Eggnog Cheesecake

This was a challenge that a friend from work put to me. She said she had seen a picture of a cake like this online and it looked tasty. So I set out to make one. I took a look at 3 or 4 similar recipes and tinkered to make it a little easier and more her taste. I used rum in place of the extract. I was quite liberal with the 1 tbsp because I think it adds a nice punch, I used good dark spiced rum from Turks and Caicos.

For the Crust:

1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs
1/3 cup white sugar
6 tbsp melted butter
1 tbsp ginger
-you could use fresh or powdered. If you use fresh, you don't need as much, but powdered you might want more if you really want that finer flavour.
1/2 tbsp cinnamon

For the Filling:

4 (8 oz.) packages softened cream cheese

4 large eggs

1 1/2 cups egg nog

1 1/4 cups white sugar

3 tbsp AP flour

1 tbsp rum

1 tsp cinnamon 

The Crust:
Assemble the crust ingredients in a bowl and mix well, then dump the contents into a greased, parchment bottom lined spring form pan.
I was taught by my mother in law that if you have a tall, straight, smooth glass or vase in the house you can use it to press the crumbs to the side of the pan and it looks a lot cleaner than using your hands. If you make sure the crumbs are pressed down well and into the sides well, the whole cake stays together a lot better and looks cleaner too.

The Filling:
In your Kitchen Aid with the whisk attachment whip the cream cheese until fluffy. My poor machine hates me already from all the Christmas baking, but this make it very warm indeed.
Add the eggs one at a time and scraping down the sides and bottom after each egg.
Add in the egg nog and the rum and mix until smooth, scraping down the sides again.
Mix together the flour, sugar and cinnamon in a small bowl and add slowly into the cream cheese mixture and whip until smooth again.
Make sure you have no lumps that haven't been incorporated into a smooth mixture. You want a nice uniform mixture when you pour it into the crust.
Carefully pour the cream cheese mixture into the crust, set on a baking tin and put into a 325 degree oven for an hour.
Once the hour is up, leave the cake in the oven, open the oven door a crack and leave it another hour.
Move to a cooling rack to come to room temperature.
Cover and put into the fridge to chill overnight.
At this point, I had actually frozen the cheesecake because I used the "big outside fridge" (aka outside in winter).
I whipped a pint of whipping cream and added just a little sugar to take the bite out of it.
I decorated the edges with rosettes, with one large rosette in the middle and dusted with a little cinnamon to make it pretty.

Loves in a lifetime

I read this, posted by someone on FB and it resonated with me, it made sense of a topic that has absolutely no sense. It's one of those pieces that quiets your soul for a moment and a peace can be attained. It seems a little on the hyperbole side of things, but it really did make me pause.

It was of course without credit, but I believe I have found the original source. If I haven't, I apologize and please correct me.

http://www.elephantjournal.com/2016/11/we-only-fall-in-love-with-3-people-in-our-lifetime-each-one-for-a-specific-reason/

It’s been said that we really only fall in love with three people in our lifetime. 

Yet, it’s said that we need each of these loves for a different reason. 

Often our first is when we are young, high school even. It’s the idealistic love; the one that seems like the fairytales we are all read as children. 

It’s a love that looks right. 

The second is supposed to be our hard love; the one that teaches us lessons about who we are and how we often want or need to be loved.

Sometimes it’s unhealthy, unbalanced or narcissistic even. 

It’s the love that we wished was right.

And the third is the love we never see coming. The one that usually comes dressed as all wrong for us and that destroys any lingering ideals we clung to about what love is supposed to be. 

It’s the love that just feels right. 

Maybe we don’t all experience these loves in this lifetime; but perhaps that’s just because we aren’t ready to. 

Possibly maybe we need a whole lifetime to learn or maybe if we’re lucky it only takes a few years. 

And there may be those people who fall in love once and find it passionately lasts until their last breath. 

Someone once told me they are the lucky ones; and perhaps they are.

But I kinda think that those who make it to their third love are really the lucky ones.

They are the ones who are tired of having to try and whose broken hearts lay beating in front of them wondering if there is just something inherently wrong with how they love. 

But there’s not; it’s just a matter of if someone loves in the same way that they do or not. 

And maybe there’s something special about our first love, and something heartbreakingly unique about our second…but there’s also just something about our third.

The one we never see coming.
The one that actually lasts.
The one that shows us why it never worked out before. 

And it’s that possibility that makes trying again always worthwhile, because the truth is you never know when you’ll stumble into love.
#thethreeloves #katerose #mayitbeofbenefit

http://www.elephantjournal.com/2016/11/we-only-fall-in-love-with-3-people-in-our-lifetime-each-one-for-a-specific-reason/

Ham cheese and bacon scones

400° oven, preheated

2 1/2 cups AP flour

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp pepper

1 tbsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 tbsp onion powder

1 tbsp garlic powder

1/4 cup light brown sugar no lumps

1/2 cup very cold butter

1 large egg

1/2 cup plain yogurt

2 tbsp a butter milk

1/3 cup chopped ham

1/2 cup shredded cheese (cheddar, Swiss whatever)

1/4 cup bacon bits

Mix all dry ingredients together in a large bowl.

Cut in cold butter and use your hands (or pastry knife) to turn into sand like crumble. I always started out with a pastry knife and give up and use my hands because it works better and I can get a good idea on the consistency. You have to work quickly if you use you hand as the heat from your hands can melt the butter.

Mix together wet ingredients and then dump into sand mixture and mix until just combined.

Add in the cheese and meats and fold in using your hands. Again it's just easier and quicker and you'll need your hands in the next step anyhow.

Dump on parchment paper

Form into disks and cut into 8's or more depending on desired scone size.

You can form into 2 smaller disks if you don't want monster scones.

Bake for 20-25 minutes

Butternut Squash Apple Soup

Soup. It always gets to this point in the year and we crave soup.
T loves it, b loves it, I love it and t hates all soup that isn't Lipton's shocking yellow stain inducing "chicken" noodle.

1 butternut squash chopped

1 sweet potato chopped

1 onion chopped

1 Apple chopped

1 tbsp Cinnamon

1 tbsp Ginger

1/2 tbsp Curry

1/2 tbsp Allspice

1/2 tbsp Cumin

1 tbsp (or more to taste) Flaked chilli peppers

4 cloves of Garlic winced

5 or 6 cups of Chicken stock

Throw all ingredients except the chilli flakes into a slow cooker, heavy pan or dutch oven.

Cook until vegetables are softened.

If you use the slow cooker:

This can be dumped into the slow cooker first thing in the morning and left to simmer on low until the evening.

If you want faster soup for supper immediately, use a dutch over or sauce pan and bring everything to a boil and drop the heat down to a simmer until veggies are knife tender.

I add the chilli flakes in last. Both T and I love the heat, but the kids don't. We will separate the batches for them and add in the spice to our own soup to taste.

This is a go to with Ham, cheese and bacon scones….

Creeper

The creeper cake.
t's 8th birthday cake was a much needed easy, peasy cake.
Just 2 cake layers, sliced in half and assembled with buttercream icing.

Left outside in the -40 degree weather to freeze set.
I trimmed the edges of the cake to square it off a little more and used more buttercream to flatten the top.

It's ugly under the fondant, but it works.
Using LOTS of spray coconut oil and a very clean, flat work surface (solid countertop) roll out the fondant as thinly as possible. Make sure the piece is larger than your cake surface, including sides.
Lay it over the cake and begin to smooth it out.
Trim away excess fondant.
Using an 8x8 grid system on paper lay out your creeper face.
I took a piece of paper the same size as the top of the cake and folded it in half enough times to create a grid with the face. It was easy and quick.
I bought already green fondant this time (as my poor Kitchenaid will not be able to handle another fondant making session without smoking and emitting an awful sound/smell)
I added gel colour to get a few different shades of green. Yellow and darker green.
I also took a small amount of green and added black gel colour for the face.
After rolling out the Using a small paring knife a cut out the squares and place in order on the cake, alternating greens and affixing the black face pieces as the green shows.

I piped green buttercream icing around the bottom of the cake and corners to clean up the cake for a finished look.

This is a large cake and feeds a lot of people! We had 9 little boys and a smattering of parents and still took more than half the cake home to feast on for the week!

***Update***

I did a second Creeper cake for the schools Cake Walk fundraiser.

It was just as easy, but it is a long process. Easy, not quick.