nigella lawson Archives - Patent & the Pantry

Chocolate Lime Cheesecake

August 30, 2011 6 Comments

The problem with getting behind in blogging is you start to forget why you made something in the first place.

OK, that might not be a problem others have. This may be particular to me.

I think I came up with the idea of making a Chocolate Lime Cheesecake while flipping through cookbooks one night and remembering this had been on my to-do list for eons. I’m almost sure I had pulled Nigella Lawson’s Nigella Bites from my (overstuffed) shelf looking for one of her salad recipes when I re-stumbled across this one. And it occurred to me, since it was a long weekend and I was going to be working on the stat holiday, that I should bake this up and bring it in to the rest of the Calgary Herald crew working on the holiday Monday just like I used to when I was over in the city section. (Back then, I worked Sundays every week and I often baked and brought in goodies for what became known as Civilized Sundays, which would see us sitting around at 10 a.m. eating cake and listening to the police scanner. And reading our horoscopes.)

Then, and I do remember this correctly, I told the people who I knew would be also working that I was going to bake a cheesecake, which actually made me do it.

And, man, am I glad I did.

Nigella, my friends, she knows her stuff.

You know I love lime. It’s no surprise I also like chocolate. These two together are a very nice, very unexpected treat.

It may seem a bit fussy, but I followed all the instructions, including baking it in a water bath, which is a relatively common suggestion for baking cheesecake (a gentler way that theoretically keeps the top from cracking but always seemed like an unnecessary additional step). And I think it is indeed worth it. And the trick of snapping the aluminum foil into the springform pan (which sounds more confusing than it actually is) really does protect the crust and cake from any water.

However, I must also add that I bought extra-wide aluminum foil thanks to the suggestion of my friend, Colette, who knew such a thing existed. Thanks Col! That way there was no panic about making sure the various pieces were secure enough. I would recommend this as a great way of alleviating any concern over seepage.

Seepage. What an odd thing to be mentioning on a food blog.

And, goodness, this is a very scattered post, isn’t it?

To summarize: this cheesecake is tasty. I enjoyed it. So did my friends. Make it. Don’t wait as long as I did to do so.

End.

Chocolate Lime Cheesecake

Straight from Nigella Lawson’s Nigella Bites.

7 ounces chocolate wafer cookies
1/3 cup unsalted butter, melted
1 1/2 pound cream cheese (recommended: Philadelphia)
1 cup sugar
4 whole eggs
2 egg yolks
4 limes, juiced or 3/4 cup

Special equipment: springform pan

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Place a large overlapping piece of aluminum foil over the bottom of the springform pan, and then insert pan ring over it. Fold the foil extra foil up and around the pan and place the whole thing on a second piece of foil, also folding it and pressing it securely around the pan, having a water tight covering.

In a food processor, process cookies until they are crumb-like, add melted butter and continue to process. Pour crumb mixture into springform pan and press with your fingers to line the pan. Place the pan in the refrigerator to set while you prepare the cheesecake.

Place a kettle of water on for water bath. In a food processor beat the cream cheese until smooth, add the sugar, eggs, egg yolks, and lime juice.

Take crumbed pan from the refrigerator and place it in a roasting pan. Pour the cheesecake mixture into the crumb pan, and then carefully pour the hot kettle of water into the roasting pan so the water reaches 1/2 way up the pan so the water does not splash into cheese cake.

Place roasting pan in oven for 1 hour, checking after 50 minutes. It should feel set, but still wobbly in the center. Take the roasting pan out of the oven, carefully remove the springform pan from the roasting pan and place it on a rack. Peel off the outer layer of foil, and tear away the side bits of the first layer of foil and leave the pan to cool. Once the cake comes to room temperature, place it in the refrigerator for 20 minutes before serving. Transfer to the plate you’re going to serve it on, a plate without a lip, or a cake stand. Unclip the springform pan and remove the outer part. Carefully lift the cheesecake removing the metal bottom. The aluminum foil can stay on the cake. Serve chilled.

Baking, Desserts

Coca-cola Cupcakes with Glaze

February 11, 2011 21 Comments

I’m not going to tell you how exactly how long this has been sitting in the vault. But I’ll give you a hint; I made these for someone who had given up drinking coca-cola for Lent. Yeah, I should probably join some sort of 12-step program for procrastinators.

But I digress . . . .

So, I thought it would be hilarious to make Coca-cola Cupcakes with Glaze for a friend. Only after I brought them to her did I realize that maybe her giving up Coke for Lent probably meant any consumption of the cola and that in my effort to be funny I might actually be undoing her commitment. She assured me that she had only given up drinking Coke and that she saw the humour in the cupcakes. I continued to feel guilt through much of Lent.

I can’t actually remember how or when I stumbled on this recipe in Nigella Lawson’s How to Be a Domestic Goddess, but I had marked it with a Post-it note at some point and then I think I just connected the dots later. It’s only one of about 12 recipes that have little tags marking them as “to-make,” so I guess I should get going on that.

One of the things I love about Nigella’s recipes are some of them call for simply melting the butter instead of waiting it to come to room temperature. For someone like me, who sometimes wants to make things relatively on impulse (read: impatient), this means I still can. No waiting.

And it was kind of fun to make these. Not only because of the odd mix of ingredients but also because the reaction between the cocoa and Coke was a bit hypnotic. Giant bubbles, that pretty much sums it up.

I was a little freaked out by how thin the batter was, but they bake up beautifully. They’re so . . . light. I don’t know how else to describe them. They certainly don’t taste like Coke, but it’s still charming to say that’s the not-so-secret ingredient.

The original recipe is for a full cake and, although Nigella suggests you can make cupcakes, she doesn’t give a baking time. I guessed at 15 minutes and when I checked them they were perfectly done. However, she says it will make 12 cupcakes and it made 16 for me (An ongoing problem for me is I always end up with more cupcakes than the recipe specifies. Unsure if I make them smaller or if my muffin tin is smaller? Ok, “problem” isn’t really the right word.)

So, if your batter fits perfectly in 12, I’d bank on it taking a few more minutes.

Coca-cola Cupcakes with Glaze

200 g plain flour
250 g sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 large egg
125 mL buttermilk
1 teaspoon vanilla
125 g unsalted butter
2 tablespoons cocoa powder
175 mL Coca-cola

Preheat the oven to 350F.

In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking soda and salt. Beat the egg, buttermilk and vanilla in in a measuring jug. In a heavy-based saucepan, melt the butter, cocoa and Coca-cola, heating it gently. Pour into the dry ingredients, stir well with a wooden spoon, and then add the liquid ingredients from the jug, beating until it is well blended.

Pour into a muffin tin that has been greased or lined with papers and bake for 15 minutes (or more, see above) until a tester comes out clean.

Glaze

225 g icing sugar
2 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons Coca-cola
1 tablespoon cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Sieve the icing sugar and set aside. In a heavy-based saucepan, combine the butter, Coca-Cola and cocoa and stir over a low heat until the butter has melted. Remove from the heat, add the vanilla, and spoon in the sieved icing sugar, beating as you do, until you’ve got a good, spreadable, but still runny, icing.

Pour over the cupcakes while they are still warm, and leave to cool.

Dinner, Pasta, Vegetables

Penne alla Vodka

March 16, 2009 12 Comments

I don’t cook much with alcohol.

Sure, there’s been the odd wine reduction sauce, a shot or two of brandy to a roasted tomato soup to round out the taste or a splash of sherry in my chicken tetrazzini. But the goal in these recipes is to add that hint of flavour, to enhance the other ingredients, not to dominate the dish.

So, I was a bit intrigued the first time I heard about Penne alla Vodka. There was no way the liquor was taking a back seat in this recipe; it’s in the name, after all. But how would the drink I associate with martinis and Caesars work over a plate of steaming pasta?

Let me be frank: it worked like a charm. So charming, in fact, I made it twice in one week–the sign of any good recipe, as far as I’m concerned.

I was a bit worried at first, because the instructions call for the vodka to be poured over the hot drained pasta instead of letting the alcohol cook out in the tomato part of the sauce. I feared it would be like eating a Bloody Mary for dinner with a scraping of Parmesan over it.

But a strange sort of alchemy happens once the butter starts to melt over the hot pasta and mingle with the boozy vodka.The flavours smooth together. (Because, yes, for experimentation purposes I did try a piece of penne with just the butter and vodka. You know, for scientific reasons and certainly not because I was getting hungry and curious.)

Dumping in the tomato mixture, delicately perfumed with garlic and scattered with bits of soft, slightly caramelized onions, transformed some very basic pantry ingredients into a rich, guilty-pleasure type dish.

It should be said here that I like it saucy–as in, the pieces of penne should merely act as sauce conveyors. Spiked on the end of my fork, the pasta is swept around the bowl to pick up the last bits of onion and tomato, the last dribble of rich sauce.

And this sauce is dangerously good — enough to make you want to lick the bowl when no one else is looking. Ahem, not that I’m condoning that. So, I’ve adjusted the recipe slightly to al-low for my preference for more sauce. Feel free to add more pasta if desired.

Unexpectedly, this is fantastic cold the next day. Perhaps it’s be-cause vodka is best when straight from the freezer? I ended up eating most of the leftovers straight from the fridge rather than waiting for the workplace microwave to be freed up. After all, with a dish like this, who would want to delay taking a bite?

The original Nigella Lawson recipe calls for garlic-flavoured olive oil. I don’t tend to keep that around, so I’ve adjusted accordingly. Of course, if you do have it, just go ahead and use it and skip the part about sauteing garlic in the first step.

Penne alla Vodka

1 large onion, diced
2 tablespoons (25 ml) olive oil
2 garlic cloves, roughly chopped
Salt
2 tablespoons (25 ml) whipping cream
1 28-oz (796-ml) can diced tomatoes
1 lb (500 g) penne
½ cup (125 ml) vodka
4 tablespoons (60 ml) unsalted butter
Parmesan

Add olive oil to large frying pan and bring up to medium-low heat. add garlic and saute for one or two minutes to flavour the oil. don’t let the garlic burn.

Remove the garlic and add the onion, along with a pinch or two of salt. Cook the onion, stirring occasionally until soft and just starting to caramelize. add the can of tomatoes and let simmer so the liquid has reduced. (this took about 10 minutes when i made it, so i put the pasta on to boil as the sauce was cooking.) when the sauce has thickened, remove from heat and stir in whipping cream.

Add pasta to salted, boiling water and cook as instructed until the noodles are al dente. drain and return the pasta to the pot. pour vodka over pasta and add butter and another pinch or two of salt. stir until the butter has melted, then add the tomato mixture. toss all together until coated evenly, then check for seasonings. add more salt if necessary.

Serve with fresh parmesan serves 5.

This story first appeared in the Real Life section in the Calgary Herald. For more delicious recipes, visit CalgaryHerald.com/life.

Chocolate Lime Cheesecake

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Coca-cola Cupcakes with Glaze

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Penne alla Vodka

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