dessert – Evie's kitchen

Week 7 – Cheesecake

April 2, 2019 evelyngraham0046

I made cheesecake because my best friend loves cheesecake and I got to go see her this weekend!! Our other friend and I had to drive 5ish hours up to Dallas to get to her, so I was worried that it wouldn’t travel very well. It turned out great!

094. Classic New York-Style Cheesecake:

I really liked this recipe. It was very similar to the recipe my mom has, so there weren’t as many surprises for me.

One of the main differences was how much butter was in the crust. They asked for 2/3 cup melted butter. That’s 11 tablespoons! We did the math 3x because it seemed like way too much.

I started with putting the cake in for 40 minutes as requested in the recipe, but it was still fairly jiggly so I added another 5 minutes before pulling it out.

We were correct in thinking it was too much because a lot of the butter melted out of the bottom during the first bake. I ended up wiping away the excess butter off the tray before putting on the sour cream topping and putting it back in the oven.

To transport it to Dallas, I wrapped the entire spring-form pan in foil and put it in a cooler full of ice. I think it got there with minimal damage.

When we cut into it and were eating it, it seemed to be slightly under-baked still. It wasn’t bad enough that it was inedible, but it was a little bit too sticky in the middle.

I think that’s been a common trend for the recipes I’ve tried so far; all of them have needed at least an extra 5-10 minutes to the recommended cooking time. I’m not sure if this is because of different ovens or altitude or some other reason. Maybe they just like all of their food slightly under-cooked.

Toppings!

Right before we dug in I made the raspberry compote and chocolate ganache. As I told my friends, these are just fancy words for raspberry jam and chocolate sauce.

For the compote I put about 2 cups of fresh washed raspberries in a saucepan over med-high heat with 1/2 cup sugar and 1/2 cup water. Let all of this boil while stirring and smashing the raspberries, making sure to scrape the sides and bottom. It’ll be ready when the sauce coats the back of a spoon. This means that when you pull the spoon out of the sauce and run a finger down the back of the spoon (CAREFULLY! Don’t burn yourself!) it should leave a clean trail that does not immediately fill back in.

If you’re like me and don’t like a lot of seeds in your sauce, about halfway through (once the raspberries have been smashed down) put the sauce through a strainer/sifter into a separate bowl and remove as many seeds as you prefer. Then return the sauce to the pot and continue boiling.

The chocolate ganache is even easier. In a microwave safe bowl, put 3/4 cup heavy whipping cream. Heat this in the microwave for 60-90 seconds until the cream is boiling. Take out of microwave and add to 1 cup chocolate. Let sit for 30 sec. Stir until all of the chocolate is melted.

DO NOT REHEAT. Unless you are making a lot of sauce, the boiling cream will be plenty to melt the chocolate. Just keep stirring. It may take a few minutes, but if you heat the chocolate too much it will seize and that’s no fun. If you are sure the chocolate has gotten too cold and there are still clumps, put it in the microwave for 10 second intervals -stirring between each- until everything has melted. Let the sauce sit and cool for a few minutes until it reaches a good pouring consistency. You can put it in the fridge/freezer for a few seconds to speed up this part.

I used Guittard chocolate again because it is my favorite.

Next Week: March 30, 2019

I pulled some brisket out of the freezer to make for this week, and I know that I want to make pasta salad to go with it. Only 1 of the sides sounded like a good pairing to me, so I’m also going to try one of the breakfasts to get back to my 2+ recipes a week trend.

017. Buttermilk Pancakes & 020. Flaky Biscuits

Week 3 – Muffins & Cookies

February 19, 2019February 26, 2019 evelyngraham0046

You’ll notice that there are no pictures yet. I took some, but I have not been able to get them uploaded on to the website yet. I wanted to post anyway and I’ll just update the page with my pictures later.

For Week 3’s recipes I wanted goodies that were easy to store and would give my house guests treats to snack on conveniently. Additionally, I needed an easy week, and muffins and cookies are absolutely in my wheelhouse. I was excited to try their chocolate chip cookie recipe because I’m always on the lookout for the best recipe for soft chewy cookies. I have another recipe the yields a good cookie, but it is a lot of work and takes a lot of time.

021. Double-Blueberry Muffins:

I did not get to make these as ahead of time as I had intended which ended up working out for the better. My sister-in-law and her kids were already staying with us, so my niece wanted to help me make these on Saturday morning. It was a great recipe for that! It didn’t require a mixer and used just one bowl, so she was able to help measure and mix and pour which reminded me of when I would help my mom bake.

The only hiccup I had was that I wasn’t paying attention to the recipe and ended up mixing the citrus sugar to the butter before putting it on the muffins, but I don’t think it affected the taste or presentation much. They were very popular with everyone who tried them, except for my helper who thought we were making chocolate chip muffins.

The muffins were a good consistency and I liked the idea of a preserve filling in the middle of them; I think I’ll try some of the variations of this recipe – maybe even a chocolate chip variety.

084. Chocolate Chip Cookies:

I was super happy with these cookies!

I won’t lie, I was a little skeptical of how the shortening would affect the taste, especially since my sister-in-law had mentioned their mom would make cookies with all shortening which made a good chewy cookie on day one, but after a couple of days, the shortening flavor really came through.

Luckily, it has been several days now since I first made them and they still taste fresh. I think I will be keeping this recipe in my rotation.

Other Pictures:

If I get any additional pictures I’ll post them here.

Next Week: March 2, 2019

050. Salmon in Parchment & 071. Fresh Herb Vinaigrette

BONUS: Chocolate Raspberry Cake (From Evie)

My coworker’s last day is this Friday, so I’m making her favorite – a chocolate raspberry cake with some chocolate raspberry macarons. I’ll post my recipes and steps next week.

Just like always, comment below with your experiences!

Week 1 – Burgers & Lemon Bars

February 11, 2019February 26, 2019 evelyngraham0046

February 9, 2019

Before I begin, I’d like to say sorry about the delay in my first post. I was having some technical difficulties yesterday.

Hello! And thank you for joining me on my first experiment! I have been very excited by the feedback I’ve received for the idea of this, so I hope I don’t disappoint.

I chose to start off with burgers because it is the Tucker tradition to have burgers every Saturday night. Also, I have made burgers before so I figured it would be a good way to ease into this project. I made potato/sweet potato oven fries with mine which aren’t in the book, but they are a classic.

For a dessert I picked lemon bars which are one of Martin’s favorites.

My mom came over to help and it was one of my first big meals to cook in my new kitchen, so everything was pretty exciting. I think we all had a lot of fun!

025. Skillet Burgers with Shallot-Herb Butter

First Reactions: Reading the recipe for the first time, I was pretty much instantly into new territory because I’ve never cooked with a shallot before and I was only pretty sure that I knew what to look for at the grocery store. Although the burger recipe is much simpler than the one my grandpa usually makes, I decided not to alter the recipe this time since the butter was so fancy.

Process: For the burger meat, I used 1 lb. 85%, and 1/2 lb. 80%. As I had figured, the burgers were pretty easy to make. There was nothing added to the meat except for some salt and pepper. I think I should have cut the shallots up smaller because the butter was pretty chunky and I’m not sure it was supposed to be.

I didn’t do a great job of prepping the meal, so there was a lot of cutting and prepping while we were cooking and everything seemed to happen very fast. The whole meal took about an hour and a half to complete.

First, we made the oven fries which were a mix of regular and sweet potato. those were mixed with oregano, thyme, sage, salt, pepper, and olive oil. We put them in the oven at 400 and they were in there for a little over an hour while we did everything else.

I bought pre-sliced mushrooms, so we just rinsed them and threw them in the butter as they came. I think this was fine because it made it easier to pick off the big chunks after I decided I don’t like them.

We ended up cooking the burgers an extra minute per side and they were still a little pink for my mom’s taste. As you can see from the earlier picture of them, they were really red still after coming off the pan the first time. I think 5 minutes per side would have resulted in a more well-done burger, but if you prefer a medium burger, the 3 minutes suggested would have been good.

I used whole wheat buns that we toasted for about 5 minutes in the oven and then spread the rest of the butter on.

After the buns came out, it was just assembling them and enjoying them!

087. Lemon Bars Deluxe

Process: The lemon bars were easier than I thought they would be. I had to double-check the recipe several times to make sure I hadn’t missed something. I used foil to line the pan like the recipe said instead of parchment paper like I normally would.

In the future if I make these again, I’ll stick with the paper because the bars stuck to the foil. Other than that, I thought the recipe was simple and tasty. The timing of their bake aligned well with the burgers so that we didn’t have to wait that long for dessert.

On average, the general consensus of the meal was that it was so-so. Grandpa’s burger recipe is definitely superior, although the butter will be good on other things I think. Nobody seemed to like the shiitake mushrooms, so I don’t think we’ll use those again in future recipes.

Other Pictures:

Next Week: February 16, 2019

I have picked 037. Classic Lasagna and 070. Caesar Salad for next week’s meal.

Below is a place to post your comments and experiences with making this recipe. I’m working on figuring out how to allow y’all to post pictures in the comments, but this website stuff is new to me so I haven’t figured it out yet. But you’re definitely welcome to send me your pictures and I can add them to the post!

Thank you for joining me and I’ll see you next week!