Photo of the Week--12/27/10

This building in Lucerne, Switzerland, was just cool: the Wasserturm ("water tower") in the middle of the Kapellbrücke (Chapel Bridge). The Kapellbrücke was built in the 14th century to help defend Lucerne from attacks, and is the oldest wooden covered bridge in Europe. The water tower is 140 feet tall and made of brick, so it has served not only as a water tower but as watch tower, treasury, and torture chamber (oooo!). A lot of European buildings have such interesting backgrounds just by virtue of existing for centuries, but we thought this one was extra intriguing. A tower! In the middle of a bridge! In the middle of a river! No wonder it's one of Switzerland's most popular tourist attractions.

Don't Fear the Springform

Another holiday, another party, another round of "Diane, this cheesecake is awesome!" Although I've always had a love for baked goods (for more evidence, see Cookie of the Month), it took me a while to attempt a cheesecake. Part of it might be that I was never that wild about cheesecake, having only been exposed to it in restaurants, where it was usually plain, dry, and accompanied by fruits I didn't really like. I have to admit, though, that a big reason I didn't attempt a cheesecake was the pan. That's right, I was intimidated by the springform.

I mean, look at it. It's got some kind of mechanism on the side. If it looks  complicated, I reasoned, it must be tricky to use. I bet the recipes must be tricky, too. Why should I bother to play around with tricky pans and tricky recipes when there are so many cookies and cakes I could make instead?

Well, I finally broke down and got one at the first Pampered Chef party I ever attended. You go to those things and eat the food or sample the wares and feel like you should buy something. I was living in England at the time and had a tiny oven, and the springform was cheaper than stoneware anyway, so I bought one. And lo! It wasn't that hard to use. And guess what? Fresh cheesecake, made with interesting flavors, is pretty damn tasty. I became a cheesecake baking fiend. So I am going to share some of my cheesecake baking tips with you, along with a recipe that never fails to get compliments.

1. Digestive biscuits make a better crust/base than graham crackers. I learned this out of necessity, as  digestive biscuits are native to England while graham crackers are not. They are made from wheat flour and wholemeal, and have a denser, grittier texture than graham crackers. This makes them great for a cheesecake base, as they don't collapse under moisture like graham crackers do. I usually find them in the international section at the grocery store, or at specialty stores like Cost Plus World Market.
2. You can reduce the fat/calorie content by judicious substitution: neufchatel or light cream cheese instead of the full-fat stuff, vanilla yogurt instead of sour cream. I've used all these with success, although you might need to adjust baking times (see number 4 below).
3. I can't stress enough how much a real mixer can make the cheesecake. It's just too hard to get cream cheese blended by hand; a powerful stand mixer will take care of all those lumps. Making sure you let your cream cheese soften before mixing is helpful, too.
4. Don't trust your recipe when it comes to baking times. I often have to leave my cheesecakes in for longer than recipes say to make sure that the center gets set. This time can be 10 or even 20 minutes longer than a recipe's baking time, but cheesecakes are so dense that it's hard to overbake them. Fail to bake them enough, though, and the center will be too gooey. (Not that anyone will complain, it still tastes great, but it's hard to serve a gooey cheesecake.)
5. Experiment with flavors! I've had success with chocolate, Bailey's (or both!), peppermint/candy cane, pumpkin, cranberry, triple berry, M&Ms ... lots of things lend themselves to cheesecake, because the cream cheese base is so bland it mixes with any kind of flavor. I simply Google "cheesecake recipe" to find something new and interesting to try.

And now, one such Googled recipe that gets great results with a relatively simple instructions.

Cranberry Cheesecake with Walnut Crust

1½ cups graham cracker/digestive biscuit crumbs

½ cup finely chopped walnuts
¼ cup butter, melted
1 can (16 oz.) whole cranberry sauce
3 packages (8 oz. ea) cream cheese, softened
¾ cup granulated sugar
¼ cup flour
3 eggs
8 oz. dairy sour cream
2 t. vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 325F. Combine crumbs, walnuts, and butter. Firmly press crumb mixture into the bottom of a 9-in springform pan. Bake until golden, 5 or 6 minutes; remove from oven. Cool slightly. Spread with cranberry sauce and set aside.

Reduce oven temperature to 300F. Use mixer to beat cream cheese, sugar, and flour until smooth. Beat in eggs, sour cream, and vanilla until well-blended. Pour evenly over cranberry sauce. Bake until a knife insert1 to 1½ inches from edge comes out clean, about 1 hour [or longer, if necessary--D]. Turn off oven; leave the cheesecake in over with door ajar until top is firm to the touch, about 30 minutes. Cool on a wire rack about 1 hour. Cover and refrigerate until cold, about 4 hours. Just before serving, remove cheesecake from pan onto a serving plate.

Serve and receive compliment!

Photo of the Week--12/20/10

I chose this photo not so much because the building is that interesting in itself, although it is a pretty example of a British manor house. No, St. Michael's Mount is more interesting because of how it's situated. Take a look at the picture to the right: St. Michael's Mount is just off the Cornwall coast in a nice little bay. When the tide is in, as in this picture, it's an island. When the tide is out, you can walk from the mainland to the mount. That makes this building, and the little village at the base of the mount, much more interesting. Imagine how much work it must have been to get all the building materials up to the site! Although the St. Aubyn family has owned the mount since the mid-1600s, the National Trust manages visitors, so you can visit most of the island, either by boat or on foot. If you've ever seen the 1996 film version of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night with Helena Bonham Carter and Imogen Stubbs (and if you haven't, you should), you might recognize the island as the setting for Orsino's castle. We visited in 1999, and the mural/map along one building in the film was still visible. Cool.

Cookie of the Month: White-Chocolate Cherry Shortbread

I know, it's more like "Cookie of the Season," since I haven't had an entry in this series since August. Number one, I've just been that busy, and number two, I haven't had an occasion to make cookies. Okay, maybe I don't need an occasion to make cookies, but I definitely need somewhere to distribute them besides my house (and by extension, my hips). It's the holiday season, so I needed to bring something to my band's holiday concert. I had two requirements: I wanted something that looked pretty, and I wanted white chocolate. A little Googling and I found this recipe at the Better Homes & Gardens site:

½ cup maraschino cherries, drained and finely chopped*
2½ cups all-purpose flour
½ cup sugar
1 cup cold butter
12 oz. white chocolate baking squares with cocoa butter, finely chopped
(or be lazy like me and get chips)
½ teaspoon almond extract
2 drops red food coloring (optional)
2 teaspoons shortening
white nonpareils and/or red edible glitter (optional)

1. Preheat over to 325F. Spread cherries on paper towels to drain well. *I actually avoided this by using candied cherries instead. No draining, and they mixed in pretty well.

2. In a large bowl, combine flour and sugar. Using a pastry blender, cut in the butter until mixture resembles fine crumbs. Stir in drained cherries and 4 ounces (⅔ cup) of the white chocolate. Stir in almond extract and, if desired, food coloring. Knead mixture until it forms a smooth ball. It's surprising, how you start with a completely crumbly mix of stuff you think can't possibly hang together, but after a little kneading it turns out into a reasonably sticky dough, like you see in the picture here. I did use food coloring, although I think it formed a little ball and didn't spread very well throughout the dough, so I wouldn't use it again. You get enough red color from the cherries anyway.

3. Shape dough into ¾-inch balls. Place balls two inches apart on an ungreased cookie sheet. Using the bottom of a drinking glass dipped in sugar, flatten balls to 1-1½-inch rounds. Here's a silly question: what other kind of glass might you use besides a "drinking glass"? Is there any other kind of glass, and if so, would it really be suited for squishing dough? I don't think so. Anyway, this is what the cookies looked like pre-baking.

4. Bake in preheated oven for 10 to 12 minutes or until centers are set. Cool for 1 minute on cookie sheet. Transfer cookies to a wire rack and let cool. My baking time was about 12 minutes, although the cookies didn't get that golden tint you expect from shortbread. Perhaps they needed another minute or two, or perhaps they just won't get golden with all the stuff in the dough.

5. In a small saucepan, combine remaining 8 oz. white chocolate and the shortening. Cook and stir over low heat until melted. Normally when I melt chocolate for dipping, I do it in the microwave, 20 seconds at a time at half power. This time it didn't work, and I had to go to the saucepan method and add extra shortening. The shortening makes the chocolate smoother and more suitable for dipping.


6. Dip half of each cookie into chocolate, allowing excess to drip off. If desired, roll dipped edge in nonpareils and/or edible glitter. Place cookies on waxed paper until chocolate is set. Mmmmm, I broke out my various mixes of holiday decorations. You can see I had some with nonpareils and sugar, and some with holiday "evergreens and berries." Both types tasted equally yummy. The cherry flavor was subtle, the white chocolate sublime, and the toppings added an interesting texture. You could taste the shortbread base underneath the cherry and white chocolate, but the texture wasn't very like shortbread at all. These were very smooth, chewy cookies, pure shortbread tends to be crumbly; again, I couldn't tell whether this was due to the extra stuff in the shortbread, or whether they needed a couple more minutes baking time. In any case, these were extremely tasty, and even though we had four dozen left at home after taking some to the concert, they were consumed within a few days.

All in all, I take away a little for the texture and give these cookies a nom nom nom nom (4 of 5 noms).

Photo of the Week--12/13/10

I selected this photo of the Ingreja do Carmo in Lisbon not because of any particularly interesting architectural detail, but rather because the building exists in the first place. Of course you see the sky through the window, but if you look more closely you'll also see it peeking through the trees, too. That's a lot of sky to be seen, and that's because this church was damaged during the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, which some scientists estimate to have measured around 9.0 on the Richter scale. Besides killing between 10,000 and 100,000 people, the earthquake destroyed 85 percent of the buildings in Lisbon and caused tsunamis that were noted as far away as Cornwall, England (see next week's photo). This convent church had its roof collapse, destroying a 5000-volume library, and it was never rebuilt. It served briefly as a military billet, and now is an archaeological museum. Unfortunately it was close when we went to visit, so we only got this view from the outside; luckily it was still a fascinating view.

The Printz Award Winners: 2007

It's been tricky finding time to read, but luckily I'd already read two of the books on the 2007 list that "exemplify literary excellence in young adult literature," according to the American Library Association. It was an outstanding year for Printz books.

Winner:
Gene Luen Yang, American Born Chinese
Honor books:
M.T. Anderson, The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Vol. 1: The Pox Party
John Green, An Abundance of Katherines
Sonya Hartnett, Surrender
Marcus Zusak, The Book Thief

Anderson's Octavian Nothing, Vol. 1: This is an extraordinary historical novel set during the American Revolution, with its title character not a rebel or a loyalist, but a slave. The story is told through diary entries and letters, all with a formal language that enhances the historical feel. Octavian's story is told in four parts, and that's how I consumed the novel. The first part was fascinating, as we see Octavian's childhood growing up as an experiment in a research college. He is taught Latin and Greek and music (and has his poop weighed every day), while his mother, an African princess, is treated like a lady. Of course he has a gradual discovery of what their slavery really means, especially after smallpox ravages the college and his mother dies in part two. Part three covers his escape to rebel forces, and part four his recapture. The depth of the character and story kept building with each part I finished, and I eagerly turned to Vol II. You'll have to wait for the 2009 reviews for that one, sorry. (Octavian Vol. 1 also won the National Book Award for Children's Literature.)

Green's An Abundance of Katherines: Green floored me with his dark Printz-winning debut, and I enjoyed his second novel just as much, although it had a completely different tone. Colin, the narrator, is a former child math prodigy who has been dumped by 19 girls named Katherine. The later dumping has occured after high-school graduation and Colin, afraid he will never demonstrate any genius again, goes on a road trip with his friend Hassan. They end up in Tennesee and take a job for a woman who owns a tampon-string factory, and Colin discovers mathematical formulae cannot substitute for (or explain) love. I loved the comic tone of the book, which used footnotes and other asides to enhance the humor, and although I'm not thrilled with Green's reliance on the manic pixie dream girl archetype, I really enjoyed the novel. The nerd jokes were right up my alley.

Hartnett's Surrender: This novel by an Australian author really floored me. I'm not sure how to describe it without ruining the story, because it's a psychological thriller that's more of a mystery than a pure thriller. At least I can give you the opening setup: a young man named Gabriel lies dying, wondering if his old childhood friend Finnegan will visit him before the end and bring his dog, Surrender. Years before, back when Gabriel was known as Anwell and was involved in a horrible tragedy, the two boys made a pact: Anwell/Gabriel would embody the good for the two boys, and Finnegan the bad. Now that human bones have been discovered in a forest nearby, however, things start to unravel, leading to a surprising and violent climax. The mystery was engaging and the resolution, and although it's the kind that gives more questions than answers, was very satisfying. It's a haunting book that stays with you.

Zusak's The Book Thief: Another gem of a book from Australia (and again much different than his previous Printz honoree), this story set in Nazi Germany and narrated by Death hit bestseller lists around the world. Death is fascinated by young Liesel, whom he first encounters when her young brother dies on a trip when the two siblings are being taken to live with foster parents. During the trip she steals her first book, a guide for gravediggers, and her new foster father teaches her to read using the book. She is soon stealing books from book burnings and the mayor's house, reading and writing being a way for her to cope with the increasingly difficult conditions under the Nazi regime. She has two other encounters with Death, who at the end notes "I am haunted by humans" like Liesel. Even if you think you have fatigue with WWII/Holocaust stories, this one is so powerful and hopeful—attesting to the eternal power of words—that I think you would enjoy it.

Yang's American Born Chinese: The winner this year was actually a graphic novel, a field that's always been popular with YAs, but only lately has branched out to broader topics. This novel is three related stories in one, beginning with the trouble young Jin Wang, son of Chinese immigrants, is having in assimilating into his American school. The second story builds on the Chinese folk character of the Monkey King, who in the book keeps accumulating power to prove he is more than just a monkey. The third story is presented like a television sitcom starring Danny, a blond American teen who keeps changing schools every time his Chinese cousin Chin-Kee, an amalgam of Asian stereotypes, comes to visit. As the novel bounces back and forth between the three stories, we see the connections as each character struggles to define their identities without denying their origins. I thought it was very cleverly presented, although I didn't find it that revelatory, being somewhat far removed from my own teenage struggle for identity (ie, old and irrelevant). I certainly can see why it's considered a groundbreaker in graphic novels for young people, although there has been great work in the genre for years.  (American Born Chinese was also a National Book Award finalist, and won an Eisner Award for Best Graphic Album: New.)

So all in all, a superlative year for YA literature, and I would be hard pressed to choose a favorite among these books. I suppose it would depend on my mood, because there was something for my inner history, math, and book-loving geeks, and they're not very good at fighting it out.

Photo of the Week--12/6/10

In July 1999 we rented a car and drove around the northwest part of Ireland, and in County Galway we found this cute little castle, Aughnanure. It's not a huge complex, like you generally think of when you hear the word "castle," but rather a "tower house," a defensive structure that was designed to defend a key strategic location. There are a couple hundred of these "castles" in County Galway, and Aughnanure lies near Lough Corrib, the second largest lake in Ireland, and near enough to the city of Galway to be an important water supply. As you can see, the castle was in a bit of disrepair, although thankfully it was sturdy enough for us to climb the ruins. Because if you're going to visit a ruined castle, you should at least be able to climb around it like a bunch of monkeys and play hide and seek.