No Bake Cheesecake

Cheesecake. Yum. That completely sums up my long-standing love affair with no-bake cheesecake. But I'm fussy about my cheesecake. Don't give me those stodgy baked varieties, I have no time or taste for them. It's got to be the refrigerated variety every time - despite my intense dislike of gelatine (I rarely eat jelly and look for yoghurts that don't contain gelatine).

Refrigerated cheesecake is unbelievably simple, but can be dressed up to look sophisticated and impressive. With very little effort (and preferably a functioning refrigerator) you can wow your guests.

This weekend was a long weekend in the US for the Labor Day holiday. We duly had guests over and I decided to make cheesecake for dessert. Something I haven't done for about 15 years. I don't know why. It's a dessert I love, but rarely make. It was also the weekend that we had FRIDGE TROUBLE [cue dramatic music]. So, on Wednesday of last week I decided that our fridge, that was easily 10 years old, that we'd discussed replacing before it died on us, that came with the house when we bought it, needed to be retired. I duly went out and bought a new fridge (and dishwasher too) and organised for them both to be delivered and installed on Friday. They were. In a timely and efficient manner.

My new, gleaming, brushed stainless steel, French door, pull-out-freezer-drawer fridge took up pride of place in the kitchen. It shone, announcing its newness to the world. It set off my electric kettle, my stand mixer and my espresso machine beautifully. All stainless steel, all shiny and new, letting the world know how much I love to cook, how much my kitchen is a source of joy for me. Everything looked great. I loaded up my shiny new fridge with all the fresh and frozen produce from the old fridge (all of which had been carefully packed on ice until then) and I smiled beatifically and my glorious new appliance. Then I went about doing all the things the installers had recommended - ditching the first 3 gallons of water from the dispenser, turning on the ice machine and waiting for it to produce happy little rectangles of frozen goodness, and generally fussing about.

I started to get suspicious when that evening the fridge still hadn't cooled. By the time I went to bed, I had worked myself into a fair state of worry. But we decided to give it overnight and see how it went. Saturday morning came around. Still nothing. Not a puff of cold. No icy fingers gently caressing all the things we'd stored in there. Naturally, I turned quickly to Google for the answers. "The compressor" it shouted, "No, the gasses have to settle and that can take 3 to 5 days" it debated, "Rubbish! There's a blockage" it equivocated. All the while, my mind screamed "YOU GOT A DUD!".  My beautiful, brand new, expensive fridge had suddenly become a costly meat safe. We checked on theory 1 and 3 and decided to give it a little more time for theory 2. Meanwhile, I marinated meat and made cheesecake.

Sunday morning rolled around and still nothing. The meat in the freezer had defrosted, the food in the fridge was starting to go off. There was nothing for it. I rang the store I bought it from, explained the problem and asked for a replacement asap. They were actually very good about it, but couldn't organise a delivery for the same day. Still, Monday we would have a new fridge. Yes ma'am, the situation had been escalated to the manager's attention. Yes ma'am, they would be happy to reimburse me for all the food losses. Yes ma'am, they would bring the new fridge on Monday and wouldn't leave until they were sure that it actually was working. Umm…ok. But where was I supposed to store the marinated meat and the cheesecake (the REFRIGERATED cheesecake) in the meantime?

Thank goodness for two large coolers (eskies) and a quick-thinking husband who trotted off to buy a small bar fridge. So disaster averted, the defrosted meat had to be cooked up or thrown out. So began my day of cooking every last bit of meat we had in the house. With only two people joining us for dinner, needless to say we were very well stocked. So at the end of that very long story, here's my recipe for cheesecake.

Ingredients:
Base/crust:
2 cups crushed graham crackers
2 tbsp sugar
125g butter (melted)

Filling:
3 pkgs (8oz/226g each) cream cheese (softened)
1 pkt gelatine (7g)
1/2 cup water
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup whipping cream
1-2 tsp orange essence (or vanilla)
zest of 1 lime
juice of 1/2 lime

Method:
Line the base of a round spring form cake tin with parchment paper. I cut off a square piece, larger than the base of the tin, placed it over the base then put the wall belt on and closed it, securing the parchment paper onto the base. This will make removing the cheesecake from the base much easier later (and that will stop any scratching up of your cake tin from cutting cheesecake on it!).

Mix the graham cracker crumbs, the sugar and the butter well. Firmly pack it into the cake tin and place in the fridge (hopefully you have a functioning fridge at the time).

In a stand mixer, place the cream cheese and sugar and beat until soft and mixed through.

Meanwhile, in a small saucepan, place the water and gelatine. Allow to sit for a minute, then place over medium heat. Stir constantly until gelatine is dissolved. Remove from heat and beat into cream cheese mix in the stand mixer.

Add lime zest and juice and continue to mix on medium-low speed. Gradually add cream and orange essence, continuing to beat the mixture. The mixture will be of pouring consistency and you'll think it's a little too runny, but don't panic. The gelatine will set it well.

Pour over the refrigerated base and return to the fridge for at least 3 hours (preferably overnight).

When you're ready to serve, run a warm palette knife, butter knife or thin plastic spatula around the inside edge of the wall belt to separate the cheesecake from the tin. Open up the spring and remove the wall belt. Carefully slide the cheesecake off the base of the tin and onto a serving plate using the parchment paper. Decorate with whatever fruits you like and serve.

And Give Us Our Daily Bread...

Bread has been my Everest for some time now. I've experimented with numerous recipes over the years and have had countless unsatisfactory loaves. About 5 years ago, when I managed to pin down an excellent pizza dough recipe (that I now use as a standard), I thought it could double as a bread recipe. And it did for a long time. But (and there's that ubiquitous but), it was never quite right. Never quite fluffy or light enough, and never strong enough to handle being sliced very thin. So naturally, more experimentation followed.

I now have a recipe that consistently produces beautifully light and fluffy loaves as well as rolls. The thing to keep in mind with bread (as with most dough recipes) is that the amounts of the ingredients vary each time you make it. Humidity, heat, consistency of the flour and the fat content of the milk all make a difference to the dough. Humid days require more flour, dry days require less (or more liquids). And my final tip: use bread flour. Regular plain or all purpose flour doesn't have enough gluten to hold the rise required for bread.

Ingredients:
4 cups bread flour
1 tbsp (roughly 16g) instant yeast
2 tsp sugar (caster/super fine)
2 tsp salt
2 eggs (lightly beaten)
30g/2tbsp butter
350 ml milk

Plus:
1 egg
2 tbsp milk or cream
whisk together for glazing bread

Method:
Preheat oven to 200C/400F.

Heat milk and butter together in microwave for 2 minutes.

Place flour, yeast, sugar, salt and eggs in bowl of stand mixer with paddle attachment (or you can mix by hand, but this takes longer). Mix till combined.

Add milk and butter and mix until dough starts to come together and away from the sides of the bowl. Change attachments to the dough hook and mix for 2 − 3 minutes.

Turn dough out and form into a ball. Place upside down into a lightly greased/oiled bowl (I use olive oil) then turn the right way up so the dough is coated with a little oil on all sides. Cover bowl with plastic wrap (glad wrap/cling wrap) and leave in a warm place to rise for at least 1 hour (or until dough is doubled in size).

Turn dough out and knead lightly for a few minutes. This helps to redistribute the carbon dioxide released by the yeast and will give you a lighter and fluffier bread.

Lightly grease the pan you're using to bake the bread in (loaf tin for a loaf or tray for rolls), shape bread and place in pan. Cover lightly with cling wrap (I use the same one I used earlier, but turned the other way round so there's no condensation. The condensation built up on the cling wrap will affect your bread and lead to less rise. Leave in a warm place to rise again for at least 1 hour (or until doubled in size).

Again, remove the dough and punch down and knead. Reshape, place in tin and liberally brush on egg and milk/cream mixture. Sprinkle bread with poppy seeds, sesame seeds, flax seeds, or leave plain. Place in preheated oven and bake for 25 minutes. When properly cooked, the bread should make a hollow sound when tapped.

Turn oven off and remove bread. Take bread out of tin, wrap in clean tea towel (this will catch the moisture coming off the bread and avoid soggy bread).

If you're making rolls, you can stuff them with cheese, meat, veggies or whatever you like. This recipe has been the most consistently reliable I've come up with. But remember, amounts of flour and liquids will vary according to the ambient temperature and humidity.

The Bells of St Clements

Orange Cake with Lemon-lime Icing

Moving to a new country brings with it a whole raft of issues to contend with. For me, moving to the USA from Australia has meant learning a whole new language for food. I spend extraordinary amounts of time standing in grocery stores reading. No, not reading books. Reading labels. Trying to figure out what the composition of different items are, trying to figure out what's similar to the ingredients I'm used to working with. These aren't automatically the things you think of as troublesome or issues to overcome when you move from one first-world, English-speaking country to another. Especially when those countries are so culturally similar; at least at first glance.

But here I am. Living in Texas. Standing in supermarkets, grocery stores, specialty stores and fresh markets, and reading. I go in with enthusiasm. Determined to find ingredients and overcome the differences. I usually leave exhausted and often defeated by the variety. Each time, I stand in front of an array of flours and baking sodas and remember Barry Schwartz's TED Talk on The Paradox of Choice.

Today was my first foray into cake baking since we arrived and thankfully, it worked. I have no electric mixer (hand-held or stand), no food processor and no baking pans apart from a roasting pan that came with the apartment we're staying in, and I'm working with an oven (and temperatures measured in Fahrenheit not Celsius) that I'm not entirely familiar or comfortable with. Add to that, the fact that I was converting from Australian measurements and recipes to US measures. A rose may well be a rose by any other name, but a cup is clearly not the same measure across nations. It was a daunting prospect having to cream butter and sugar by hand. I haven't done that in years and remember it as being labour intensive and arm-aching. But I was determined. So here's the recipe for a moist, tart orange cake with lemon and lime icing.

Orange Cake
(this is not a super sweet cake, in fact it's quite tart, but works very well with the icing and is delicious warm or cold)
1 US cup unsalted butter, softened (I put it in the microwave for 10 seconds to really soften it since I was creaming by hand)
1/4 tsp salt
1 US cup extra fine sugar
3 large (free range/cage free) eggs at room temperature (around 60g each - large but not jumbo)
1 tsp finely grated orange zest
1 1/2 US cups unbleached self-raising flour (I used King Arthur)
juice from 6 small-medium oranges (not navels, they're too big)

Method
Preheat oven to 340F.

Grease the sides and base of your roasting pan.

Microwave butter in mixing bowl for 10 seconds. Add salt. Using a whisk, begin creaming butter. Add extra fine sugar and cream butter and sugar together till light and fluffy (this takes about 10 − 15 minutes).

Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well for a few minutes after each egg. Don't rush the addition of the eggs as the mixture will be more likely to separate and develop a curdled appearance. Add the zest with the last egg.

Add half the flour and stir until just combined. Repeat with remaining flour. Mix in juice and aerate by whisking.

Spoon mixture into pan and smooth over so it's evenly spread.

Bake for 35 minutes. A skewer inserted should come out clean and the cake should spring back when lightly pressed in the centre.

Remove the cake from the oven and allow to cool in the pan (it will come away from the sides on its own). I left the cake in the pan and poured the icing over the top.

Lemon-lime Icing
1 1/2 US cups icing/powdered sugar
juice of 1 lemon and 3 limes
1 tbsp butter

Method
Put a plug in the kitchen sink and fill with very hot water. Place your mixing bowl with all ingredients into the water bath (sink) and whisk ingredients together. The icing will be quite runny. Let sit for 5 minutes or so and it will thicken. Pour over the cake and spread evenly.

Slice and enjoy!