In the chaotic kitchen of a recipe developer, you get a food blog called FoodMayhem.
I'm Jessica, an Asian-American, born and raised in NYC, and that's Lon, my Jewish, white husband. While professionally trained as a French culinary- and pastry chef, many of FoodMayhem recipes are my attempt to preserve and share authentic Chinese and Taiwanese recipes learned from my mom. We don't eat Chinese food every day, so you'll get a little bit of anything we find delicious enough to share: from our Eastern European side; recipes and techniques learned from my restaurant days; restaurant reviews, food travel tips; and a few other juicy bits along the way. Welcome to FoodMayhem!
It’s been a while since I posted about cheesecake, but for the devoted FoodMayhemites, you know I love me some cheesecake. So for our early Hanukkah celebration, I decided to create a new recipe (as I’ve done before). The only real requirements were that it include fresh vanilla bean and use an Oreo crust. Both of these requirements were simply due to having the ingredients on hand.
Both of us (Lon and I) don’t like Pumpkin Pie. I know. I know. So anti-Thanksgiving but…it’s the truth. One of my problems with pumpkin pie is that the filling is too much for me. Too what? I’m not sure, just too much, so I figured I might like it more if I made mini pumpkin pies so that I could work the ratio so that it’s more crust, less filling. I think it worked. I do like this more and so does Lon. Yippee!
I wanted to make birthday cupcakes for two friends, Sara and Rachel, and I couldn’t decide on regular sized cupcakes or miniatures. Turns out, things worked themselves out, two people meant I could do both. I must be on a lucky streak because this recipe also turned out to be perfectly one tray of regular sized and one tray of miniature sized. (update with smaller recipe portion here) Oh, and absolutely delicious too!
I was reading this post on A Southern Grace, and it reminded me of these amazing marbled muffins, sold at a gourmet market near my high school. They called them muffins, but I think it’s technically more of an un-frosted cupcake. It’s over 10 years since I’ve had these muffin/cupcakes and the store is no longer there so I decided to make something like it, myself. This recipe uses the cream cheese swirl from Grace’s recipe and the cake batter is an improvement on the Chocolate Zucchini Cake I wrote about.
Some of you may have noticed that I’m a little obsessed with my mini-muffin pan. Everything just comes out looking so cute. So when Lon invited his friends, Shruti and Ekta, over for brunch, I wanted to experiment with miniature quiche. It was yummy so I’m sharing my recipe:
Being a fan of all things cheesecake, I was excited by the cheesecake “throwdown” a few weeks ago and made an Apple Caramel Cheesecake inspired by Flay’s entry. However, having a bit of cream cheese left over from the massive amount we purchased at Costco, I’m making a new cheesecake inspired by the competition, Junior’s, and their entry the Devil’s Food Cheesecake.
Some may ask why on earth I didn’t just travel over to Junior’s, with two of their locations being within 20 minutes of my home, so let me answer: because I do not like Junior’s cheesecake! I have tried their cakes on at least four occasions and am less than impressed. They taste bland, overly sweet, too dry, and generally a day old. So rather than go overpay for one of their crappy cakes, I made my own, and besides, I prefer vanilla over chocolate.
This recipe basically requires three nine-inch cake pans on hand, I have two and a spring form, which works fine.
I used a Basic Cheesecake Recipe:
Cream cream cheese and sugar, then add sour cream, then one egg at a time, followed by lemon and vanilla. Scrape down sides, mix again and bake in a 9-inch cake pan (with NO CRUST) in a waterbath at 325 degrees F for 50-60 minutes– until center is jello-like and the outside is firm. Then let stand in over for another hour before chilling over night.
And then prepared a basic Yellow Layer Cake recipe (from About.com):
Sift flour, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl set aside. Cream sugar and butter in a large bowl, until light and fluffy, then beat in one egg at a time. Mix in half the flour mixture followed by half of the milk. Add vanilla. Mix until blended; add remaining flour and milk and beat until smooth. Fill two greased and floured 9-inch cake pans. Bake at 375° for 25 to 35 minutes, until toothpick in center comes out clean.
The next day, I whipped up some Butter Cream Icing (from Wilton):
Cream butter and shortening with electric mixer. Add vanilla. Gradually add sugar, one cup at a time, beating well on medium speed. Scrape sides and bottom of bowl often throughout whole process! When all sugar has been mixed in, icing will appear dry. Add milk and beat at medium speed for several minutes until light and fluffy. This is enough icing to do a thin layer– perfect for us. If you want a heavier layer (i.e. crumb coat and top coat) you’ll need to increase the icing recipe by 50% or 100%.
Then it was time to Assemble the Cake:
Frost top of cheesecake with about 1/2 cup of icing, then invert last layer cake on top, with bottom facing up. Do not frost top at this point.Enjoy. We did. See the rest of the pictures in the Flickr set.
