate and gelatine to cool, I started on the mixture portion. Mary called for 'full-fat soft cheese' so I interpreted that as cream cheese for over here. I then separated the eggs, you needed to keep the whites and yolks separate in this recipe. So, I beated the cream cheese, egg yolks, and white sugar with my hand mixer. I then spooned in the sour cream and slightly cooled chocolate and mixed with a wooden spoon. I beated the egg whites until white and frothy/bubbly, and folded it into the cheese mixture with a large, deep metal spoon to try and keep the air in. I added in the finely chopped ginger, and the brandy...she insists you can add more if you like! Oh dear, Mary Berry! But I decided to keep the amount she originally calls for, and it later proved to quite enough brandy for my family!  (I'll explain that later too!) I used a French brandy, this was the smallest bottle that I could find in the liquor stores! But I have noticed that Mary calls for brandy in other recipes too... I'm starting to think that she really likes brandy! :) Also, have a peek at how beautiful her cheesecake looks in the book... what I am aspiring to and hoping for! 





So folding in the brandy concluded the cheesecake mixture. I had high hopes! It looked and tasted good... so I poured it onto the ginger snap base and placed in the fridge to set. She didn't clarify how long to set exactly, so I kept it in the fridge overnight. 

I told all of you earlier how messy the kitchen at home becomes when I'm baking, and I think because I was feeling very flustered with this recipe, the 'dish situation' became much worse than usual! So, I will be brave and show you just how bad it gets! :) Definitely a new year's resolution!








The cheesecake looked as though it was almost set, but I stuck it in the freezer for around an hour or so before garnishing the top. I decorated the cheesecake with real whipped cream, chocolate curls, and a few slices of ginger. I added some icing sugar into the whipped cream, and I used a peeler on some room temperature eating chocolate to make the curls. I also sort of caramelized the ginger slices in some butter and demerara sugar in a saucepan on the stove.







As you can see, we ate the cheesecake in bowls! It sadly did not set like a proper cheesecake should, and so I knew I definitely got something wrong with the gelatine measurements. I think, for future references, 2 gelatine packets would have been correct. For me doing an encore recipe? I don't think so. And this mainly had to do with the difficultly I had with this recipe. The raw eggs in the mixture, added to the feeling of a 'mousse' to my attempt at this recipe. It was indeed very mousse-like. It did have a nice flavour... you could taste the brandy for sure! But it turned into a very messy cheesecake where we needed spoons. I definitely did at least one, if maybe not a few things wrong in this recipe. The proper tin size would also have made a huge difference. 

My family, within 1/2 an hour, was extremely giddy...and I knew it wasn't from the artificial wine/ sparkling grape juice we had at dinner. It was the brandy cheesecake. So if anything, it put us all in a great mood for the new year! Thanks Mary Berry. :)

I hope you enjoyed reading along! I had fun with this recipe... a challenging one, and one I know would be amazing if done properly! I am still not sure yet how to do that... and won't be attempting any time soon. But maybe by the time I'm through the book, I'll have things figured out to try it again. 

Happy new year everyone, I hope it is everything you wish it to be. x

So, I will end with "Ready, Set, BAKE!"

~*Next Bake Coming Soon*~


















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