You should. Pinkies out!
3 Likes
Wowie zowie!
Also, I ignored the baking directions and baked this at 275° until it was 155° or so, at which point I took it out and let it cool before refrigerating overnight. No cracks and no leaving a cheesecake in an oven for an arbitrary amount of time.
3 Likes
Cook’s Illustrated strawberry cheesecake squares.
And I also baked Aya Caliva’s wonderful lemon pound cake, but I wasn’t able to take a photo before it got eaten.
14 Likes
please tell me about the cheesecake squares!
2 Likes
I went to make a Triple Lemon Velvet bundt tonight and realized I had no sour cream. At the grocery store, I noticed a new entry in the sour cream case: Good Culture brand cultured sour cream, in a pouch you can squeeze. I’ve recently become extremely attached to Good Culture cottage cheese, so I snatched it up.
At home, I realized the cultured sour cream had quite a different texture, moisture level and volume than I am used to. It was obviously delicious (I had to stop myself from eating it with a spoon), but I really fretted about adding it without any adjustments to the cake batter. Without other options, I used a bit less than the recipe calls for. The batter wound up a little thicker than I’m used to, so I stirred in a healthy dollop of plain Greek yogurt, which (while still thick) was thinner, wetter and looser than the cultured sour cream. Then I hoped for the best and baked the cake.
I was also concerned that the more assertive flavor of the cultured sour cream would blunt the lemon flavor, which would be tragic.
It’s for a party Saturday, so I can’t try it, but the tiny cake of leftover batter I baked myself was a little reassuring. I dunno. Cultured sour cream. Who knew.
8 Likes
All sour cream is cultured. It’s cream or cream and milk cultured with enzymes.
The brands of sour cream I avoid for baking are the ones with thickeners and/or stabilizers as I dislike the texture of the finished products.
2 Likes
Why they gotta do me like that then with the labelling!
I wonder if it has thickener in it, it really behaved differently than the sour cream I usually buy. It wasn’t smooth, either.
Yeah, I typically bought Daisy or Breakstone’s because they are just cream and culture with no stabilizers.
3 Likes
It doesn’t contain any thickeners, but yeah it’s just sour cream. Though they’re more specific about strains in the labeling, presumably to get people to think there’s a difference from cheaper sour cream.
1 Like
ok good, i’m relieved now. hopefully the cake will be fine!
2 Likes
Strawberry cheesecake bar recipe is here. Uses the same crust as their New York cheesecake, which I love. I do reduce the sugar in the crust a bit, though. This was a half recipe that I made with one egg and a yolk in an adjustable mold at 6.5x 9, or it can be done in an 8-inch square. The topping being strawberries and sour cream gives it a nice fresh flavor. I want to play around with having it be no bake and thickened with a little gelatin, though.
5 Likes
Breakstone’s isn’t sold out here, but I buy Daisy or Clover Organic or Straus (the latter two dairies local to Northern California) for that reason. Even Daisy’s “light” sour cream lacks stabilizers.
3 Likes
A great start to the weekend!
16 Likes
Sure is a great start to a weekend, beautiful.
1 Like
Beautiful! Details, please?
Thank you.
First is a Strawberry Flan Cake with Jello and whip.
Second is Cherry Pineapple Pie
1 Like
My mother had a big milestone birthday last week, so I baked cakes for her party.
First up, ridiculously tall triple-layer chocolate stout cake with brown butter cream cheese icing between the layers, covered with coffee-brown sugar ermine icing. So tall, it came to the top of my tall cake carrier.
I’ve made the popular (large) chocolate stout layer cake from Epicurious before, but this time I tweaked my standard fudgy, moist, long-keeping chocolate layer cake recipe, which is oil-based and includes chocolate and bloomed cocoa, to incorporate stout. (I don’t think I find it appreciably different, but my mother likes the idea of chocolate stout cakes.)
To serve it, we cut thin slices and halved them horizontally through the middle layer to make reasonable pieces, especially given there was another cake.
For the non-chocolate option (though honestly, only one person didn’t take both), I was inspired by @mig ’s gushing praise to make RLB’s triple lemon velvet bundt cake with Meyer lemons from my folks’ backyard tree. I don’t have a 14-cup+ bundt pan, but I did want a fair amount rather than a smaller cake plus a few cupcakes, so I made a recipe and a half and baked it in the Nordic Ware party bundt and a standard bundt pan, and got two stubbier cakes, which actually made it easier to cut small slices. I baked and syruped the cakes two days ahead of serving and glazed them the day before. I followed the recipe save for reducing the sugar in the batter by around 15%, and piercing their tops with a skewer as well as their bottoms before brushing with with syrup. They were moist (you’d hope so, with all the egg yolks, sour cream, and butter), tangy, and thoroughly imbued with lemon flavor.
Both cakes were thoroughly enjoyed and (thankfully) mostly eaten up.
23 Likes
Gorgeous x 2!!
3 Likes
Thank you!
1 Like
