Saturday, June 9, 2012

summer's here - show your colors!

I've become a huge fan of OPI nail polish! They just have an amazing range of colors and it's great quality too. This summer, these are my two favorites:


With your nails in green or yellow you don't need much more to make your outfit special. It's accessoire enough!

Have fun trying it out :)




Monday, June 4, 2012

NY cheesecake

As promised, here comes the recipe for a traditional New York cheesecake. It's from "cheesecakes" by Maxine Clark, but I've changed quite some things.

What you need:
base
200g rusk/zwieback (make sure it's sugared)
100g butter
75g sugar

filling
150g butter
190g sugar
4 big eggs
30g flour
a untreated lemon (grated peel and juice)
8g vanilla sugar (1 package)
675g Philadelphia (should come directly out of the fridge)
60ml milk

topping
425ml sour cream
2 tbs. sugar
freshly pressed lemon juice from 1 lemon

I use a 26cm diameter springform.

How to:
As always, you need to preheat the oven, to 190°C.
Then, you start with the base for which you need to crush the rusk. I put the rusk (in portions) in a freezer bag and then use a rolling pin to crush it. This technique is rather time-consuming.
Melt the butter (slowly) and mix it with the rusk and sugar.
Grease the springform, then spread the mixture and with your fingers, flatten it.
Bake the base for 8-10 minutes. Afterwards, you need to cool it before continuuing. Reduce the oven temperature to 160°C.

In the meantime, mix the butter and sugar for the filling. Gradually add the eggs, then the flour, the lemon zest and juice and the vanilla sugar.
Use another bowl to mix the Philadelphia with the milk (here you need a rather big bowl). Finally, pour the first mixture into the second and make sure there are no clots. If that's the case, pour it onto the base and bake for 90 minutes.

For the topping, mix the ingredients. Put it into the fridge until you need it.

Once the filling is baked, increase the temperature to 190°C again. Pour the topping onto the cake and bake for another 10 minutes or until it's solid.

To cool the cheesecake you have two options: You either switch off the oven and leave it there to cool with the oven door open. Or put it onto a cooling tray with a big bowl put over. This is to prevent the base from cracking.

You have to put the cake into the fridge for at least 2 hours, but in my experience, the cheesecake tastes even better when you make it in advance and leave it in the fridge for about two days.

Often, I make some raspberry coulis to eat with the cheesecake. It's really easy, but you need some patience to pass it through a sieve. All you need in terms of ingredients is raspberries and some sugar (I prefer it still a bit sour,  others like more sugar). I warm the raspberries a little, especially if you have frozen ones. And then, as I said, you need the patience to pass it through the sieve.

ENJOY!

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