National Day 2008

It's HS' birthday. Don't ask which number, but it's a monumental one.

It's quite hard to throw a surprise for him, as he has become my 24 hrs accountability partner. So very difficult. In the end, I had to sneak out after he fell asleep on Fri nite to make him the non-bake Oreo Cheesecake.

I was up making the cake till about 3 am. It was alot of fun. Here's the recipe I referenced. It was from my colleague for passionfruit cheesecake, but I substituted the passionfruit with oreo cookies instead. The funny thing was, I wasn't so well equipped, and it was a make one time, MUST succeed first time kind of thing. I only had enough ingredients for one try and limited equipment. So, it was quite fun to encounter different "situations" and had to just make the best out of what I had. And at the same time, very scared that HS would wake up and find me in the kitchen, and then end of surprise. Glad that it all turned out okay.

PASSIONFRUIT CHILLED CHEESECAKE

Base

130 g butter

200g digestive biscuits (finely crushed) --> Used digestives with milk choc

2 tbsp brown sugar (firmly packed) --> skipped

50g cornflakes (finely crushed) --> Used kellogs frosties instead

Filling

500 g Phillidelphia cream cheese

100 g castor sugar

1 tbsp lemon juice (strained)

2 no passion fruit --> Used 3 pkts of oreo cookies self-serve, chopped finely

2 tbsp gelatine (dissolve in 100 ml water for 5-10 minutes then double boil until melted) --> Used 1 pkt agar powder

300 ml whipping cream --> Used 200ml whipping cream

Topping

1 passion fruit (optional) --> Used 30g Oreo cookies, chopped roughly

Method

Base

1. Melt butter in a pan over low heat. Stir in the rest of base ingredients, mix well and off the fire.

2. Pressed into a greased 23 cm springform or false-bottomed cake pan with the back of a metal spoon or with your hand.

3. Cover cake pan and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.

Filling

1. Beat cream cheeese, sugar and lemon juice until smooth. Stir in passion fruit. Pour in gelatine(warm) and mix until combined. Blend in whipping cream.

2. Pour filling on biscuit base. Cover cake pan. Refrigerate for at least 6 hours.

3. Top with passion fruit and serve.

Two challenges:

(1) It was SO DIFFICULT to "finely chop" the digestive biscuits, and oreo cookies. My own "artificial intelligence", thought that a chocolate coated digestive biscuit would taste better for the base of the cake. But, it turned out so messy to prepare. I didn't have a food processor, bowls were not deep enough, and had to manually (i.e. use hand) break and crumble the cookies. That took like the longest time.

(2) I didn't know how the agar powder was suppose to work. Almost failed project because of that. In the end, just added a little more water, and dumped it into the mix for further mixing.

Other than those two things, I enjoyed the blending with the electronic mixer the most. I had so much fun, I think I over-blended everything. I went to bed smelling like one giant cookie, but HS had no clue.

Taste-test:

I think it was okay overall. Not sure if it is suppose to be harder, 'cuz I'm quite sure something went wrong with the adding gelatin process. Wasted quite abit of the gelatin. The base turned out okay, even though initially I thought the butter proportion was too high, and that my base mix was too soggy. But it turned out hard and quite crunchy on the bite, although the discerning taster would be able to tell my layering is not even. The oreo mix was nice, but a little on the bland side. I blame that on cutting down of sugar on my part. I didn't have weighing machine and proper equipment to make a good estimate on actual amount of sugar I added. I did a very rough estimation, and just consoled myself saying that less sugar is more healthy. Also, I used low fat philly cream cheese, and wonder if that has got anything to do with the cake tasting bland. I probably could have thrown in more Oreo cookies, if my fingers were not so tired from breaking all the digestive cookies manually. I took a wift of the cake two days later, and think it smells more cheesy now. I have heard that cheesecakes tastes better the longer you keep them. Shall try some again tonight to see.

Surprise no. 2

I've always dreamt and plotted to catch the national day fireworks from this hotel. Never did materialise until this year. So, it may seem like a present for HS, it is very much for myself too...haha.

So, we lived like kings and queen the last weekend, ate sumptious delicious hotel breakfast at the ballroom. Used their gym and pool. And felt very much like tourists. We're getting too used to this living in posh places thing.