In Which I Wear a Forever Lazy and Make Ginger Cheesecake

There is a Supper Party tomorrow night at the farm. One of mum's favourite things to do is wait until I'm home (which I am . . . for a while . . . until some AMAZING boarding school hires me to teach English and coach cross country . . hint hint hint) and then invite people to dinner. And then I get to cook. Thing is it actually works out really well, because I love cooking and we have really awesome friends so it's always a fun night. Only at our Supper Parties can we move from settling an argument about Channing Tatum via imdb to impersonating a foul mouthed Scotsman to the IMF bailout and the UK independence party in the space of about 15 minutes.

I'll post more menu info and photos tomorrow once it actually happens, but I have been a busy beetle for the last two days.

First was two loaves of Black Bread. I wish a photo could convey how amazing this smells when you're mixing the dough. It's the good stuff, none of this candyass "oh I used rye flour I made black bread" nonsense. It's got coffee and cocoa powder and I almost never use white flour when making stuff like this. So it's . . . dense is a good word. Like, kill someone with it dense. Anyway, the recipe was this from 101 Cookbooks. It's a good one. I swapped out the carrot for a can of pureed butternut squash (which comes half a cup short) and to make up the bulk of it added half a cup of oat bran. It definitely makes the dough sticker so be prepared if you follow in my fingersteps. The bread is actually payment for our wonderful handyman putting together the spin bike I bought for myself before I moved back home. I'll photo it later. Me being able to workout whenever and however long I want = world peace. He put it together in about an hour bless him and I promised him two loaves of his favourite black bread when he comes tomorrow night. So voila! This one takes a while, but it smells incredible and it's SO satisfying and filling. On the Beetle Friendly scale it ranks about a 7 (10 being all good). It's got a little bit of butter in it which I could easily switch out if I were making it for me and cocoa powder which, technically, not supposed to eat chocolate. But it's awesome.

Today was four (count 'em FOUR more loaves of the Rosemary bread I made last week. I took out the honey because I wanted something even more savoury and we got some really nice fresh rosemary yesterday. Oh here photo:

The rosemary looked so pretty floating on the yeast. Sigh. And now the kitchen smells like salt and rosemary and everything that is good and kind in the world. Rosemary bread is a resounding 10 on the Beetle Friendly scale. 10+

Dessert came next in the cooking schedule. For thanksgiving I had made a pumpkin cheesecake (cheesecake incidentally is a 0 on the Beetle Friendly scale . . . seriously call the paramedics) which I had to hide from mum so that it wouldn't have giant spoon holes in it when I put it on the table. I decided to do cheesecake again but THIS time I would make a ginger one. Yay!

I found out when I made the pumpkin one at TG just how amazing Neufchatel really is. It makes all the difference in the world when you're making cheesecake. So light, so fluffy. I guess there's an added bonus that it's not AS guilt inducing but whatever, if you're going to eat, EAT. I'm talking about the density difference here. The recipe I used for Ginger Cheesecake called for a ground pecan crust but I hate pecans so even if I'm not going to eat one single bite I refuse to cook with them. I went with a good old fashioned gingersnap crust that I filched from another Martha Stewart recipe and set to work.

Do you have ANY IDEA how amazing ginger cheesecake smells? It's all spicy and sweet and warm and just HAPPY. Gingersnaps too, btw. I was crushing them up for the crust and I seriously just put my palms up to my face and took a couple of huge breaths. I'm glad nobody saw me but I was completely justified.

So with the Neufchatel doing it's airy fairy thing up in there, THIS is what it looked like:

At that point it was full of cream and eggs and ground and grated ginger and BRILLIANTLY full of ginger preserves which means it's studded with tiny pieces of crystalised ginger . . . omg. Amazing right? I've never been a stickler for having a perfectly smooth cheesecake crust (you're just going to eat it anyway) so I don't have any problem showing you the finished product currently cooling in my oven.

Due to our last springform pan dying a noble and heroic death in the middle of carrying out a gingerbread cake assault, and Target's surprising lack of springforms (really guys? you have EVERYTHING) I used a pie plate. Ah well. The result of that is that there was a bit of filling left over, so I poured it into a pyrex and baked them side by side. The excess without the crust becomes a ginger cheesecake CUSTARD instead which . . . what's the problem. And the cool part is that when I was scraping the bottom of the mixing bowl for it, all the crystalised ginger bits from the preserves ended up getting on the top of the custard so it's sort of a topping. A topping of awesome.

So that's one day of cooking down. Tomorrow I make the mains: Filets of whatever fish looks good at the market, Spiced Carrots and Lentils with Sauteed Onions, Cauliflower and Black Olives with Roasted Tomatoes and Coriander, and in a nod to spring (ha, we have two feet of snow outside) a Leek and Olive Tart with Cheese. Like I said, photos and descriptions to come. For the time being, having run 10 miles in the bitter wind and then run around the kitchen all day listening to the Parliamentary debates, this is one Hungry Beetle.