Muffin Monday - Blackcurrant Cheesecake Muffins

I think we're seeing in working mothers a change from "Thank God it's Friday" to "Thank God it's Monday." If any working mother has not experienced that feeling, her children are not adolescent.

- Ann Diehl 

Now that I no longer have to go into an office to do a regular 9 to 5, I really look forward to Mondays. For a start, I have the whole house to myself and after what is a normally hectic weekend full of activities, the peace and quiet is a much welcomed relief. Another reason I now look forward to the start of the week is of course, Muffin Monday, our weekly cooking group hosted by Anuradha of Baker Street.

This week's recipe is Berry Cheesecake Muffins, and it was up to us what kind of berries we wished to adopt in the recipe. I was all excited and enthusiastic until I went grocery shopping and no fresh berries were to be found anywhere! Which was really strange because only a few days ago, the store shelves were lined with punnets upon punnets of the most beautiful strawberries... That's one of the hazards of living out here in the low-lying tropics, we rely on the regularity of overseas shipments for fruits such as these and unfortunately, they are not as regular as I'd like... 

And so I surrendered to the fact that my muffins would not contain any fresh berries this time round. I located a jar of blackcurrant jam instead and used that as the filling for the cheesecake muffins. The jam was already very sweet so to compensate for that, I reduced the amount of the other sugars stated in the recipe. The added lemon zest provided a warm citrusy note that balanced off the sweetness and creaminess of the muffins quite well. 

The sight of some of the hot jam oozing out from underneath the batter as these came out of the oven simply added to the muffins' allure. If you love the idea of mini New York-style cheesecakes, then these muffins are  definitely for you!

Note: Muffin Monday is an initiative by Baker Street. A culinary journey of sharing a wickedly delicious muffin recipe every week. Drop in a quick line to join her on her journey to make the world smile and beat glum Monday mornings week after week.

Berry Cheesecake Muffins
Adapted from allrecipes.com
Ingredients:
1/2 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup confectioners' sugar (I reduced this to 1/4 cup)
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 egg
1 1/4 cups milk
1/2 cup brown sugar (I reduced this to 1/3 cup)
1/2 cup butter, melted
1 teaspoon grated lemon zest
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup strawberry jam (I used blackcurrant jam)

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 375F (190C). Grease 12 muffin cups or line with paper muffin liners.

2. Beat together cream cheese and confectioners' sugar until smooth and set aside.

3. In a large mixing bowl, combine all-purpose flour, baking powder and salt. In a separate bowl, beat together egg milk, brown sugar, butter, lemon zest and vanilla extract. Stir egg mixture into dry ingredients, stirring just until moistened.

4. Spoon half of batter into muffin cups. Top each portion with 1 tablespoon cream cheese mixture and 1 teaspoon jam. Spoon remaining muffin batter on top.

5. Bake in preheated oven for 20 minutes, or until golden. Cool in pan for 5 minutes, then remove muffins and cool on rack. Store in airtight container.

Secret Recipe Club - Snickers Coffee Cheesecake Brownies

Childhood smells of perfume and brownies.
~ David Leavitt

After a two-month break from the Secret Recipe Club, I'm back with a delicious bake attributed to Frugal Antics of the Harried Homemaker, the blog of which I was assigned. Kristen, the blog owner is a fantastic mother of 5 and an even more amazing cook, as evidenced by the wide-ranging recipes on her blog. She comes from a long line of women who ran restaurants, catered, taught other people how to cook, and Kristen is no different. What I find as equally fascinating as her recipes are her Saturday Stories series, depicting multigenerational tales of her family, her childhood as well as her own Rainbow Family, as she calls it. I really can't imagine there'd be many people who haven't already come across Kristen and her blog, but in case you've been living under a rock lately, I highly recommend that you leg it over there for some fabulous food gems!

Cashew Crusted Dragonfruit Hearts and Matcha Cheesecake

You gotta hand it to boredom, it makes you do something you normally won't. Just like doodling on a piece of paper led to oh, say, the creation of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (the concept arose from a humorous drawing sketched out by Kevin Eastman during a casual evening of brainstorming with his friend Peter Laird), doodling recipes in my mind led to this slightly outrageous creation - Cashew Crusted Dragonfruit Hearts and Matcha Cheesecake.

Cashew nuts and biscuit base

Well, this dessert was not totally unfounded. I had leftovers that needed to be used up, and I didn't want to use them for anything that I normally do. There was half a dragonfruit from my scones session, some matcha powder from my churros post, half a packet of Digestives and a large jar of roasted cashew nuts left over from that day I cooked biryani rice and made my creamy pear-cashew sorbet. Oh, also a packet of cream cheese that I wanted to bake with but hadn't up to this point.

The mental doodle started with the cashews, condensed milk and matcha, three of my most favourite flavors in the world. The cheese was the anchor ingredient and made me think, okay, a cheesecake would be good. Then the visual part of my brain reasoned that I needed to brighten this dish up a little and what goes well with green? Yep, you guessed it, the ever dazzling fushia pink that dragonfruit provides! The hearts were originally supposed to be swirls on the green filling, but somehow I stopped swirling when I saw the much cuter hearts. Especially since they were fuschia pink hearts. Yeah.

Little fuschia hearts, for your sweetheart. Ask them to marry you, quick!

(Or if they already have, ask them to go with you on a romantic cruise, or out dancing ;-))

This cheesecake was surprisingly easy to make, and even easier to photograph! (No melting ice cream or precariously leaning food stacks, thank goodness). If you don't believe me, here's the recipe:

Cashew Crusted Dragonfruit Hearts and Matcha Cheesecake
Ingredients:
Pastry base:
2 cups Graham crackers or Digestives, crumbed
2 cups cashew nuts, roasted and finely chopped
¾ cup butter, melted and cooled

Cheesecake filling:
1 packet (250g) Philadelphia cream cheese
1 ½ cups sweetened condensed milk
2 eggs
½ small dragonfruit
1 tablespoon matcha powder

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C/325F. Grease an 11-inch pie pan and set aside.

2. Prepare the pie base: Place cashew nuts in a food processor until finely chopped and pour into a bowl. Crumb the biscuits the same way, then add this to the bowl of cashew nuts. Add the cooled, melted butter and mix well. Press crumb mixture onto the bottom and sides of the pie pan. Chill for 15 minutes in the fridge.

3. For the filling: In another mixing bowl, whisk the cheese until smooth, then add the condensed milk. Mix until combined before adding the eggs one at a time.

4. In the meantime, peel, slice and puree the dragonfruit in a blender. Divide the cheese batter into two portions. In one bowl add the dragonfruit puree, and into the other add the matcha powder.

5. Reserve about 3 tablespoons of the dragonfruit cheese batter for the hearts decoration. Pour the rest of this red batter onto the base of the pie dough and bake for 20-25 minutes until the top is slightly firm to the touch.

6. Take the pie tin out of the oven and carefully pour the matcha cheese batter on top of the dragonfruit layer.

7. Drop little dots of the extra dragonfruit mix on the matcha layer and run a knife through each of them to form little hearts and swirls.

8. Place it back in the oven and bake further for 25 minutes until a rod inserted into the centre of the pie comes out clean.

9. Let it cool for at least 20 minutes before serving.
PS. The bottom dragonfruit layer turned an orangey-pink color upon cooking, probably because it was in the heat for too long. The dragonfruit hearts on the top, meanwhile, retained their fuschia color. So strange, this cooking business!

Fruit from my Homeland 4 : Chempedak Cheesecake

This local, sausage-like fruit called Chempedak (Artocarpus champeden) is native to southeast Asia and terribly, terribly aromatic. How aromatic? Well, when it's fully ripe, the aroma fills up not just my kitchen but the whole house! At which point someone in my house would say something to the effect of, "When are we going to eat that darn fruit?", or "Aren't you going to make something out of that smelly thing??". It's THAT aromatic, ok!

Juicy chempedak fruit

The taste of the fruit is similar to the related Jackfruit and Breadfruit, both of which I've blogged about previously. The sweet, juicy pulp of chempedak is most frequently made into fritters by dipping the pitted flesh in batter and frying (yumms!). The best thing about this fruit is that the seeds are also edible once they are roasted or boiled, and they have that incredibly comforting taste and texture of chestnuts.

Chempedak seeds.

Soak them overnight in water before boiling or roasting, this helps peel the inedible skin off.

Anyway, today I looked in the pantry and saw these: chempedak, a packet of Philadelphia cream cheese and some Digestives. Now, the world can't get more globalised than that, can it? So, here's my creation for you to try out - Chempedak Cheesecake.

Chempedak blended with sourcream

Roasted chempedak seeds, de-skinned and sliced.

Pour the caramel-seed mix on top of the cheesecake, and you're ready to rock and roll, baybeh!

Chempedak Cheesecake with Caramel Topping

Chempedak Cheesecake with Caramel Topping

Ingredients:
250g (8oz) cream cheese
2 eggs, separated
1 tablespoon cornflour
1 cup chempedak flesh1 cup sourcream
1/3 cup milk
150g Digestives biscuits, crumbled
70g (1/2 stick) butter

Caramel topping:
7-8 roasted chempedak seeds
½ cup sugar
2 tablespoons water
2 tablespoons sourcream

Method:
1. Preheat oven to 160°C/320°F. Line 12 standard muffin cups with muffin papers.
2. Prepare the biscuit base first: Either crumble the biscuits with your hands or use a food processor. Melt the butter, cool slightly and combine with the crumbs. Press down a tablespoon full of this biscuit mix at the bottom of the muffin cup. Set aside.
3. Beat cream cheese with sugar until fluffy, then add egg yolks one by one.
4. In the meantime, cream the chempedak with the sourcream and milk. Fold into the cheese mixture along with the cornflour.
5. In another bowl, beat egg-whites until stiff peaks form. Fold this into the cheese and cempedak mix above. Spoon into the muffin cups, fill it up to 3/4 full.
6. Bake for 20-25 minutes until a tester inserted into center comes out clean.
7. Leave to cool completely before peeling off the muffin paper.

Caramel topping:

1. Roast the soaked chempedak seeds under in a very hot oven for about 15 minutes until the skin starts to split. Be careful, as these seeds pop explosively! You don’t want to take out an eye just for bragging rights.*grins*

2. Once cooked, leave to cool and then peel outer skin off. I left the inner brown skin intact because it’s edible and it’s too tedious to peel even using a potato peeler (because of the small size). Remember, this is a really labour of love to use the seeds, so if you’d rather go off and do other fun stuff, just simply ditch this part. Hey cooking should be fun, not exasperating!

3. Make the caramel by dissolving the sugar with 2 tblspns water, then leaving it to boil slowly under medium heat - do not stir. Once the caramel has turned amber in color, remove from heat and mix in the sourcream. Just beware the spluttering, for it will surely sp-luhht-ter...

4. Add the sliced chempedak seeds to the caramel sauce, and spoon on top of a cooled miniature cheesecake.

Take a bite and be transported to a quiet spot in my tropical garden!