Book review of "Flavorful" by Tish Boyle

I'm excited and honored to be doing a book review, right here on my blog, of Tish Boyle's newest book called "Flavorful: 150 Irresistible Desserts in All-Time Favorite Flavors". Tish Boyle is co-editor of Dessert Professional magazine, an experienced pastry chef, and has written many cookbooks and co-authored several others. If you've never heard of her, you might be living under a rock :) 

As you may or may not know, I'm huge fan of Tish. One of the most popular posts on my blog to this day is still the Brioche Cake with Caramel Custard Cream, from her book The Cake Book. I baked several recipes from that book, which you can find here, and each one has turned out great, every time! That's what I like about Tish's recipes: they're always reliable!

When I heard about her new book, Flavorful, I was really excited. This book is divided into nine "flavor" categories: vanilla, berries and cherries, apple, citrus, sweet cheese, nuts, caramel, coffee, and chocolate. Any time the mood strikes for something specific, you just go straight to that chapter. Brilliant!

ABC - Spiced Apple Cream Cheese Coffee Cake

This month's ABC recipe is perfect for the fall season. Warm spices like cinnamon and cloves are very appropriate for this time of year. This recipe for Spiced Apple Cream Cheese Coffee Cake, represents a cake, a cheesecake and caramelized apples, all in one. I really loved it and so did my coworkers. I did make a few changes (such as changing the name) which I've posted at the bottom of this post.

Apple Cheesecake Bars with Caramel Drizzle

If you'd like to join the ABC bakers in their monthly baking adventures, please go to the ABC blog for more information.

ABC - Chocolate Cheesecake Brownies

Happy New Year everyone! Wishing you all good health and good food in 2014 :o)

I just realized that we're starting our 5th (yes, FIFTH!!!) year of ABC baking! Wow, time flies. But I couldn't have done it without you! A big Thank You to all the ABC members for baking their hearts out every month.

Is there a better way to kick off a new year of ABC baking, than to bake with chocolate? Add some cream cheese to the mix and you have a recipe for a decadent dessert! I love brownies and I love cheesecake. When I saw the recipe for Chocolate Cheesecake Brownies in the King Arthur Flour catalog a little while back, I knew I had to put them in the ABC list. So, here we are...

Mocha Cheesecake Brownies

If you'd like to join the ABC bakers in their monthly baking adventures, please go to the ABC blog for more information.

Book review and a giveaway

If you're a frequent visitor of my blog, you'd know that I'm a big fan of Abby Dodge (which is short for Abigail Johnson Dodge). Her career is nothing short of amazing. She's a cookbook author, pastry chef, and Fine Cooking Magazine contributing editor. For my ABC baking group, we're happily baking our way through one of her books, The Weekend Baker.

© 2012 The Taunton Press, © 2012 Miki Duisterhof

Today I will be talking to you about Abby's newest book, Mini Treats & Hand-Held Treats. When her publisher, The Taunton Press, asked me if I were interested in doing a book review of Abby's new book, of course I said Yes! :o)

Brownie Latte Cheesecake

Let's say, you need to make a birthday cake for someone very special. What do you do? I'd really like to know. Please feel free to leave a comment, telling me about your approach.

Here's what I did for my husband's birthday cake. I stared at all my cookbooks in the bookshelf for a long time, and then grabbed a couple of them and browsed through them, hoping "the" recipe would just jump at me. Pretty scientific, huh? :o). Well, it sure did! I was sold as soon as I saw this beautiful picture of a slice of this rich and decadent Brownie Latte Cheesecake from The Cake Book by Tish Boyle. This would be the first time I had made a cheesecake for any birthday. One could argue it's not traditional. My argument: you're getting two desserts for the price of one, so who cares! :o) The fact that Tish gave it two thumbs up certainly helped a lot too!

Happy birthday, sweetie!

A slice of heavenly Brownie Latte Cheesecake

Creamy Pumpkin Cheesecake with Ginger-Almond Crust

I made Tish Boyle's Creamy Pumpkin Cheesecake with Ginger Pecan Almond Crust twice this month already so it's only fair that I share this gem of a dessert with all of you. The recipe can be found in Tish's book The Cake Book, as well as her blog (yes, I'm a big fan!) :o) One of the first things that stood out for me was the crust. Instead of the traditional graham cracker crust, Tish offers a shortbread crust made with toasted nuts and finely chopped crystallized ginger. The only change I made was substitute almonds for the pecans. The other aspect about this recipe that caught my attention was the use of spices in the filling. Last year, I made my first pumpkin cheesecake from Rose's Heavenly Cakes, which didn't have any spices, yet, it tasted heavenly and pumpkin-y.

For a little extra oomph (and to hide a few craters from accidentally dropping the cheesecake - oops), I decorated the cheesecake with Pumpkin Mousse

SMS - Black Bottom Brownies

This week's Sweet Melissa Sundays recipe, Black Bottom Brownies, was chosen by Cynthia of Bakingtherapist's Blog. This recipe combines two favorites: brownies and cheesecake. I love both so I figured I'd like them even better together.

I never had or made Cheesecake Brownies before so this was certainly exciting. However, the thought of making a plain vanilla cheesecake batter to pour on top of the brownie batter didn't sound that exciting to me. What could I change to spruce things up? What goes with chocolate? Hmmm... pretty much anything. Looked in my fridge and there was my answer. Raspberries it is then!

Spread the brownie batter evenly in the pan.

Pour the raspberry cheesecake batter on top, sprinkle with mini chocolate chips, and in the oven it goes.

About 45 minutes later, it looked like this. Now it has to cool completely.

I made half a batch and after 45 minutes, I removed the brownies from the oven and set them outside in 30 degree F weather to cool for about 4 hours. Then it was tasting-time. Using a heart-shaped cookie cutter, I cut the brownies into cute little hearts. Mmmm... the creamy raspberry cheesecake complimented the dense and fudgy brownie beautifully. My only criticism would be that the brownie edges were overbaked and very dry. I expect some of that, but in this case, you could easily cut off a whole inch on all sides to get to the fudgy part. Next time I'll use cake strips.

Used a heart-shaped cookie cutter to make it look extra special :o)

If you'd like to give these a try, pick up a copy of The Sweet Melissa Baking Book or go to Cynthia's blog for the recipe. Thanks for such a great recipe pick, Cynthia!!

Bon appetit!

Final thoughts/tips:

• Hubby and I enjoyed these brownies a lot. The cheesecake part was perfectly creamy and the raspberries gave it a nice fruitiness with a little tang. The brownie part was dense and fudgy, and very chocolaty. I liked the combination of both. Would definitely make this again.
• Made only half a recipe and used a metal 8" square pan.
• Instead of using all granulated sugar, I used half granulated sugar, half brown sugar. The latter helps in creating moist and fudgy brownies.
  
• The recipe calls for a significant amount of eggs. I wasn't too worried about the 2 whole eggs and 1 egg yolk in the brownie batter. However, the cheesecake batter required 3 whole eggs for 8 oz of cream cheese. That's a very high ratio of cream cheese to eggs and I don't like desserts to taste "eggy". So I used 2 eggs instead.
• Instead of regular cream cheese I used a 8 oz tub of raspberry cream cheese bagel spread from my favorite bakery, Panera Bread. I added about 1/4 cup of thawed out raspberries to the batter.
• The batter looked pretty runny to me so I added 1 Tbsp of flour to it. As a general rule of thumb, it's always good to add 1 Tbsp of flour to cheesecake batter to prevent it from cracking or sinking because the flour acts as a stabilizer.
• Sprinkled about 1/4 to 1/3 cup of mini chocolate chips on top of the raspberry cheesecake batter.
  
• Baked it in a 300F oven with convection ON for 45 minutes.
• Don't forget to check out what the other SMS bakers thought of this week's recipe.
  

SMS - Chocolate Espresso Cheesecake

This is a very late SMS post but better late than never, right? :o) Shandy of Pastry Heaven by Shandy picked the last SMS recipe of the year: Chocolate Espresso Cheesecake with Blackberry Glaze. This cheesecake was delicious. It's very chocolatey, creamy and rich, so thin slices will go a long way. To find out for yourself, check out the recipe HERE.

Out of the oven, cooled completely, and ready to be glazed

Used homemade grape jelly in place of the blackberry glaze

A thin slice of delicious cheesecake. Come to momma :o)

I will keep this post short and sweet. The shortcuts I took and other changes I made can be found below.

Final thoughts/tips:

• Replaced the rum in the recipe with heavy cream. For a silkier texture, I added 1 egg yolk.
  
• Instead of the chocolate cookie crust, I used my favorite gingersnap crust with ground almonds.
  
• Skipped pre-baking the crust and the thin layer of melted chocolate on top of the crust. The cheesecake itself is already chocolatey enough.
  
• Cut the amount of espresso in half since I'm not a coffee fan. Glad I did!
• Baked the cheesecake in a water bath in a 350 degree oven for 45 minutes. Afterwards, with the oven door closed, shut off the oven and left the cheesecake in the there for 1 hour.
• Instead of a blackberry glaze, I made a glaze from homemade grape jelly. The cheesecake was delicious without the glaze too.
  

HCB: Pure Pumpkin Cheesecake

This week's recipe for the Heavenly Cake Bakers was a Pure Pumpkin Cheesecake. Other than the spices in the gingersnap crust, the cheesecake contains no spices which really lets the pumpkin flavor come through. I ended up using Dutch gingersnap cookies called pepernoten for the cheesecake's crust. And I substituted toasted whole almonds for the pecans in the crust, as I'm allergic to pecans. This worked great. I think that the crust would work well without nuts as well.

I always like to spray the sides of a spring form pan with cooking spray and line the sides with parchment paper. This helps keep the sides of the cheesecake smooth, and it helps with the removal of the cake from the pan after baking.

Fearing that the batter might overflow if made in the food processor, as suggested in the book, I decided to make the batter in my KitchenAid mixer. This worked really well. I started beating cream cheese, then added the eggs and egg yolks, followed by the pumpking/cream mixture.

I loved loved loved this cheesecake. It was super-creamy, not too rich and full of pumpkin flavor. Furthermore, it didn't crack or sink, which is a common cheesecake problem. The turbinado sugar added a subtle caramel flavor to the cheesecake which I enjoyed. I skipped the caramel syrup merely because I ran out of time. I figured I'd make it later for the leftover cheesecake. But since it was this delicious as-is already, I left it out.

My friend had a chance to taste the cheesecake and loved it. She said: "it's the best cheesecake I've ever had". Needless to say, she will be making it very soon herself :o) It has definitely made it to my "favorite desserts"-list as well. Hubby enjoyed it very much too.

Here are some step-by-step pictures:

Prepping the pumpkin and sugar for the filling

Gingersnap and nut crust for the cheesecake in prepared pan

Cheesecake batter poured into the aluminum-wrapped pan

Fresh out of the oven, all set

A slice of the pumpkin cheesecake, decorated with a few sliced almonds

The perfect bite! Bon appetit!