This cake is not cheap! :p
The amount of cheese it uses, the Oreo biscuits, and the good quality dark chocolate… But worthy! I’m sure it is still cheaper to bake your own than to buy this outside. Furthermore, I don’t recall having seen this sold anywhere. Try this Oreo Cheesecake recipe:

OREO CHEESECAKE RECIPE
INGREDIENTS
Cake Base
200g Oreo Biscuits, finely crushed
50g butter, melted

Cake Filling
750g cream cheese
100g caster sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla essence
3 eggs
200g UHT whipping cream
15 pieces Oreo biscuits (cut into 4 quarters each)

METHOD
1. Mix Oreo biscuit crump and melted butter well. Press onto a 8″ loose-based cake tin. Bake at 160C for 10 min and set aside to cool.
2. Cream the cheese and sugar until smooth and creamy.
3. Add in vanilla essence and the eggs, mix well.
4. Add UHT whipping cream, mix well.
5. Fold in the quartered Oreo biscuits.
6. Pour mixture onto the Oreo biscuit base. Bake at 160C for 1.5 hours or until center is set. Turn off the oven, leave the cake inside for a further 1 hour.
7. Remove from oven, run a sharp knife around the rim of the cake tin to separate the cake (to avoid the cake to crack during cooling process).
8. After cooled, chilled in fridge over night.
9. Decorate with some chocolate topping and chill until it is set. Served chilled.

Chocolate Topping
For chocolate topping, warm up 120g UHT whipping cream, add in 200g dark chocolate and 1 tbsp butter. Mix well. Wait till it cools slightly before spreading on top of the cake.

I have been eying for this cake for more than a year, yet didn’t have the courage to bake it — mainly because of a previous failure on cheese tart. Just as I was planning on things to bake, Ian requested for me to bake this, so here you have my first trial and successful cheese cupcake.

This recipe is actually quite good in terms of the amount of sugar used. I like to reduce the sugar content in most recipes. Naturally I reduced the original 30g sugar down to 20g. All who have sampled this cake agree that I should have kept to the original amount – what I had was a little less sweet enough. So, please keep to 30g, and if you have a strong sweet tooth, you should increase.

This recipe uses 4″ diameter paper cups, and although it says it yields 9 cups, I only got 6 in total. I guess we could use smaller paper cups, so that we can share it with more people.

BLUEBERRY CHEESE CUPCAKES RECIPE
INGREDIENTS
Cake Base
3 pieces digestive biscuits, crushed into crumbs (similar size to the nibbed almonds)
50g nibbed almonds, toasted

Cake Filling
250g cream cheese
3 eggs, separate yolk and white
100ml milk
20g flour
30g caster sugar
3 tbsp blueberry jam, and additional for decoration

METHOD
1. Preheat oven to 180C
2. Put biscuit crumbs and nibbed almonds onto the six 4″ paper cups

3. Cream cheese with yolks until smooth. Add in milk and flour, mix well.
4. On a clean bowl, whisk egg white with sugar until peak.
5. Fold egg white into cream cheese mixture in batches. Mix well.
6. Spoon the mixture onto the cups, reserve approx 5 spoons.
7. Add the blueberry jam into the reserved mixture. Mix well, now you have purple color batter.
8. Spoon the purple batter into the cups, stir with chopstick to form marble patterns.
9. Steam bake (by placing a bowl of water into the oven together) at 180C for 25 minutes or until cooked. Turn off oven, leave cake to cool in it for 1 hour.
10. Served warm and fresh.

Recently Ian asked me to bake something nutritious, and I just flipped my recipe book to this page –> Pumpkin Cheesecake, so decided to give it a try. Never tried or seen a pumpkin cheesecake before!

The ingredient is very special, it only uses very little 20g of brown sugar for the base, and none for the cake itself. It is sweetened by the honey and the pumpkin. At least my mom can eat this cake, after so long!

BAKED PUMPKIN CHEESECAKE RECIPE
INGREDIENTS
Crust Base
200g digestive biscuits
20g brown sugar
100g butter
Filling
500g cream cheese
100g honey
25g cornflour
1 tsp nutmeg powder
3 eggs
230ml UHT whipping cream
500g pumpkin flesh
Topping
Some nutmeg powder

METHOD
1. Crush the biscuit until fine
2. Melt butter on low heat, remove when melted. Mix butter with brown sugar and crushed biscuits.
3. Press the biscuit mixture onto a 9″ loose-base cake tin. Refrigerate until set.
4. While waiting for the base to get ready, steam the pumpkin until soft and mash it with fork.
5. Preheat oven at 150C degree.
6. Cream cheese with honey, add cornflour and nutmeg powder. Mix well.
7. Add in whipping cream and eggs, and lastly add in pumpkin flesh.
8. Mix well and pour onto the biscuit base.
9. Steam bake at 150C for 1.5 hour and until firm to the touch. Turn off the oven, but leave the cake in oven for another 30 min with door closed.
10. Remove from oven, when it is cool enough, keep in oven for at least 6 hours.
11. Remove cake from tin, dust with nutmeg powder and served chilled.

In baking most (or nearly all) of the cheesecakes, it is often required to ‘steam bake’ the cake, so that the cake won’t be too dry. So, what does steam bake mean, and how to do that? This is also another question that I have received often, and I have asked many times in the beginning too!

Steam cake basically means that you bake the cake in an oven, together with water –> by placing the cake tin into a tray of water before inserting into the oven.

The tricky part is, most of our cake tin used for cheesecake is loose base. This means, if we put it into a tray of water, water can sip in, and damage the cake!

Most book would ask you to wrap the cake tin base with tin foil. I tried that, but it often leaks. Then, decided this is the best method:

The easiest solution is: Just put the loose base cake tin into a slightly larger solid base cake tin, before placing them onto a tray of water!

Example above: 8″ loose base tin was placed into a 9″ non-loose base cake tin. Then the whole cake tin was placed into a 10″x10″ (or 11″x11″) tray with water, before inserting to oven.

Happy trying!

I intend to publish a new recipe on a very healthy Pumpkin Cheesecake, and I would like to share 2 tips first before going to that, so you can bake that easily…

This is a cake that needs a biscuit crust base, and I would like to share with you this very simple way of crushing your biscuits, which is also less messy.

Very easy, just put the biscuits (or any other ingredients you need to mash or crush) into a food grade plastic bag, tie a knot at the end (after you squeeze out all the air), then roll a rolling pin onto the food until well crushed/mashed.

I haver received some comments and email asking me how does a UHT cream looks like, and what brands do I use, or where to get it. This post is to answer this question.

I don’t know what other brands available, but have always use this brand Anchor. It can be found in all cake ingredient shops and all supermarkets/ hypermarkets. It is tasteless, looks like normal UHT milk but a lot thicker.

It is durian season again, and from BIL’s family orchard, came not only durians and mangosteen, there were a lot of bananas as well! Isabel loves fruits, but the bananas are not only abundant, they are all fully ripened! What it means is that, we cannot keep them for long.

So, Isabel ate 4 pieces in 2 days, I ate 2. We tried very hard to clear the ‘stock’, still have a lot left. I then turned this into a delicious banana cake:

This cake is easy to bake, yields around 3 loaves like sold at stores, and it is very fine, moist and delicious. We finished the cake in just 2 days (well, I gave some to MIL family since they contributed the bananas!).

BANANA CAKE RECIPE
INGREDIENTS
4 bananas (roughly 200g)
200g butter
3/4 cup sugar
3 eggs
3 cups flour
1 tsp baking bicarbonate
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup milk/soymilk
2 tbsp lemon juice

METHOD
1. Preheat oven at 180 Celsius
2. Mash bananas
3. Cream butter and sugar until creamy and fluffy
4. Add in eggs and mashed banana, mix well
5. Sift flour, baking soda and baking powder together.
6. Fold into the batter, half or 1/3 at a time, alternate with the milk and lemon juice
7. Pour into an 8″x8″ square tin.
8. Bake at 180C degree for 50 to 60 min, or until skewer comes out clean

I have been searching for a good spinach dip recipe that is easy and simple, and with the ingredients easily found in my usual fridge stock. I finally found this recipe, which I improvised a little. Kids love this, and they can finish 1 cup in just one sitting. 1 small bunch of spinach (from Jusco, RM1.20 per bunch) can make 2 cups. So, effectively 1 kid ate 1/4 bunch of the spinach, considered a success for those who hate veggie.

INGREDIENTS
1 bunch of spinach
1 tbsp butter or margarine
1 tbsp flour
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 teaspoon onion salt
1/4 tsp lemon juice
1/8 tsp pepper

METHOD
1. Wash spinach, drain and finely chop the spinach
2. Steam the spinach until cooked (will shrink too)
3. Melt butter/margarine in a pan, add flour and stir for a minute.
4. Add in the cooked spinach and other ingredients.
5. Stir to mix well, chilled and serve with taco or tortilla chips (or even celery for a healthier change!)

I recently found out many do not know how to cut their cheesecake nicely, so would like to share my tips here…

Very easy, just warm your knife before you slice the cheesecake, and the cut will be smooth and the cake will not stick on the knife. No messy look on your nicely baked cake!

What you need are: knife, hot water, kitchen towel, and a cheesecake (of course!)

Either dip the knife into the hot water or pour water over knife on a sink. Wipe dry with towel quickly, make a slice on the cake before it gets cool again. Repeat the process until you get all the cuts made.