Fudge Truffle Cheesecake

 

 After our last light, refreshing dessert, we were ready to dive into something rich and delicious. Hence, the Fudge Truffle Cheesecake!

Notice the difference between these two ingredients photos? This was Problem #1: never send Rachel to the grocery store alone. Rachel doesn't know the difference between Vanilla Sugar Wafers and ACTUAL Vanilla Wafers called for in the crust.

The crust ingredients waiting to be blended.

Problem #2: Don't put Ellie or Rachel in charge of finding the correct pie pan. We were getting ready to press the crust into a regular pie pan when Ellie's mom yelled, "Wait!! Don't you have to use a spring form pan?" Thus began the search for the long lost spring form pan that was finally found deep within a cupboard.

Measuring out generic semi-sweet chocolate chips.

And now onto problem #3: Generic brand semi-sweet chocolate chips melted in the microwave look like that. They are supposed to be smooth and melted, but instead they were a squishy, brown blob.

As with the sorbet, when in doubt, go to Google! Which wasn't much help either....

After deliberating, we finally decided to start over with Toll House semi-sweet chocolate chips which melted perfectly!

But don't worry! There is always a use for everything--even melted chocolate-blobs. We were able to spread them over our cookie-dough-brownies from the night before.

The filling was poured into the crust and sent to the oven. Check out Ellie's beautiful, handy-dandy Dutch oven mitts that are indeed practical, Rachel!!

And finally, after chilling for a day, our masterpiece was ready to be cut and tasted.

The Reviews:

 "It's really good!! But you can only eat so much..." -Ellie's Mom

 "It's cheesy." -Ellie Dad

 "It's very rich." -Davis (Ellie's brother)

"Delectable." -Gabe (Ellie's brother)

"MMMMMMMMMM!!" -Leona 

"Wow. Did you really make this? The texture is fantastic." -Rachel's Mom

Rachel's Recipe Review: I found the Fudge Truffle Cheesecake Ellie and I made to be delightful. My favorite part was probably the texture...it was thick and rich and yummy. I'm a huge cheesecake fan to begin with, but I'd never made a cheesecake from scratch before, so it was a true experience. The extra work definitely payed off in more YUM.

Ellie's Recipe Ramblings: Well, it was a VERY interesting process trying to make this cheesecake, but it ended up turning out very delicious! I will admit, after having Junior's Cheesecake after Broadway in New York, my cheesecake-standard was very high. Yet, I still found our cheesecake very tasty, and I actually found the crust to be pretty similar to Junior's (or at least my memory of Junior's). This was my very first cheesecake-making experience, so Rachel and I were pretty proud of it. It was so rich--at first we were stuffing it down because it was so delicious, but then about half way through the piece we stopped and could eat no more! We do have one warning, however: we ate the cheesecake at about 10 PM (after Miss Mountain Lake), and it wasn't too friendly on Rachel: she was up till 3 in the morning!


"Don't wreck a sublime chocolate experience by feeling guilty." ~Lora Brody

Our First Attempt: Watermelon Sorbet

 

Since it's summer, we wanted to start with something cool and refreshing. Also, we wanted to begin with something relatively simple--after all, we didn't want our biggest challenge to be our first recipe.

 Our first step was to puree the watermelon. 

As you can see from Rachel's face, she's never pureed watermelon before. ;)

While, obviously, Ellie is a blender-pro!

 The recipe called for a boiled "simple syrup," however the syrup did not turn out to be so simple. The ingredients were simple (all two of them); however, when the syrup didn't thicken, we began to worry.

 When you're unsure about something, just ignore it for a while: that's Ellie's motto! So we moved on to juicing the lemons. Once again, Rachel was a bit of a novice lemon juicer, while Ellie was OBVIOUSLY a lemon juicer pro.

 We decided to add our watery syrup to the other ingredients and hope for the best.

 The sorbets were then placed in the freezer with clear warnings to Ellie's brothers:

"CAUTION! Do not tip! Liquid inside!"

"CAUTION!! (Same reason)"

 You know the saying, "A good cook never does the dishes"? Yeah..well..either we are bad cooks or that is completely UNTRUE! Dishes must be done! After all, who can keep cooking with a bunch of dirty dishes cluttering the kitchen?

Finally...after freezing for roughly 36 hours, the sorbet was ready to be tasted!

The end product!

The Reviews:

"Light, cool, and refreshing." -Mrs. Harder (Ellie's Mom)

"Good consistency." -Gabe (Ellie's Brother)

Davis-- enough said. 

Rachel's Recipe Review: The Watermelon Sorbet was a good first recipe to try. After tasting it, I thought it needed something more, so we ended up adding a few different things to the different batches (mint leaves to one...gingerale to another). In the end, I found I liked the original recipe the best (the one with extra mint reminded me of slushy mouthwash....yuck). All in all, the Watermelon Sorbet was a nice summer treat, but next time, I'd probably try a different recipe. (Ellie, I know our review will completely contradict one another, but hey...I'm just speakin' the truth.)

Ellie's Recipe Ramblings: I agree that this was a very good first recipe to try; it was relatively simple (well..except that syrup got a little interesting...) and not too hard to screw up--you just have to mix a few things together, freeze it, then whip it up in the food processor--can't be too difficult, right? However, sometimes more work can pay off in more yum, and this recipe kind of taught us that. I do think it a had a pretty good flavor--it was really unique, light, and refreshing. Rachel kept insisting it needed "something more" though, and that led us down an interesting road...First we whipped in a couple mint leaves. I actually thought it was pretty good, however it was called "nasty" and "like a stick of Wrigley's gum" by the panel of judges (a.k.a. my family), and after a while, I kind of started to agree. Then we tried ginger ale, but that was just weird...enough said. So, all in all, it was a pretty good recipe--not great, but not awful either. I would maybe make it again...sometime..in the pretty distant future...


So try-one was okay...now on to Fudge Truffle Cheesecake tomorrow!

"Vegetables are a must on a diet.  I suggest carrot cake, zucchini bread and pumpkin pie."  ~Jim Davis

A Little More Background

So I'm sitting here at my desk, waiting for Rachel to get here so we can start on our first dazzling dessert: Watermelon Sorbet! I thought I'd give a little more background to where our challenge came from while I wait...

I guess it all really began a little over a week ago at my graduation open house. My mom had made her delicious Oatmeal-Chocolate Coffee Cake which Rachel absolutely loves. My mom mentioned to Rachel that we could have some baking parties this summer to make (and eat!) the cake again. Rachel and I took that idea to heart, and while cleaning out my room (a rare occasion indeed!) I found a dessert cookbook I had received for Christmas the previous year: the Best of the Best Recipe Hall of Fame DESSERT Cookbook. I figured we could find some great recipes in there for our baking parties, so I began flipping through. I read the back cover of the book which mentioned that there were 318 dessert recipes in the book, and I immediately thought of having a challenge like that in the movie Julie & Julia (318 is pretty close to 365--a book in a year!). I told Rachel of my "brilliant" idea, but she immediately brought me back down to earth, "Yeah..but we're going to COLLEGE in 2 months..."...so then the SUMMER Dessert Challenge was born--7 weeks, 14 recipes, and a summer of delicious fun!

Well..Rachel is finally here now, so: Let the challenge begin!


"I want to have a good body, but not as much as I want dessert."  ~Jason Love

Preparing for the Challenge!

Let the challenge begin!
Rachel and I are so excited to start baking (and eating!)!
We'll have more info very soon, but here's a quick preview into our dessert list.

Our First Three Desserts:

• Cheesecake: German Chocolate Cheesecake
• Frozen Dessert: Watermelon Sorbet
• Pudding: Amaretto Bread Pudding

We're very excited for the challenge to begin! 
The countdown begins: 3 days to go! :)

"Life is uncertain.  Eat dessert first." ~Ernestine Ulmer