Chocolate cheesecake!

Along with the bourbon I’m also not so much a coinsurer of cheesecake. I usually go for chocolate cake or carrot cake for dessert. For some reason I decided chocolate cheesecake sounded like a great dessert to make for Easter. I’ve never made cheesecake. Not normal, not chocolate, nor any other type. I have a Hershey’s cookbook on the self in my kitchen. I’m pretty sure I’ve only opened it to drool, and never actually made anything from it so I had no idea if the recipe writer knew what they were doing or was just making things up. I decided to double check the internet to make sure that the recipe was at least close to other cheesecake recipes and I wasn’t being led astray or using some weird combination of cheeses. Fortunately the recipe was sound and off I went on my cheesecake adventure. The recipe is found here.

Lesson learned: allow the cream cheese to come to room temperature. It mixes better that way. Otherwise you need to whip it for a lot longer and continue to scrape down the sides of the bowl and the mixing blade.

The recipe called for instant espresso in the crust. I couldn’t find it at the grocery store. I’ve actually had a hard time finding it the only times I’ve looked for it, but I can always find it when I don’t need it. Go figure. I decided I could do without the espresso flavor. All it does it does is deepen the chocolate flavor, making it a little more like a bitter sweet chocolate crust. I rather enjoyed the sweeter chocolate flavor with the Nilla Wafer base. The complexity of flavor with the combination of chocolate and vanilla plus the ease of grinding up the Nilla Wafers was preferable to me over the alternative of using Oreo cookies as the crust. The issue I have there is that you need to scrape out the frosting in each sandwich. That’s a lot more work than throwing handfuls of Nilla Wafers into the food processor and grinding them to a fine powder and mixing that with powdered chocolate. 

The bonus of making cheesecake: I got to use both my spring form pan and my tamper. I have owned a tamper for years, from when I had an espresso maker (a crappy little thing that made terrible espresso; no pressure pump = bad espresso). It’s been sitting in my utensil drawer for ages with not apparent purpose. Now it has a use! I was able to even out the crust without getting my hands terribly dirty and the crust would be far more even than my finger press method could make it. 

This particular recipe makes a fairly dense cheesecake with a decadently rich chocolate flavor. I may try another type of cheese next time, possibly a mascarpone cheesecake. I’ll need to do some more research. I also need to figure out how to make a cheesecake that will not crack. When it finished cooking it was beautiful and smooth on the top, when it had cooled it cracked, not just right down the middle but in an ugly “Y” shape. I’ve read that a water bath may fix that. I’ll have to find out next time I make cheesecake, which may be a while. Not because it was bad but because my waist line does not need all that sugar and cheesy goodness.

I believe I have now used everything my wonderful family and friends gave us as wedding and shower gifts and I have found I love everything we requested. Thank you all for your love and support. To all my future brides and grooms: Be very careful what you wish for on your registry. People will buy you all of it. That doughnut maker, and the deep fryer, yep you’ll get them. And probably never use them. We were so picky about what we put on our registry, we really tried to choose things we thought we’d actually use on a regular basis.

Bourbon Glazed Ham

I don’t know anything about bourbon. At all. I don’t like the taste, I don’t like the smell. And I’ve never used it for cooking… until now. As you know yesterday was Easter. I hosted my very first family holiday (New Year’s Eve is what I call a “friends holiday”). For me the traditional Easter food is ham. And boy to I love ham. But I wanted to do something special, something different than the normal honey glaze from the packet that comes with the ham. In a moment of inspiration my husband suggested bourbon. Sure, why not. I don’t even know if we have it in the house but I’ll go get some and look up recipes. I soon found myself standing in the liquor store in the bourbon/whiskey isle with no idea what I was looking at other than price. Which is exactly how I ended up choosing the bottle I did. I was actually a little skittish about the particular bottle I chose because there was no information on the back. No history of the distillery or the “distinct notes of whatever” I was supposed to be able to taste, just a line drawn picture of what I can only assume is supposed to be Thomas Jefferson, but with no information I can’t be sure because it certainly doesn’t look like him. Maybe it was some other Jefferson, possibly the 1^st owner. I’ll have to do some research for you. I decided to take a chance on this unknown bottle of bourbon. It was a mid-range price, about $25 for a 750 mL bottle, which was actually on sale. It had been $30 something. Jefferson Straight Bourbon Wisky (I did spell that right I promise, that’s what’s on the bottle). It turns out my method of choosing Bourbon was pretty awesome.

We decided to try it before cooking with it, following our rule of “try it before you mix it”. It was surprisingly smooth. The only other bourbon I’ve had is Jim Beam and I’ve always felt it tasted like liquefied wood mixed with lighter fluid. Jefferson was not that at all. It had all the heady aroma of bourbon but the alcohol burn lasted only a second before the flavor smoothed out the a pleasingly masculine pallet. It tasted like good cologne smells if that makes any sense.

My recipe came from Jim Beam, I felt a little like a trader because I didn’t use Beam but it worked out. See the recipe here. The only derivation for me was the cooking method. Instead of microwaving the honey and molasses I decided to put the whole thing in a pot on the stove. I mixed up the honey and molasses and let that simmer for a few minutes before adding the orange juice, bourbon, and mustard. I let the whole thing simmer for another minute or two before I took it off the heat and let it rest until the ham was ready for it. The only changes I think I would make is next time I don’t think I’ll buy a pre-sliced ham. I felt that the edges got a little dry because the ham was not sealed together and the heat could get to the edges of the meat.  I know this will involve a little more work on the back end but I’m ok with that. Plus I’ll be able to decide the size of the slices when I cut it myself.

The flavor of the meat after glazing was slightly sweet and slightly tangy with the molasses and honey being toned down a bit by the bourbon, orange juice, and mustard. The smokey flavor of the ham also paired really well with the rich flavor of the bourbon. I will say the OJ was a surprise. I didn’t think about how well the acid of the OJ would work with the ham. Usually people put pineapples but I think I’m going with orange for that high acid note on ham from now on. My only complaint, if you can call it one, I’d like the glaze a little thicker. I might cut down on the orange and cook the mix a little longer to make it a little more syrupy.

I would like to note that it’s probably not the best idea to test new recipes or new ingredients on family dinners. It is a little cruel to use your family as test subjects for all your culinary adventures but sometimes it works out for the best. This time I was lucky both my 1^st time recipes worked out. Come back Friday for more information about the 2^nd 1^st of Easter, chocolate cheesecake, otherwise known as decadence on a plate.