Room for Dessert - Food Blog

Avi’s birthday was a week before Shavuot - a Jewish holiday during which, among others, it’s common to eat dairy products. So that’s why, in the spirit of the holiday (and because Avi really likes them) I decided to make 2 cheese cakes. The first one, the one I’ve told you about in my previous post, was supposed to be the pretty one (let’s, for a moment, ignore the fact that it didn’t come out pretty as I hoped for in the end…), and this one I made because it’s the best cheese cake there is! Seriously, it is, try for yourself and see!

I baked both cakes at my friends’ house, and I had only a very limited period of time to make them both. Since assembling the mousse cake took me longer than I expected, I didn’t have enough time to wait for this one to finish baking. What do I do? I thought to myself, worried that all the work was for nothing, and that the cake is going to be ruined. Knowing that they always say that cheesecakes are better off cooling inside the oven, I decided to take my chances and estimate how much longer it needs to be in the oven for, set the timer, and left the house. I came back after 3 hours - and was surprised to find out that the cake was just perfect. That being said, when Avi’s friends from work came to our house in the evening, I was still stressed out that it wouldn’t be as good as always - until I tasted it and relaxed All was peaceful again.

The cake has a really mild taste, and the eggs in it aren’t felt at all (something that bothers me sometimes about baked cheesecakes, the emphasized eggish taste), and the sour cherries simply complete it. It’s also very light in texture. 
Usually I make a baked crust for it, but this time, as I was short on time, I used the same base as I used with the mousse cake, it’s a wonderful base that I use regularly since I’ve discovered it, and it was great with this cake as well.
Unfortunately I didn’t get to take many photos of it since there were people here, so here are the leftovers

Cherry Cheesecake / Adapted from Hans Bertele’s recipe
For a 9 inch cake

Ingredients:
For the base:
150 gr Graham Crackers, ground
100 gr butter, melted
zest of half of a medium sized lemon

For the filling:
500 gr low fat cheese (9%)
10 Tbsp sugar
3 medium sized eggs
2 medium sized egg yolks
1 tsp vanilla extract
zest of half of a medium sized lemon
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
120 gr butter, melted
1 cup milk
350 gr sour cherries (fresh or canned)

Powdered sugar

Directions:
1. The white cheese in Israel is quite runny, in order to deal with that and prevent my cheesecakes from being too moist, I drain the fluids. Place the cheese on a piece of clean cloth or on an absorbent paper, and let it stay for half an hour, or until most of the liquids are out.
2. Prepare the base: mix the ingredients of the base to a uniform mixture. Spread the mixture out evenly on the bottom of the cake pan. Place the pan in the freezer until finishing making the cake. Preheat the oven to 338F (170C).
3. Prepare the filling: Whisk together the cheese and sugar.
4. Whisk eggs and egg yolks together with the vanilla extract, and gradually add into the cheese mixture. Add in the flour, butter and milk and stir well.
5. Take the crust out of the freezer, spread the filling on top of it. Scatter the cherries evenly upon the filling, they will sink in a bit, and it’s ok.
6. Bake for 40 mins, or until the cake firms up and starts to get golden.
7. Let cool and powder with powdered sugar.

עוגת גבינה ודובדבנים / עיבוד למתכון של הנס ברטלה
לעוגה בקוטר 24 ס”מ:

רכיבים:
לבסיס:
150 גרם ביסקויטים, טחונים דק
100 גרם חמאה, מומסת
גרידה מחצי לימון בינוני

למלית:
500 גרם גבינה לבנה 9%
10 כפות סוכר
3 ביצים מס’ 2
2 חלמונים מס’ 2
1 כפית תמצית וניל
קליפה מגוררת מחצי לימון
1/2 כוס קמח
120 גרם חמאה מומסת
1 כוס חלב
350 גרם דובדבנים חמוצים מגולענים (משומרים או טריים)

לזריה:
אבקת סוכר

הכנה:
1. מסננים את הגבינה בתוך בד או נייר סופג למשך כחצי שעה.
2. מכינים את הבסיס: מערבבים כל חומרי הבסיס לתערובת אחידה. שוטחים בתחתית התבנית ומפזרים באופן אחיד. מכניסים למקפיא עד לסיום הכנת המלית. מחממים תנור ל - 170 מעלות.
3. מכינים את המלית: טורפים או מקציפים גבינה וסוכר במהירות נמוכה.
4. טורפים ביצים וחלמונים עם תמצית וניל וקליפת לימון, ומוסיפים בהדרגה ותוך כדי טריפה לתערובת הגבינה. מוסיפים קמח, חמאה וחלב ומערבבים היטב.
5. מוציאים את הקלתית מהמקפיא, יוצקים עליה את המלית ומפזרים את הדובדבנים. הם ישקעו חלקית בתוך המלית, וזה בסדר.
6. מחזירים לתנור ואופים כ - 40 דקות, עד שהעוגה מתייצבת ומתחילה להזהיב.
7. מצננים ומאבקים באבקת סוכר לפני ההגשה.

So we’re 2 months into the strawberries season and I haven’t prepared even one single dessert using them! I did discover several great places to buy beautiful and relatively cheap strawberries, and actually that’s one of the few benefits of my college moving from the lively center of Tel Aviv into the also-lively center of Jaffa… So until now I only bought them for us to eat straight up, or sometimes with a little sugar scattered upon them. But last week I decided to use them for preparing a sweet goodie. I also decided to combine this with making my first ever mousse cake.
Mousse cakes are something I wasn’t technically able to prepare for a long time, since I didn’t have a proper mixer. Since I bought the KitchenAid last September, I’ve been planning to prepare one, but the chance hasn’t come up, and truthfully, I was also a little scared of trying it.

Looking for interesting recipes of strawberry mousses, I’ve found Martha Stewart’s recipe for strawberry mousse cake that looked promising, so I decided to take the recipe of only the mousse from it. I combined it with an improvised base made of biscuit crumbs, butter, lemon zest and strawberry puree. For the topping I planned to use Martha’s white chocolate ganache, but Avi doesn’t like eating big amounts of white chocolate, and since there was also white chocolate in the mousse, I decided to use milk chocolate. So far so good. But when we got to the store to buy that milk chocolate - I thought to myself - why not make it even more special and use one regular milk chocolate bar and one Nougat filled milk chocolate bar? This was the crucial mistake that made the topping of the cake lumpy (pieces of the nougat that didn’t dissolve well, I presume), instead of it being silky-smooth, the way ganache should be…

To sum up the whole story: the mousse was really tasty and had a great creamy texture, and there was just the right amount of each ingredient in it - the strawberries were very noticeable but didn’t overwhelm it, the amount of sugar was just accurate, and the white chocolate was barely noticeable taste-wise, but contributed to the great general texture. The biscuit base was also wonderful - the lemon zest and the strawberry puree really gave it a good twist. The only thing to improve is the ganache - next time I’ll definitely make it using white or dark chocolate.

Strawberry and white chocolate mousse cake / Mousse adapted from Martha Stewart & Self recipe for the base
For a(half-sphere) mold with at least 1.6 liter capacity

Ingredients:
For the base:
130 gr petit-beurre biscuits
70 gr butter, melted
2 Tbsp strawberry puree (from the mousse)
the zest of half of a medium-sized lemon

For the mousse:
450 gr (1 pound) strawberries, hulled and halved
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
230 gr (8 ounces) white chocolate, finely chopped
1 1/4 tsp unflavored gelatin
2 cups (480 ml) heavy cream
2 Tbsp confectioners’ sugar

For the ganache:
2/3 cup (160 ml) heavy cream
340 gr (12 ounces) white chocolate, finely chopped
pinch of salt
2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
whole and halved strawberries, for garnish

Prepare the mousse:
1. Puree halved strawberries in a food processor. Stir in 1 tablespoon lemon juice; set aside.
2. Melt chocolate in a medium heatproof bowl set over a pan of simmering water, stirring until smooth; set aside.
3. Put 1/4 cup cool water into a small bowl. Sprinkle gelatin over top; let stand until softened, about 5 minutes. Stir 1/4 cup cream and the confectioners’ sugar in a small saucepan; bring to a simmer over medium heat. Add gelatin mixture, and stir until gelatin has dissolved. Pour into bowl with the melted chocolate, and stir until smooth. Reserve 2 Tbsp of the strawberry puree for the base, and whisk the rest of it into the bowl with the chocolate.
4. Put remaining 1 3/4 cups cream into the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment. Beat on medium-high speed until medium peaks form. Whisk one-third of the whipped cream into the chocolate mixture. Fold in the remaining whipped cream using a large rubber spatula. Move into the half-sphere mold and refrigerate 1 hour.

Meanwhile prepare the base:
1. Measure the diameter of the mold that contains the mousse. Measure it at the mousse’s level (and not at the top of the mold), in order to know which diameter should the base have. With the mold I used, the diameter was 20.5 cm. I used an adjustable cake ring, adjusted to 20.5 cm, for forming the base’s shape, it’s also possible to use a regular round pan of the matching size.
2. Smash the biscuits to crumbs using a food processor.
3. Transfer the crumbs to a separate bowl or continue working in the food processor’s bowl (to save the wash of one more dish ), and add the melted butter, lemon zest and the 2 Tbsps of strawberry puree. Mix all the ingredients well together.
4. Lay the base mixture out on the bottom of the chosen pan (if you chose to use a ring, its bottom should be sealed with aluminium foil), tighten it using a spatula or the bottom of a clean glass, and put in the freezer until the mousse comes out of the fridge.
5. After the 1 hour has passed, take the mousse out of the fridge and the base out of the freezer, and place the base on top of the mousse. Press the base gently, to attach it to the mousse. Put the mousse in the freezer.

One hour and a half before serving it, prepare the ganache:
1. Bring cream just to a boil in a small saucepan over medium-high heat. Pour hot cream over the chocolate in a medium bowl; let stand 5 minutes. Stir until smooth. Stir in salt and lemon juice. Let stand until ganache is pourable and has cooled slightly.
2. Take the half-sphere mold out of the freezer, put the bottom of it in a bowl with boiling water (the water must not touch the mousse at all) for 2-3 seconds only, then turn the mold upside down and support the base of the mousse with your hand. Give the base a little push, and the whole cake will easily pop out of the mold into your hand. Place a rack on top of a big baking pan, and place the cake on the rack.
3. Pour ganache over top of cake, allowing it to drip down sides. Refrigerate assembled cake 1 hour before serving. Using 2 large spatulas, transfer cake to a serving platter. Garnish with strawberries.