Life in the Cheese Drawer

last easter, i told the story of how i made cheesecake. i think, however, that i didn’t take any pics. so here are the pics! but first, the recipe, from the joy of cooking, which, i have found, i use quite a bit.

I started off with the crust – i know i have a fancy food processor, but it was just easier and less time consuming to crush that little graham crackers with the rolling pin. i also might add that the only non-organic graham crackers that are devil’s syrup free is the honey-maid low-fat version. rubbed butter all over and threw in the crumbs.
mmmm. look at that filling. it tasted great.
pre-waterbath! foil is there so the water doesn’t seep into the springform pan. last year i used regular sized foil and i still got water in the cheesecake. this year, i specially bought the heavy-duty stuff so i’d have the correct size.

mmmm, look at that! it’s still in my fridge like that right now. gorgeous! tastes delicious. and cheesecakes are not that difficult to make, so don’t be intimidated by them.

i tried my hand at an almond filling. ground up some almonds with powdered sugar, a little vanilla, and egg white. then mixed in some honey. it was gooey and looks like oatmeal, but tasted good. so, after a failed first attempt (i had unwittingly used year-expired yeast and after 3 hours, it had risen maybe 1/4), i finally got my dough ready to go. the only recipe i have for the b-kuchen is one in grandma’s church cookbook that she published it in. there are a couple questionable things (a rolled out thickness of ONE INCH??), but so far it seems to be the same recipe 🙂 but first, let me wax eloquent about the smell of lemons. the kuchen recipe calls for lemon rind, and this was the only time growing up that we actually bought a lemon. so it stands to reason that the smell of grating a lemon, or cutting into a lemon, always brings up memories of spring and eastertime. it’s such a fresh scent. now let me wax eloquent about my microplaner. if you do not have one of these, GET ONE NOW. not only do they grate fruit rinds better, but it will also serve as a whole nutmeg  grater as well. hard cheese (parmesan) is also served well with the microplaner. it’s useful and handy and easy to clean. ok. time to roll that bad boy out and cut into squares! insert homemade filling, pinch, pinch, pinch and pinch. rising pre-oven. got my post-oven setup ready to go. note silicon brush: only useful thing i found in a pampered chef catalog. and done! since my parents aren’t eating these, i pull my kuchen out when they are BARELY done. bottoms are barely golden, dough is nice and chewy (but not raw). i had some tops flip up, as you can see. no real exploding kuchen with the poppyseed, but the almond filling just went kaflooey all over. oh well. better luck next time. and i was actually surprised there were no exploding kuchen, because you can see that i packed it in there pretty good.
A NOTE ON THE FILLING: tasting just the filling proved to be sweet enough, but after baking, it seems that some of the sweetness was lost. not sure if this is due to the poppyseed being ground, raw, or what, but if you want the filling sweeter, i recommend upping the sugar content in the recipe from yesterday. next year i’ll up it to 1 or 1.25 cups of sugar. not that this is bad; it’s just not as sweet as the solo filling.