Oreo cheesecake with reduced sugar content.

If you're lazy, or out of equipment (like me) to crush the cookies for cheesecake base, which always discourages me from making cheesecakes, then head on to your nearest baking supplies store for a packet of cookie crumbs. I was lucky to have Oreo crumbs at the store I visit regularly. This means I had to omit the filling that was called for in the original recipe, which I was okay with - less sugar, you see!

I also reduced more than half of the sugar and almost doubled the recipe to use up 500 grams of cream cheese. I thought the taste was just fine.

Recipe adapted from Oreo Cheesecake Bars by Table for Two.

Oreo Cheesecake with Chocolate Ganache Topping

For the cookie base:

70 g Oreo crumbs

2 tbsp melted butter

Preheat oven to 180°C. Mix well the crumbs and butter, then press onto the base of an 8" pan. Bake for 5 minutes.

For the cheesecake:

500 g cream cheese

30 g granulated sugar (use twice the amount for added sweetness)

200 g sour cream

1 tsp vanilla essence

2 medium eggs & 1 yolk

50 g Oreo crumbs

1. Preheat oven to 165°C. 

2. Beat the cheese until smooth, then add in the sugar and beat until it is smooth again.

3. Mix the sour cream and vanilla essence with the cheese mixture.

4. Beat in the eggs and yolk.

5. Stir in the crumbs until they are just distributed through the batter. Don't overmix.

6. Pour batter onto the cookie base. Bake in the preheated oven for 60 minutes. Leave the cake to cool in the oven for an hour. Remove from the oven and chill in the fridge.

For the ganache:

20 g chocolate chips or chopped chocolate

1 tsp milk

Microwave for 20-30 seconds. Stir the mixture until smooth. If it's too thick, thin it with more milk or thicken it with more chocolate, and microwave for another 20 seconds. You may need to let it cool to your preferred consistency.

Pour the ganache over the room temperature or chilled cheesecake and let it set in the fridge. It will thicken as it cools.

Durian mini cheesecakes.

Being married to my husband has got its perks. For example, we never had to pay a cent for durian. And they are gifted to us as long as they are in stock. Crazy, but good. I remember last year when I got out of confinement, durian was going out of season. This year however, we still have so much even though it's now September!

Taking advantage of the room temperature durians (but don't ask me the species, I only knew they were sweet because I reject bitter durians) I made these mini cheesecakes with the recipe adapted from Foodie Baker. 

Her recipe was adjusted from another source and the measurements were not exact. The recipe yielded 7 muffin-sized cheesecakes for me. She also increased the durian content from the original recipe, when she halved the rest of the ingredients.

As a result, the cheesecakes were very dense with durian, and so creamy, which was delightful! It's not any bit light or fluffy, therefore not the kind of cake my mom would prefer. Making this was rather effortless, but baking was a fussy process. Using low temperature would result in a much longer cooking time, but temperature too high would make the cakes rise too high and crack. I wasn't using the 160 °C consistently, I played around with 150 (too slow) then 160 again (too hot!). As the cakes cook, cracks were seen but since it's a very dense recipe, the cakes fell as it cooled down. If you plan to use any topping, don't worry about the cracks. But if you are particular about them, I suggest you bake the cakes at 150 °C but for 40 minutes or until the top turns golden brown.

Durian Mini Cheesecakes (makes 7 muffins)

250 g cream cheese

30 g icing sugar (you can reduce it as you like so the cake will not end up too sweet, but omitting it totally will make your cake harder to brown)

1 egg

40 g milk

150 g durian flesh (puree it if you wish)

1. Preheat oven to 160 °C.
2. Whip cheese for one minute. Then beat in sugar until it turns light and fluffy.
3. Whip in egg until just incorporated. Slowly mix in milk.
4. Gently fold in durian until just mixed.
5. Pour into muffin cases more than 3/4 full. Bake for 30 minutes or until top browns.

Passion fruit cheesecake.

When you crave for some sugar fix but don't know what cake is on the safe side ... Just side with cheesecakes. Cheesecakes that don't need leavening to look presentable.

Although I would say, better ditch the sponge cake base. :(  Because it will be stone firm without sugar.

The cheesecake recipe is adapted from Alex Goh's Fantastic Cheesecake, and sponge cake recipe from Food.com.

I reduced the sugar in the cheesecake, but for the sponge cake I only managed to cut away 2-3 teaspoons. Overall, sugar content is 20 g (sugar in cheesecake) + 52 g (sugar in sponge) + est. 10 g (sugar present in dairy products) = about 82 g, plus fructose present in the pulp of 2 passion fruits!

Nevertheless, its carb and fat contents are still high so eat in moderation.

No bake coffee cheesecake with sponge base.

Daddy's birthday is supposed to fall on this day. So it's practically a holiday everytime.

He's supposed to turn 63 this year.

Anyway, happy birthday daddy!

With or without a celebration, our home is always filled with a cake. To put my baking desire on hold whenever I'm short of sweet stuff.

Here is a sugar guilt-free version of Bakericious's Non Bake Coffee Cheesecake. Except for the sponge base (adapted from Food.com), in which the sugar plays a very crucial role, there's no added sugar in the cheese other than what was already present in the whipping cream.

Okay, it is however wise to taste your cake before chilling it ... Cream cheese is naturally salty so I should have balanced it out with some sugar, or used sweetened coffee powder.

I made this in a loaf pan so it's a pretty petite cake.

And please don't be bothered by the unkempt setting. :/ I lined the rounded tin with foil so that the cake can be extricated easily. The sides then looked like crumpled paper.

And I probably should have infused the coffee more into the boiled water before filtering. Or used more coffee.

Making cheesecake with molasses sugar.

I am on a low carb low sugar diet, which means eliminating white and refined products and processed foods as much as I can from my life.

So mommy (and my husband, too) are growing sterner with me when I begged for ice cream, ais kacang, cakes and ... repeat.

Blergh.

Mom said I could bake cakes, ONLY if the sugar amount was cut back very drastically.

You know how hard it is to bake WITHOUT granulated sugar.

So I have resorted to using the darker varieties of brown sugar - in this case, molasses sugar. Molasses are present in your typical packaged brown sugar, the colour depth varying with its molasses content. I was looking for muscovado sugar at the organic store but they only had molasses sugar and unrefined cane sugar for my replacements. 

Can anyone enlighten me on the differences between muscovado and molasses sugar?

Brown sugars contain more moisture than white sugar, therefore the dryness of white sugar is extremely crucial in making a cake with light texture.

On the other hand, instead of using my regular full cream milk, I have replaced it with low fat high calcium milk.

This recipe requires one to beat egg whites with sugar until soft peaks form. I actually whipped until firm peaks are formed. It takes a longer time to attain this with molasses sugar than you would regularly with granulated sugar.

I obtained 16 servings from this recipe.

Table below is the nutrition content of the cake. Take note that I did not include carbohydrates from the flours and protein from the eggs.

No-bake red bean cheesecake.

I've been craving to make foods after I quit working. My university life is starting next month (tomorrow is the beginning of October, I gotta embrace it!) and it's been a long time since I had the time to cook or bake.

I found the recipe from my brother's bundle. Credit can be located at the bottom of the post.

This I could say, is one of my most successful cakes, maybe I was less slouchy and the method was not so tedious. The produce was rather delicate. *smiles* But sadly there were gelatin lumps that weren't incorporated into the cheese mixture.

It's a chilled cake and no egg is needed.

Firing away.

For the biscuit base:
I used the square crackers the seniors love dipping into coffee, and a tablespoon of melted butter. Only this time, I chilled it in a baking pan with removable base, instead of baking it.

For the red bean filling you'll need:

100g red beans, cooked until soft in water (but still a lil' stiff for my case, anywho, as long as it's edible)

60g caster sugar

1. Strain water from red beans, and process the red beans until they form a paste.

2. Cook the paste over medium heat. More water would ooze out after some time. Cook until there's less liquid, but still a little moist.

3. Add in the sugar and cook until it dissolves.

The final product.

For the cake:
250g cream cheese
50g caster sugar
1 1/2tbsps gelatin powder
60g water
250g whipping cream (I used the 250ml pack, it weighed a little over 200g, and the original recipe calls for 300g)
200g red bean filling (I had a little over 200g from the recipe, the leftover is still in the fridge *guilty*)

1. Combine gelatin powder and water in a bowl, over a bain-marie, cook until gelatin dissolves.
2. While waiting for (1), beat cream cheese and sugar until incorporated.
3. Pour (1) over the cheese mixture and stir well. (Lumps in my cake were formed in this process.)

I was curious about how mixing gelatin mixture with cream cheese would turn out.

4. Beat the whipping cream until soft peaks form, then fold into the cheese mixture.

I LOVED this! It was so fluffy!

5. Mix in 200g red bean filling.

6. Pour mixture into the baking pan with biscuit base.
7. Refrigerate for 4 hours or more.

Adapted from Fantastic Cheesecake by Alex Goh.

Highly recommended for bakers! I've tried some recipes since year 2005 and except for the Cottage Cheesecake, the rest turned out really good.

Passion fruit cheesecake.

Few days ago I spent a little time making a Passion Fruit Cheesecake.  This one is super easy.

500g cream cheese
100g caster sugar
Pulp from 3 passion fruit
200g non-dairy whipping cream, whipped till soft peaks formed
1½ tbsp gelatin powder melted in 4 tbsp water by double boiling

1. Combine cream cheese and sugar. Add in pulp, stir well.
2. Mix gelatin solution into the whipping cream. Then stir together with the cheese (the recipe says to add by batches but I didn't notice that, oops).
3. Store in the refrigerator overnight.

Recipe by Alan Kok.

His version comes with a biscuit base (which I FORGOT until I finished the cake part). It's so limp without the base as support.

White chocolate marble cheesecake from Flavours magazine.

Still fumbling thru folders for a better picture, don't mind my old watermark.

Becoming the victim of this recipe has its price to pay.  Instead of using dark (in appearance, that is) chocolate, it calls for coffee solution, and I was never fond of it.

White Chocolate Marble Cheesecake

Biscuit base

Cookies, crushed (enough to cover the bottom of a pan)

Butter, adequate (enough for the bits of cookies to stick together firmly)

Melt butter and mix with the crushed cookies.  Press it against the bottom of the cake pan with the back of a spoon and bake under 180°C for 10 minutes.

Before and after baking.

Dark chocolate mixture

12g cocoa powder

2 teaspoons instant coffee powder (I used a packet of 3-in-1)

30ml hot water

Combine all ingredients and mix until smooth.  Set aside.

White chocolate mixture

750g cream cheese (this has got to be the most expensive part)

120g castor sugar

8g cornflour

3 eggs, lightly beaten

100g white chocolate (again, I usually choose cheap local made chocolates)

300ml yoghurt

Beat cream cheese until smooth.  Add sugar and cornflour, mix.  Gradually mix in eggs, white chocolate and yoghurt.  Set aside 150g of the mixture.

To prepare

To the remaining mixture, add the dark chocolate mixture; mix well.  Pour half the white mixture onto the baked biscuit base.  Dot half the dark mixture in the white mixture.  Swirl with a bamboo stick (I use the narrow end of a fork) to create a marbling effect.  Repeat with the remaining white and dark mixtures.

To bake

Preheat oven to 150°C.  Bake in the oven, bain-marie, for 80 minutes, or until the cake is set - the centre should still be slightly soft.  Turn off the heat and let the cake cool in the oven, with door closed, for 30 minutes.  Run a knife along the edge to loosen the cake, then set it back in the oven to cool completely with the door ajar.

- Adapted from Flavours magazine,

recipe contributed by Catherine Lau,

Nov/Dec 2009 issue