Chocolate Chip Cheesecake | Recipe Review

Hello everyone! It's been a while since I've done a recipe review. I was specifically asked by @p_j_foster for the recipe so here it is. It's actually a combination of two different recipes. The chocolate crust was from part of an AllRecipes.com recipe while the filling was from the Philadelphia Cheesecake website.

Crust:

Ingredients:

1 1/2 C graham cracker crumbs

1/3 C white sugar

1/3 C cocoa powder (unsweetened)

1/3 C butter (melted)

Instructions:

Mix ingredients together and press into the bottom and sides of the pan.

Comments:

This crust was actually pretty similar to a regular cheesecake crust, it just also has cocoa powder. The only other non-graham cracker crust I'd ever made was based on crushed Oreo cookies and it only turned out so-so. As a result, I was worried about how this one would taste. 

Filling:

Ingredients:

16 oz cream cheese

1/2 C white sugar

1/2 tsp. vanilla

2 eggs

3/4 C chocolate chips (divided)

Instructions:

Mix together the cream cheese, sugar and vanilla. Next mix in the eggs. Once the mix is fully blended, stir in 1/2 C of the chocolate chips. 

Pour the filling onto the crust and spread evenly. Sprinkle the remaining 1/4 C of chocolate chips on top.

Bake at 350° for 40 minutes.
After it's cooled for a bit, refrigerate for 3 hours.

Comments:

I ended up having to bake this for about 10-15 minutes longer than the recipe called for. I'm not sure if it's because I used a spring-form pan while the original recipe called for a pie dish (pre-made crust). As a result, I kinda had to watch for it to get more solid in the middle. That being said, baking for 50 minutes probably would be a safe bet.

Taste Test:

Fluxx and I had similar opinions. Because I frequently use cream cheese in my frosting recipes, I thought the cheesecake tasted like chocolate frosting. Fluxx thought it tasted more like candy than cheesecake because of the chocolate chips. We both agree that it's not bad, but is at it's best when accompanied by a strong drink (i.e. coffee). I know Fluxx must have really liked it because, when there were leftovers on Monday he asked me to pack him a BIG slice to take to work. 

Overall, I think I'm gonna keep this recipe. 

Waffle Sandwiches | Recipe

Ingredients (for 6 sandwiches):

12 waffle squares

6 sausage patties 

6 slices of cheese

3 hash browns, deep fried

6 eggs, scrambled

Process:

I make all of my waffle from scratch. It's actually the first page of my own, handwritten recipe book. if you would like me cover the recipe, please let me know and I will post the recipe later. For now, the important thing is getting the waffle squares we need.

I actually only started making these sandwiches after getting a square shaped waffle iron. My previous, round shaped one, would've been okay for sandwiches, but not nearly as well.

While the waffles are cooking, I start warming up the deep fryer to around 350. It takes a while to heat up, but is always quicker than I'm expecting, so I try to start it up soon after I've started making the waffles. Be sure to fill the deep fryer enough to cover the bottom half of the bowl.

Next up is the sausage. I like to cook these before I cook the eggs because it's easier to keep it warm than it is other ingredients.

When the deep fryer is ready, I prep the pan for cooking the eggs. It only takes 3 minutes to deep fry the hash browns and that's about the same as it takes to cook up the eggs. So I prep the eggs by scrambling them together with a small amount of milk. Then, I put the hash browns into the basket. 

Then I "drop" the basket into the hot oil, cover it with the lid, and set the timer for 3 minutes. Then I start up the stove and constantly stir the eggs until they're cooked. Generally the two get done around the same time.

Finally, it's time to assemble the pieces.

 Naturally, you start with a square waffle. 

On top of that you place the scrambled eggs.

Then the slice of cheese to keep the eggs in place.

After that, add the sausage patty. 

Then you add half a hash brown and top it all off with the second waffle square.

Review:

This recipe has, at Fluxxdog's request, become a weekly staple at my home, especially now that I've got the order of the layers correct. We've tried making this with turkey bacon and it just wasn't as good. Canadian bacon, however, worked really well. Additionally, you can make this without the breakfast meat if you need to.

With all of the ingredients listed above, and my waffles being homemade, the calorie count on two sandwiches is a whopping 1000 calories (give or take). I'm not sure how that would change with frozen waffles or with bacon instead of sausage. 

Overall, we really like the recipe and it's one where you can play around with some of the ingredients. One of these days I'll trade out the scrambled eggs for omelet style eggs. Or maybe just fried eggs.If you need a sauce for it, you can always add ketchup or maple syrup. It's a lot more playful of a recipe than it may seem to be at first. Definitely keeping this one.

Strawberry - Blueberry Muffins | Recipe

 

The other day Fluxxdog and I got to talking about muffins and how, early in our relationship, I used to make peach muffins for him to take to work to eat for lunch. I had found a recipe for blueberry-peach muffins and asked him if he'd like to give it a try. Well, unfortunately, this is not the season for peaches. Luckily Veonoss found strawberries for us to try. Originally I was tempted to use the blueberry-peach muffin recipe and just replace "peaches" with "strawberries". Then I found a recipe specifically for blueberry-strawberry muffins and decided to give it a shot.

Unlike a lot of recipes I'm used to, this one calls for veggie oil instead of butter. It also uses a significant amount flour. After I had mixed in most of the dry ingredients, I started to worry about this recipe as the "batter" was looking more like "dough" and had a stickier consistency than I like.

Even after adding the fruit, I wasn't getting the consistency that I thought I would need for muffins. I started looking at the comments of the recipe and saw that a lot of people needed to do variations on the recipe to get it how they wanted. One person added an extra egg, another replaced the sugar with brown sugar, etc. However, there were enough people saying the recipe was fine on its own that I decided to keep going. 

After I added the strawberry jam and kept mixing it for several more minutes, the batter started to look and feel more like actual batter.

I was still very nervous about how the muffins would turn out. I was tempted to look up a cinnamon roll icing recipe to add if they weren't tasty or sweet enough. Fortunately, though, the recipe held up. Fluxxdog, Veonoss and I were able to make a good breakfast out of these. They tasted even better with coffee. So, I think I'll go ahead and add this recipe to the list of keepers. Next time I'll see about replacing the strawberry jam with blueberry and see what happens.

Christmas Cookies | Recipe

Yeah, I know. We're well past Christmas at this point. But I didn't get to celebrate Christmas with my Mom until after New Year's. I ended up making 45 Christmas cookies (would have been 48 but I lost two to the floor and one to taste testing). I made so many because I thought my nephew and both my brothers were coming as well, but my nephew ended up sick so he and his dad had to stay home. I'm still working on getting rid of all of these!

Christmas cookies were always a big deal in Mom's family. My great-grandmother would make up at least one hundred every year and we'd get all the cousins together to decorate them. Grandma B was the kind of person who would spend 15-20 minutes decorating one cookie, just to get all the sprinkles in their proper places. I kinda take after her with the decorating, but I also respect my mom's approach of spending as much time decorating a cookie as it takes to eat the cookie. So I opted to give myself some practice frosting with decorating bags. It was quite the learning experience.

Naturally, the first step was mixing up the batter for the cookies. Grandma B always made sugar cookies, but I decided to make up vanilla cookies as I had all the ingredients. 

Then comes the rolling out of the dough. I remembered (from painful experience) that I needed to flour the rolling mat before I put the dough down. I didn't put all the dough down at once and went through it in batches instead.

I've been asked before how I know what the proper thickness is for the cookie dough. The answer is, I don't. It's something that depends on the recipe, the desired crispiness of the cookies, etc. I tested some different sized layers before settling on one.

Before next Christmas, I will need to get some more cookie cutters. These were the only ones I could find that produced the cookie sizes I wanted.

The cookies do look a little flat going in, but after 8 minutes in the oven they come out looking pretty good.

At this point I was still debating whether or not to frost the cookies so I had Fluxxdog taste test one and he said that it was just okay and could use a little something more.

Again, I deviate from Grandma B's tradition. She always made cream cheese frosting for the cookies, but I didn't have enough cream cheese, nor does the frosting lend itself to decorating bags. So, instead, I made up a double batch of icing, split it in two, and added food coloring. Next year I may try for more colors, but for now I like the red and green.

In order to make sure I had enough icing for all of the cookies, and to try to minimize the mess, I went over the cookies once with the red icing. Then I went over them again with the green. I had initially skipped a few cookies, thinking some of them would be all red or all green, but I ended up with enough extra icing that I was able to go over the cookies again and get a good mix of both colors.

I'm actually somewhat energized by this experience and I'm looking forward to getting in more practice with the decorating bags and seeing if I can make frosting flowers and whatnot. If you'd like to see these attempts/experiments, please let me know. 

Apple Pie | Recipe

Today's post is going to be my attempt to recreate my Great-Grandma B's apple pie recipe. This is partially in preparation for Thanksgiving and Christmas when I am the main baker. Fortunately I have some of Grandma B's own tools to help me out! Starting with the rolling mat that she used every time she made pie crusts.

First step is to mix up the ingredients for the pie crust: 2c. flour, 1 tsp. salt, 3/4c. plus a little more lard/shortening (room temp). 1/4c. cold water. Then it needs to be rolled out. I'm actually using the same marble rolling pin that Grandma B used. And yes, it is quite heavy.

So, it's a good thing I'm getting some practice in because I've completely lost my instinct for proper water to flour ratios to keep the crust together without letting it get sticky. If you use too much flour, trying to keep it from sticking to stuff, it'll dry out and become weak. If you try to add moisture to it, it'll become very sticky and you won't be able to roll it out or get it from the mat to the pie pan.

As it is, I'm kinda running low on patience, so I'm just gonna piece together the bottom crust from what I rolled out. Use a bit of water here and there, and you can't tell.

Next up, slice up 4-6 apples (I'm going with granny smith) and mix them up with 1/2c. white sugar, 1 tsp. cinnamon, 1/4 tsp. nutmeg, 1/3c. flour until all the apple slices are covered. Then put them in the pie pan.

Next comes the top crust. I can't get away with piecing it together as much as I could the bottom crust, but I think I did an okay job for being so out of practice.

Then I bake the pie at 400degrees for 1 hour (or until brown & bubbly).

It doesn't look nearly as nice as Grandma B's, but the taste is spot on. It's a bit tart for Fluxxdog, but Veonoss absolutely loves it and I'm very happy with how it tastes. Still need to work on the crusts, though. 

Bisausegg | Recipe Review

I'll be honest, I can't remember if Bisausegg was one of my mom's ideas or one she got from my Uncle, but it's quickly become a family favorite. We have it every Christmas morning after the presents have been opened. It really doesn't take a lot of work or time to make.

The first thing you want to do is get a small container of Pillsbury biscuits (or generic if you prefer). Rip each biscuit in half and place at the bottom of a greased pan to form the crust.

The next step is to cook up 1 lb of sausage and set it aside.

Then whip up about 12 eggs with a dash of milk. Cook the eggs for a couple of minutes. Do NOT cook them all the way through.

Next, you pour the eggs over the biscuit crust and sprinkle the sausage on top.

Finally, add as much shredded cheese as you want.

Then you bake everything at 375º F for 20-25 minutes.

Like I said, this is a pretty simple recipe that really doesn't take a lot of time. It's gonna be on the regular Saturday Morning Breakfast rotation in my apartment. Just look at my husband's response:

Seems @fluxxdog really likes it. ^_^ #bisausegg pic.twitter.com/VWoiIZ16HL

— Rachel Noel (@Silelda) October 24, 2015

Oreo Cupcakes

It's been a long while since I've done a recipe review so I decided to record my baking for Easter Sunday. I ended up making Oreo Cupcakes, chocolate cupcakes with an Oreo at the bottom and crushed Oreos in the frosting. I used a generic chocolate cupcake recipe for the cupcakes and my usual recipe for the butter-cream frosting.

Ingredients:

For the generic chocolate cupcakes:

                          3 Cups Flour                         2 Eggs                         1 tsp Vanilla

                          2 Cups Sugar                         1 Cup Milk

                          1/3 Cup Cocoa Powder         1 Cup Water

                          2 tsp Baking Soda                 1 Cup Vegetable Oil

For the butter-cream frosting:

8 oz Cream Cheese       1/2 Cup Butter            ~1 lb. Powdered Sugar

Instructions:

The overall recipe is pretty simple. Mix the ingredients together and pour into the cupcake tins. However, because these are Oreo Cupcakes, we start out with cookies in the bottom of each cupcake.

THEN we fill them up to the brim.

The frosting is just as simple, though I'm adding in crushed Oreos that are getting further crushed by the hand mixer.

Then it's just a matter of combining the cupcakes and the frosting and the product is finished!

Review:

Between me, Fluxxdog and Veonoss, we can all agree that these do taste pretty good. Unfortunately there is room for improvement. The chocolate cupcake DEFINITELY tasted generic. Next time, I'll replace the water with either coffee or Bailey's Irish Cream. 

Still, it tastes pretty good and I will be baking it again. 4 Hoots!

        

                Hoot!Hoot!

                Hoot!Hoot!

Also, if you'd prefer to see the video, you can watch it here or go to my YouTube channel!*

*Thanks again, so much, Fluxxdog for editing.