Gordon Ramsay's Cheesecake

Right, here's one thing that you need to know about me. I love 3 C's. Cheese, Cream and Chocolate and this recipe couldn't be more perfect for me to make. I know it says Gordon Ramsay's Cheesecake and it might somehow put off some of you out there who thinks he's a little bit of a douche (pardon my language) but it's the first cheesecake recipe that came across as easy, simple and exciting on the search engine. And for the record, I never knew that you don't actually have to bake your cheesecake, you can simply pop it in the fridge. That is so much easier. Call me ignorant but I never heard anything about this before. All the cheesecakes recipes that I have gone for before didn't work out perfectly well for me. So, it's quite thrilling to know that this one worked out so much better than the rest and couldn't help but feeling  proud of myself. 

And for those of you who don't really fancy a pungent sourly taste in a cheesecake, the amount of lemon juice used can be minimized depending on your own taste buds.

Ingredients
175 g caster sugar
450 g soft cream cheese ( I used Philadelphia)
3 tsp of vanilla extracts (you can put as much as you want really)
75 ml lemon juice (can be minimized if you prefer a mild sourly taste)
175 g crème fraiche  (this gives a hint of sourness to the cake)
475 ml double cream


Topping
Chocolate curls (put as many as you want, the more the merrier!)


Base
10 digestive biscuits (probably more to make the base crunchier)
25 g melted butter


Method
1. For the base, crush the biscuits using hand or a food processor and mix them with the melted butter. Press into the bottom of a 20cm spring-form tin. Chill.


2. For the filling, mix the sugar, cream cheese and vanilla extracts together. Whisk the lemon juice with the crème fraiche to soft peaks. fold everything together. Keep the mixture cool unitil you need it, but don't chill it. 


3. For the chocolate curls, peel one bar of cooking chocolate (milk/dark) using a potato or a vegetable peeler. 


4. Spoon or pipe a layer of cheesecake mix over the biscuit base, then from a height, drop the chocolate curls on top. Chill for at least 5 hours or longer and keep chilled until you need to cut it. 

Additional Info
896 calories per serving
serves 8
prep 30 mins plus chilling (at least 5 hrs)
rated as EASY


There's one other thing that I need to tell you. I've kinda made my own version of the topping where I only used chocolate curls (its coz i've run out of chocolate and double cream and also coz i'm dead lazy) instead of making chocolate swirls which is in the original recipe. So, for those of you out there who have all the necessary ingredients and bothered enough to follow the original recipe, here's what you need:


Swirl
150 g dark chocolate
150 ml double cream


Here's what you're supposed to do:


3. For the swirl, melt the cream and chocolate together in a bowl set over a pan of simmering water. Cool the mixture until it is cold enough not to melt the filling and thick enough to hold a trail.


4. Drizzle a thin stream of chocolate mix in a swirl on top, then repeat until you have three layers of each. Stick a thin knife blade or skewer into the cheesecake and swirls the mixture together. Don't be tempted to smooth the surface down or it will look muddy. Then, chill it for at least 5 hours in the fridge. 


And here's what you cheesecake gonna look like! Yum, yum!

Enjoy!

  

Homemade Jammie Dodgers Cookies

I decided to make these melt-in-the-mouth munchies as my youngest brother used to go nuts on the store-bought ones. This is my first ever attempt on biscuits/cookies making. I guess they were not as bad as I had anticipated as my two little brothers almost had a tug-of-war over the last cookie in the tin. BTW, don't worry if you have lots of irregular shapes and sizes for the cookies, they're simply signatures of your culinary style.

Ingredients

• 425 g plain flour
• 75 g caster sugar
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 tsp freshly grated lemon zest, from 1 large lemon ( i didn't put this as the boys don't like sourly taste) 
• 4 egg yolks
• 325 g butter, softened
• raspberry or strawberry jam
• icing sugar, for dusting

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180C/gas mark 4. 

2. Sift the flour into a large bowl, add the sugar, vanilla extract, lemon zest, egg yolks and butter. Mix with an electric food mixer or a wooden spoon until it comes together as a dough. Remove from the bowl and flatten with a rolling pin or the palm of your hand to about 2cm (3/4in) thick. Wrap in clingfilm and chill in the fridge for 30 minutes. 

3. Remove the dough from the fridge and place on a lightly floured work surface. Roll the dough out to about 5mm (1/4in) thick. 

4. Using a 6cm plain biscuit cutter, cut the dough into discs. 

5. Take half the discs, and using either a plain or flower-shaped 3cm (1 1/4in) cutter, cut holes from the centre. Bring the scraps together and roll out to make more discs, and cut holes in the centre of these. You should end up with about 35 whole discs and 35 discs with the centres cut out. 

6. Place the discs on baking trays (you will need a few baking trays) and bake for 8-10 minutes until pale golden. Allow to stand for a few minutes, then remove from the trays and transfer to wire racks to cool. 

7. When the discs are cool, spread 1/2-1 teaspoon of jam on the whole discs and top with the discs with the centres cut out. 

8. Dust with icing sugar and serve.

If you're not quite familiar with what I just talked about, this picture might ring a bell.