Kitchen Therapy


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French Cheesecake or Torteau Fromager

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French Cheesecake or Torteau Fromager from David Lebovitz’s cookbook, My Paris Kitchen and this week’s Cook the Books Fridays recipe.
The last few weeks have been busy. We moved into the house we have been building and while the outside of the house is still looking like a construction site, the inside (especially the kitchen) is ready! I took a photo of the sky last night and it shows the state of our yard 🙂
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Cooking in the new kitchen has been wonderful. It’s spurred me into a bit of a cooking frenzy! And what a week to return to Cook the Book Fridays. This French Cheesecake was amazing. David Lebovitz says “the blackened crust hides a cake with the unique flavour of a dense American cheesecake, but with the light sponginess of a Japanese cheesecake.” And that pretty much says it all.
If a light, white, sponge cake and a cheesecake had a baby, then this would be it.
I really liked the taste and texture of this cake, my 18yr old who has always stood by his dislike for cheesecake, actually liked this cake and asked for more.
I wish I left it in the oven just a few more minutes, there was a section in the centre that was a bit under done. It still tasted good though, so no one cared!
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I probably would have steered clear of this recipe had it not been for this group, the burnt coloured top would have left me feeling sceptical enough to not try this. So it’s a good reminder of how good it is to push myself out of my comfort zone, thanks to the Cook the Book Fridays group 🙂

 

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Strawberry Cheesecake Cupcakes

 Oh My Goodness!

We have been working our way through the Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook at our house.
We love the Banana Bread which tastes just like the slices you can buy in most of the nicer cafes around Sydney. The golden moist Blueberry Muffins disappear quickly in our house. The kids pack them in their lunch boxes and share them with friends.
Until now I’ve stuck to making the same few things from this book, but we’ve decided to live on the wild side and cook as many of the recipes as we can! 
So after a day at Manly beach, we came home and decided to continue our family time in the kitchen. We voted on which recipe to make next and these cupcakes were the clear winner. I didn’t really have any expectations and have never really been a cheesecake fan, I’m more of a European layered cake kinda girl. After dinner, I served these babies up and could hear the exclamations of delight as my family bit into these light and luscious morsels of heaven! The crumbed digestive biscuits on top have you convinced you’re eating a cheesecake, but it’s so much better than that!

Ingredients

120g plain flour
140g caster sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
a pinch of salt
40g unsalted butter at room temperature
120ml whole milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 egg
12 large strawberries, chopped into small pieces
200g digestive biscuits

For cream cheese frosting
300g icing sugar
50g unsalted butter at room temperature
125g cream cheese

Method

1. Preheat oven 170 degrees celsuis or 325 degrees farenheit.

2.Mix flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and butter on low speed until you get a sandy consistency.

 

3. Add milk and vanilla extract, beat on medium speed until all ingredients are well mixed. 

4. Add the egg and beat well for a few minutes to make sure it’s well mixed

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

5. Divide the chopped strawberries between the paper cases.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

6. Spoon the cake mixture on top and bake for 20-25 minutes.

 

My husband ate about a third of the mixture and I had to shoo him away! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

7. Put broken up digestive biscuits in a food processor and process until finely ground (you can see Emily’s rose cheeks after our beach fun!) 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

8. To make cream cheese frosting beat icing sugar and butter until the mixture is well mixed.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

9. Add cream cheese and beat until totally incorporated. Turn mixer to medium and beat for another 5 minutes until frosting is light and fluffy but careful to not overbeat and make it runny! 

 

 

 

 

 

10. When cupcakes are cold spoon cream cheese frosting on top and finish with a sprinkling of the biscuits.

 

ENJOY!

(Recipe pretty much as it appears in Hummingbird Bakery Book)