Another Birthday Cake

We went to Sweden for my birthday and I thought I'd try my hand at my newly acquired chocolate tempering skills.



My Sister Bip is obsessed with New York at the moment, so I thought I'd make the New York Cheese Cake, I had such great success with a couple of weeks back. Though she declared that cheese cakes are not for her, I decided to go ahead anyway and not tell her, because I suspected that she had the same opinion as me - I also don't like "regular" cheese cakes, that aren't cooked, but the New York ones are something completely different.

My Mum remembering well that Lundulph disapproves of cheese in general, had stocked up with mascarpone, so I used this instead of Philadelphia.

The Swedish digestive biscuits were also a bit different - they were smaller and had a different colour.

I was careful not to over-do the butter like last time and I used walnuts instead of hazel nuts.

Of course the oven was different. I definitely left it in the oven to cool for way too long.

I don't know, but it didn't turn out as good as the first time. As I made the cream mixture, it was way too runny. After baking, the texture was completely different, drier and grainier. And the biscuit base went soggy very quickly.

But at least very little of the butter oozed out. Also, walnuts were OK in the biscuit mixture, but toasted hazel nuts are much better.

The topping was different though, instead of lemon, I added mango purée. And not just any, but the stuff made for babies (link in Swedish). I added the whole jar, 125 g and it tasted nice and showed colour. This was a suggestion from Mum and a very good one, so definitely a keeper for alternative topping. The main cheese cake was lemon flavoured though. I suspect peach or passion fruit would work as well.

Also, Mum only had white chocolate. I should have taken the trouble to get milk chocolate, which was what we used in the course and what is supposedly the easiest thing to do. So I struggled with the white chocolate, to say the least.

I think it did temper a little, I'm not sure, it behaved differently and after some web research, it seems that white chocolate is the trickiest to do. I should have thought of it - after all, white chocolate is mostly cocoa fat, sugar and milk solids. Still, I managed to make a rosette and I also had a play with some new sprinkles my Mum had handy.



On the whole it was OK. But I definitely need to spend some time practicing tempering chocolate...