Heavy Cream

Welcome to THEJNSREPORT’S: STRAWBERRY TOPPED RICOTTA CHEESECAKE

Strawberry Topped Riccotta Cheesecake

I hadn’t baked in a bit when a coworker reminded me that he’d asked me to make a cheesecake for a get together he was having with some friends. Unfortunately I was unable to come thru due to schedule constraints. I vowed to make it up to him at a later date. When that later date came I made sure to make the time to get back to practice.

After purchasing the requisite ingredients I began the process.

I began with a large mixing bowl,

5 packages of cream cheese, 2 cups of heavy cream,

1 cup of whole milk,

1 pint of fresh Ricotta cheese,

4 whole eggs, 2 tablespoons of Almond Extract,

1 whole squeezed lemon

about a 1/2 cup of sugar or more as I regularly sample the taste of the batter always with a clean spoon and palate so that I have the perfect balance between the salty and the sweet. You can add more or less sugar according to your taste. Pre-heat the oven to 250 degrees.

For the crust I cheated and used store-bought graham cracker crust as it just takes a lot less work in prepping the base when the graham crackers are already crushed.

All that’s required is to transplant the crust into the cake pan press in uniformly all the way round and voila. Not to mention it tastes amazing! I save just a bit of the graham cracker crust for decoration later.

Begin by mixing the wet ingredients with the softened packages of cream cheese before adding the eggs one at a time. Be careful not to get any egg-shell in your mix.

Add the Riccotta cheese into the mix before the eggs and then add the sugar and lemon juice from a fresh lemon careful to avoid seeds if any from falling into the mix. Mix everything on low-speed with an electric mixer if you have one. Don’t mix until completely smooth as I hear it leads to the cake cracking if over beaten.

Pour the cake batter into your 12 x 3 cake pan over the graham cracker crust. Place the cake pan on a rack raised one rung from the bottom of the oven in the center.

Place a cast iron skillet with water underneath the rack that the cake will bake on. This is to help prevent the cake from cracking. Close the door and let the cake bake away for 2 and a half hours.

When time is over turn off the oven and let the cake sit for at least an hour before transplanting to either the freezer or the fridge it’s your preference. I personally like to freeze my cakes as it makes decorating easier later on but the fridge will work fine if you don’t have space in the freezer.

For the topping, I washed fresh ripe strawberries and sliced them before layering on some cream cheese frosting on the top of the cake. Yes this cake is a decadent one as all cheesecakes should be.

Spread the frosting on the cooled cake evenly before adding the Strawberries and sifting the left over graham cracker crumbs on top. The syrup drizzled over the strawberries was an accident by an “assistant” who didn’t let the strawberries sit and reduce in the sauce long enough to give it that rich strawberry glaze color but it still came out quite nice.

For the syrup we used butter, sugar and a little water in a skillet over medium heat sliced some strawberries and tossed them into the butter and sugar as it cooked.

Welcome to THEJNSREPORT’S: Dinner at Home – Whole Wheat Fusili and Seafood & Vegetable Cream Sauce

Today I was thinking that I have a lot of pasta I haven’t used yet and could try my hand at making my own cream sauce to boot. After checking the fridge for what I would need I decided to make a quick stop at the supermarket and pick up some needed items for my Cream Sauce. Once back from the supermarket I set up the ingredients

Ingredients for my Vegetable Seafood Cream Sauce:

1 pint of Heavy cream

1 half cup Coconut water with pulp

3 tbsp Oregano, 2 tbsp Cayenne Pepper, 1 tsp Black Pepper, 1 tsp Habanero Pepper, Sea Salt

2 finely chopped Garlic Cloves

1/2 Red Onion finely chopped (or whatever onion you have)

1 can Green Peas n Carrots, 1 can Green Peas

3 tbsp All purpose flour

1 1/2 cups shelled deveined uncooked Shrimp

1/2 cup Calamari

3 hard boiled eggs

I poured the heavy cream and coconut water w pulp into a sauce pan or pot with medium low heat. Next in went the spices and canned peas and carrots before I stirred in the chopped garlic and red onion. In a small bowl I mixed the 3 tbsp of flour and just enough water to dissolve the flour and have no lumps. The dissolved flour was then added to the sauce and let simmer.

In a separate skillet I added some canola oil and heated the pan to medium heat. Once the oil was fast in the pan, I added the Shrimp and Calamari pieces one at a time to the pan and allowed them to cook on both sides before removing and placing on a plate with paper towel to drain excess oil. I did two styles where I used Panko breadcrumbs and an egg yolk bath to coat some of the Calamari and Shrimp and some I fried without any breadcrumbs just in oil. Both ways I cooked the shrimp ended up in the cream sauce and were equally delicious.

Next I took the yolks from the 3 Hard Boiled Eggs and sliced them in halves before adding them to the sauce.

After a gentle stir of the Shrimp and Calamari and Egg Yolks into the sauce, I added Sea Salt to taste as I could tell the coconut water had made the sauce a tad sweeter than I intended. Once the taste was just right I let it simmer until sufficiently thickened. The heat was turned down to low. Next turned my attention to putting a pot of water on to boil before adding the Fusili pasta to it.

I let the Fusili boil for about 8 minutes till al dente then drained them and set them aside while I tended to the cream sauce which was almost done. Next I grabbed a mixing bowl and whipped together a quick Garden Salad with Mushrooms, Grape Tomatoes, Spinach and Shredded Carrots. Below is the completion of my efforts.

Dinner is finally served…

Just when I thought I’d take my first bite I realized I wanted to add some Parmesan Cheese and so…

Now for the first bite of Shrimp

I have to say for my first time throwing together a Cream Sauce this turned out to be quite good. The Cayenne Pepper and Habanero Pepper heightened the flavor and gave the sauce a little kick. Next time I’ll have to experiment making this using Shrimp stock in the sauce. Till next time this has been Dinner at Home another report by THEJNSREPORT.