Ricotta Cheesecake with Balsamic Strawberries

This recipe was lifted from the Taste website after initially thinking of baking a regular cheesecake. Much lighter than it’s cream cheese counterpart, it’s also a lot less sweet, balanced with the perfect match of strawberries and balsamic vinegar in the syrup. Being a lot less rich than a regular cheesecake it’s also a lot easier to fit in more slices lol. In the process of experimenting with other recipes, so will keep you posted.

Ricotta Cheesecake with Balsamic Strawberries – Original recipe here

Ingredients
200g digestive biscuits
75g unsalted butter/margarin, melted
125g caster sugar, plus extra 2 tbs
650g ricotta
1 tbs cornflour
1 tsp vanilla extract
4 eggs, separated
150ml sour cream

Strawberry Syrup
55g (1/4 cup) caster sugar
2 tsp balsamic vinegar
1 tsp cornflour
¼ cup water
250g strawberries, cut

Method
Preheat the oven to 160°C and grease line a springform tin, mine was 20cm.

Pulse biscuits in food processor, then add 2 tbs of caster sugar and melted butter/margarine. Press mixture into tin.

Beat together the ricotta, cornflour, vanilla, 125g of the caster sugar, egg yolks and sour cream.

In a separate clean bowl, beat the eggwhites until stiff peaks form, then fold into the ricotta mixture. Pour into tin and bake for 50-60 minutes until golden (mine took 70 min).

Mix cornflour with a little water. Combine water, caster sugar, vinegar in pan over low heat, stirring until sugar has dissolved. Add cornflour mixture and cook for a few minutes until sauce has thickened. Remove from heat, leave to cool slightly then add the strawberries.

To serve, allow cake to cool slightly (will sink in the middle), then remove from tin and serve drizzled with syrup.

Other baking fruity/cheesecakey posts

Cheesecake Brownie

Strawberry Custard Tart

Apricot Buttermilk Slice

Adriano Zumbo Weekend

If you’re a reader of other Sydney food blogs you’ll realise this post is late(ish). 3 days may not be much in the real world, but it definitely is in the blogosphere lol.

I’ve just had a Balmain/bakery oriented weekend, starting with a breakfast on Saturday, which I’ll post later:), and a trip to Adriano Zumbo, followed on Sunday with…….Adriano Zumbo again, this time with fellow Sydney food bloggers.

SATURDAY

The new collection at Adriano Zumbo is aptly titled – “Please sir, can I have some more!” and is a spectacular array of mouth watering desserts. I hada quick looksee on Saturday morning to give myself a heads up (and also to satisfy a post breakfast sweet tooth lol). Sindel, Madam Saucy and I took quite a while trying to decide what we wanted.

What’s on offer

Mingled in with the newbies are some remnants from the previous collection, including the green Tuk Tuk Nothing.

Scrolling to the right…

I ID the Charles du Jour as a target for the foodblogger event, The intriguing baubles are enough to suck me in, I get a White Christmas/Wedding Cake vibe lol.

And right again…

I can see the successor to the Tuk Tuk Nothing, it’s pink (always a good sign with me), but has no description tag. I ask the lady behind the counter and she tells me she has no idea what it is either and is also waiting for a tag lol. The mystery!

I’ve been craving cheesecake for quite some time now, only to be greeted with old/dry looking cheesecake everywhere I turn. Awkward. But not here!!! I choose the Miss Marrple Cheesecake and carefully bring it home:)

Miss Marple Cheesecake
Orange cheesecake with orange strawberry compote, cream cheese crème legere with crepe and maple glaze.

Apologies but this is a (slightly) erroneous shot. For the “attention to detail” types out there, there are actually white chocolate slivers pieced on the ends like bookends, but I may have eaten them on the way home….

A gorgeous dessert - satisfied that craving quick smart.

Sindel chose the Chocolate Fondant, but we got to that before the camera could;)

Onto Sunday!

Firstly a big “Thank you!” to Reem for organising us:)

This is the first foodbloggers meet I’ve been to and I had a fabulous time. It’s great to be able to put faces to the names I’m so used to online. It’s a great crowd and quite a spectacle at times – cameras and desserts galore. Herr Moutarde graciously accompanied me and we had a decadent breakfast to start our Sunday:) Being me, I spent a fair bit time chatting which subsequently caused a drop in photo quality/quantity. This unfortunately means my snaps are incomplete for the entire collection. Not to worry! There were so many of us you’ll see pics all over the net!

Attendees:

Reem: I am obsessed with food
Helen: Grab Your Fork
Suze: Chocolatesuze
Karen: Citrus and Candy (my new designated camera buddy lol)
Lorraine: NotQuiteNigella
Richard: Herecomesthefood
The team from Eatshowandtell (Howard, Linda, Teresa)
Simon: Simon Food Favourites

Plus a few others that popped in as I was leaving and sadly did not get to meet. So, where do you put a gaggle of snap happy food bloggers?? In the nearby Adriano Zumbo Café Chocolat of course! This man is slowly but surely creating an empire. Luckily for the rest of us, Reem has managed to secure us a cosy little alcove in this place where we can rest, sample and photograph our desserts in peace:)

The Table

No doubt place to be: seating AND food:)

Charles du Jour
Tart pate sucree, vanilla ganache, vanilla crème Chantilly, vanilla water bursts, vanilla glacage.

Helen beat me to this beauty, and generously divided it up so we could have a bite, (foodbloggers are a generous breed). It really is as good as it looks.

Choccies!

Herr Moutarde and I couldn’t resist the mass of chocolates ordering counter. Guess who ate more?

PARIS – La Vie en Rose
Rose crème brulee, raspberry sorbet balls, fresh lychees, rose macarons served with a strawberry tapioca shake.

It became evident to me that the mass purchasing had led to the group with samples of nearly all available bakery treats. I graciously stepped forward to choose an offering from the café menu (my life is tough). The counter boy (Charles) at the bakery had recommended a dish with creamed rice and fruit salad, which sounded amazing but alas, I was told there was none left when I got back to the cafe:( I ended up choosing this beautiful concoction, named after one of my favourite cities. With scattered rose petals, it’s easily the prettiest thing in sight.

The studio

The sheer number of desserts led to a makeshift studio being set up at the nearby table, which was quickly swarmed by photohungry bloggers.

Past jobs
Kaffir lime and ginger pannacotta, black sticky rice pudding, exotic fruit jelly and palm sugar marscapone.


Framboise Millefeuille
Raspberry coulis and marscapone with caramelised puff pastry and biscuit jaconde.


Zumbo the Kid
Vegemite bavaroise, peanut butter crème legere, raspberry jelly, chocolate peanut glacage, peanut feullitine, flourless chocolate biscuit


Wheely Wildly Wendy
Fresh roasted peach in a tonka bean crème legere and sandwiched between two almond dacquoise disks and rolled in almond crumble.

Yum! I remember a few months ago, Daisy Moo and I split the green Tuk Tuk Nothing, much to her dismay - she’s not of a fan of coconut, which is beautifully laced through the green version of Zumbo’s wheel. I’ll be pestering her to share this with me next time we go;)

UZC
Biscuit macaron, sweet corn jelly, saffron bavaroise, vanilla brulee.

Another dessert I quite enjoyed was the rice pudding éclair that the lovely Suze brought along, a simple and lighter combination of rice pudding and cinnamon in an éclair form which I could easily have eaten all day. Sweet Karen brought along the cheesecake and Cassius, while Richard also gave me a bite of another café creation called It’s a Macaron and Not a Hamburger. Check out their blogs for photos:) So many things to try!!!!

The new collection will be available until the 22nd of May 2009, which gives us all plenty of time to try them all again, and again….and again:)

Adriano Zumbo Patissier
296 Darling St
Balmain, NSW, 2041

Open 7 days

Phone: (02) 9810 7318

Adriano Zumbo Café Chocolat
308 Darling St
Balmain, NSW, 2041
(inside Balmain Mall)

Open 7 days

Phone: (02) 9555 1199

Cheesecake Brownie

If there is one brownie recipe you try, make it this one – you’ll never look back:) I am by no means a pro baker and even I managed to make this mouthwatering recipe! I found this recipe during a trawl through the Taste Website.

Starting the base

The usual suspects in an indulgent bakery treat – fat, sugar and eggs. I use a regular electric hand beater and the sheer amount of sugar meant I was standing there for a very long time…wishing I had one of those fancy ones that mix All By Themselves.

Putting together the brownie mixture

It really was a simple brownie mix, because after all that initial beating, all I had to do was add some melted chocolate. Licking the melted chocolate bowl is good...

So then it was time to make the cheesecake bit.

Time to pull out another mixing bowl

While mixing the eggs, sugar, cream cheese and vanilla extract together, the dietitian within me started screaming. I shuddered when I realised the recipe had effectively amounted to almost ½ kilo worth of fat, most of which was saturated.

For the record, I bought extra light cream cheese and always advocate the use of margarine instead of butter when cooking, so while this brownie was indeed energy dense, heart damage capacity was still significantly reduced:)

Assembling the brownie

Putting it together was quite easy. Most of the brownie mixture was spread on the bottom and then layered on top with the cheesecake. The remaining brownie mixture is then swirled through the top. Size wise, I used a shallow rectangular baking tray (about 20cm long) and it was fine.

Fruit!

The recipe asked for raspberries on the top, but our fridge offered up strawberries and our freezer had a box of frozen blackberries, so I used those instead.

It’s baking time!

I found that it took a little bit longer to bake than the recipe stated, not long, only about 15 min which I guess is due to oven differences.

Time to eat!

An apology for the poor, poor shot above, it does no justice to the recipe at all! Impatience may have led me to prematurely slicing and eating before adequate cooling :S

But wow was it fantastic! Even in theory, a slice with brownie AND cheesecake was always going to be good, but this exceeded my expectations. The whole thing was gone within a few hours, and no, it wasn’t entirely due to myself, I must give credit to Daisy Moo, Chocolate Queen, Herr Moutarde and Sindel for their time and effort lol.

Sindel and I had a moment when we thought we might actually be drooling – classy…

Anyway, the recipe was found here

Enjoy!