We Love Cooking!:
cream cheese

Another recipe from that amazing dinnerparty I keep mentioning, this time it's the turn of the amazing cheesecake which Sadhbh's son Jamie prepared. Cheesecake is definitely a winner when it comes to making desserts ahead of time, and even if you don't have a son to make it for you, it's not to tricky to get great results! :)

White Chocolate Cheesecake
(Recipe from Bill Granger's "Bills Food")

Serves 8
100g plain digestive biscuits
50g butter, melted
400g of good quality white chocolate
284 ml carton of double cream
250g full-fat soft cheese (such as Moonshine Farm cream cheese)
250g tub of mascarpone cheese

For the sauce
275g blueberries, raspberries or strawberries, plus extra to serve
50g golden caster sugar
1 tablespoon of lemon juice

Whizz the biscuits in a processor until they look like breadcrumbs. Pour in the melted butter and whiz again briefly. Line the base of a 20cm springform tin with a disc of baking parchment. Tip the mixture in and press firmly to cover the base in an even layer – use the back of a spoon. Cover and keep in the fridge until you’re ready to make the topping.
Break the chocolate into small pieces into a heatproof bowl. Put it over a pan of simmering water, then remove the pan from the heat and set aside until the chocolate has melted. Stir once or twice. Remove the bowl from the pan and leave to cool slightly.
Gently beat the cream, cheese and mascarpone in a bowl until well-combined – don’t overbeat it or it will go too stiff. Stir in the melted chocolate until the mix is smooth. Spoon this mixture on to the biscuit base and put the cheesecake back in the fridge for at least 3 hours or overnight.
To make the sauce, tip half the blueberries into a blender or food processor, add the sugar and lemon juice and puree until smooth. Press through a sieve into a bowl and set aside until needed.
Remove the cheesecake from the tin and cut into slices. Transfer to serving plates, drizzle with the fruit sauce and top with the remaining fresh fruit.

It may not look like it now but when I was younger up until the age of 5 or 6 I was completely blonde! There was a brief few years in my teens where I tried to recreate this look, but this ended in tears and should most definitely not be revisited. Anyway as a blonde kid people always seemed to make the association between me and the milky bar kid who also had bright blonde hair. I blame these comparisons for my love of white chocolate from an early age. I know white chocolate gets quite a lot of stick because it's not as high quality as good dark chocolate but it is an ingredient that I love using in desserts, giving a great creamy sweet flavour.

White Chocolate Ginger Cheesecake Pots
Desserts that can be made ahead are lifesavers when it comes to entertaining and ones which only take a few minutes to put together are even better! These individual cheesecake pots are perfect to pull out of the fridge at the end of a meal and with an extra kick from the ginger your guests will be singing your praises!

Serves 6
200g of gingernut biscuits
100g of butter, melted
1 teaspoon of ground ginger
450g of cream cheese
200g of white chocolate
100ml of cream
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
1 tablespoon of icing sugar

Blitz the biscuits in a food processor until you have fine breadcrumbs. Pour in the melted butter and ginger and process until everything is mixed through.
Gently push the biscuit base into individual serving pots and set aside. Don't press down too hard as you want nice loose spoonfuls of biscuit with the cheesecake mix.
Slowly melt the white chocolate in a bowl over a small pot of simmering water.
Put the cream cheese in a large mixing bowl and add the white chocolate, cream, vanilla extract, and sugar.
Beat all the ingredients together until you get a nice light mixture.
Spoon the cream cheese mix into the serving pots, smooth the top and garnish with a sprinkling of thinly sliced white chocolate.
Place in the fridge until you are ready to serve.

I have mentioned Leila Lindholm on this blog quite a few times at this stage, she is my baking hero, plus I think I might have a little bit of a crush on her! Leila is from Sweden and I was given a present of her book "A Piece Of Cake" in Swedish last year by Sofie's dad. I have been hooked on her delicious recipes ever since. She has been in the kitchen since the age of three helping her grandmother and still remembers the first batch of muffins she ever cooked. I love hearing about those sort of stories when you read other cooks books, it gives a much more interesting sense of where the recipes come from.

Leila is extremely successful in her native Sweden and has released 3 cookbooks there, including my favourite "A Piece Of Cake". I speak a good bit of Swedish, enough to read a cookbook, and having worked over there in a restaurant, my Swedish food vocab is pretty up to scratch, so I have worked my way through a good few recipes in the book. However I recently got sent a copy of her book in English, as it has just been released in the UK and it has rekindled my love for her recipes. The ones without pictures, which I may have skipped over in Swedish, I am now salivating over and reading properly! It's all very exciting, so I have decided this is going to be Leila Lindholm week here on the blog, featuring a recipe everyday from her fab book "A Piece Of Cake". The first recipe I have chosen for today is these fantastic Peanut Butter Cupcakes". As you might have noticed I have a bit of a weakness for cupcakes and I have been meaning to try these ones in particular for so long! Enjoy!

Leila Lindholm's Peanut Butter Cupcakes
There are loads of delicious frostings you can use to ice your cupcakes, and there are no limits to how you decorate them. This frosting is as tasty as it is simple to make.

Makes 12 cakes
3 organic eggs
225g caster sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla sugar
50g unsalted butter
100ml sour cream
2 tablespoons baking powder
2 tablespoons cold coffee
210g plain flour
4 tablespoons good quality cocoa powder
1 pinch of salt
100g good quality dark chocolate (70% cocoa solids)
150g salted peanuts and extra for decoration

For the peanut butter frosting:
100g soft peanut butter
240g icing sugar
4 tablespoons good quality cocoa powder
2 teaspoons vanilla sugar
150g cream cheese
1 tablespoon warm coffee

Preheat the oven to 175oC/350oF/Gas Mark 4.
Beat together the eggs, butter and vanilla sugar until pale and fluffy.
Mellt the butter, add the sour cream and coffee and blend with the egg mixture.
Mix together the flour, baking powder, cocoa powder and salt and carefully fold into the mixture.
Chop the chocolate coarsely and melt it in a bowl set over a pan of simmering water. Add the the mixture.
Put paper cases in a muffin tin.
Chop the peanuts and add them to the paper cases, layering them with the cake batter until two-thirds full.
Bake in the centre of the preheated oven for about 15 minutes. Leave to cool.
Stir the peanut butter, icing sugar, cocoa powder, vanilla sugar and cream cheese until creamy. Stir in the coffee.
Spread the frosting on top of the cakes and decorate with extra peanuts.

I promise no more pumpkin recipes up on the blog for while after today's recipe! But I did save the best till last! These pumpkin brownies are so delicious, you just have to try them. I didn't manage to get my hands on pumpkin puree so I made my own. I slowly roasted the pumpkin until it was soft, scraped out the flesh, then I puréed the mixture and passed it through a sieve. Unfortunately my homemade purée didn't have that authentic neon orange colour that you see in American food photo's so you will have to allow me a little artistic creativity, as I did play around a little with the colours in the photos.

Chocolate, pumpkin and pecan brownies

Recipe from The Daily Mail

Makes about 20 squares
For the pumpkin mixture:
25g butter
75g cream cheese
100g caster sugar
1 egg
100ml pumpkin purée
1tsp vanilla extract
1/2tsp ground ginger
75g plain flour

For the chocolate mixture:
200g unsalted butter
200g dark chocolate, chopped
3 large eggs
300g granulated sugar
2tsp vanilla extract
125g plain flour
Pinch of salt
100g pecans, roughly chopped

Preheat the oven to 180C/160C fan/gas 4.
Grease and line a rectangular baking tin, approximately 20cm x 30cm (8-12in) and 3-4cm (1 1/4-1 1/2in) deep, with greaseproof or parchment paper.
To make the pumpkin mixture, beat all the ingredients together until smooth. Keep to one side.
For the chocolate mixture, melt the butter and chocolate together, either in a bowl over a pan of simmering water or gently in the microwave.
In a separate bowl, beat together the eggs, sugar and vanilla extract with an electric hand whisk until thick and creamy.
Mix in the melted chocolate and butter. Finally, stir in the flour, salt and pecans.
Pour the chocolate mixture into the lined baking tin and level off the surface.
Using a tablespoon, drop dollops of the pumpkin mixture all over the top, and then, using the back of a table knife, loosely swirl it into the chocolate mixture.
Place in the oven and cook for about 25 minutes, until the top is cracking and the centre is just set.
Leave to cool in the tin for 40-45 minutes before cutting into bite-sized squares.

Cupcakes cupcakes cupcakes! They just never fail to impress, no matter how many different types I make. These blackberry vanilla cupcakes were no different and only lasted a couple of hours in the house.

I had my little cousin Maisy (AKA the cupcake queen!) helping out, she totally enjoyed it and didn't complain once, despite me dragging her around the cliffs blackberry picking for 3 hours beforehand! I actually made the frosting a little too runny in an attempt to use up the coulis, but I kind of like the dramatic effect it gave the pics. Yup that was my sad attempt to cover up a mistake! But you'll let me away with it right?

Blackberry Vanilla Cupcakes

(Recipe adapted from Coconut & Lime)
This recipe makes delicious, light and moist cupcakes with a fruity taste.

Makes 12 cupcakes
For the cupcakes:
1 cup flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
6 tbsp. unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup blackberry coulis

For the frosting:
8 oz. cream cheese, at room temperature
3 cups powdered sugar, sifted
2 tablespoons blackberry coulis
Blackberries for decoration

To make the cupcakes, preheat the oven to 180c. Line a cupcake pan with paper liners. In a small mixing bowl, stir together the flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside. In the bowl of an electric mixer, cream together the butter and sugars on medium-high speed until light and fluffy. Add in the eggs one at a time, scraping down the bowl between additions.

In another bowl or liquid measuring cup, whisk together the milk and blackberry coulis. Add half of the dry ingredients to the bowl of the mixer and mix on low speed until just combined. Mix in the blackberry coulis/milk mixture. Mix in the remaining dry ingredients on low speed just until incorporated. Do not over-mix.

Divide the batter evenly between the prepared paper liners. Bake 12-15 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Allow to cool in the pan 10-15 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack and allow to cool completely.

To make the frosting, combine the cream cheese, powdered sugar and blackberry coulis in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Mix on medium speed until smooth and well blended. Frost cooled cupcakes as desired and garnish with fresh blackberries.