The Cheesecake Dilemma

I wanted to make a cheesecake for my boyfriend's birthday but was instantly faced with a Moral Dilemma:

Should I try to make a healthy version or just do it the 'normal full-fat' way?

Eating a lardy cheesecake with all its creamy badness in a restaurant doesn't seem to make you feel as guilty as making one yourself - you suddenly become more conscious of the amount of cream, butter, sugar, cream cheese and other naughty ingredients inside that decadent cheesecake. And that's something that I didn't feel particularly good about giving to someone else.

So, easy decision, right? Go for a healthier version.

Well, no, it presents another problem - wouldn't a low-fat cheesecake taste a bit rubbish? There's nothing worse than a disappointing cheesecake. So, how do I find the solution to this?

Test both versions out of course! I have a mini springform cake pan, perfect for experiments of this type.

First, the low-fat version. For this, I used Quark, a type of soft cheese which has a lower fat content than cream cheese, and egg whites. For the base, I went for reduced fat digestive biscuits and a bit of sunflower oil.

The result?
A cheesecake somewhat crumbly, light and airy.

(And not particularly photogenic.)

After the first timid bite or so, it did start to taste creamier than I thought it'd be. But it seemed a little too 'light'. You actually felt like you were eating a bit of lemony air. Which is not quite the desired effect of a cheesecake.

So, onwards with the second cheesecake. This time, it had cream cheese, double cream, butter, sugar, all the badness. But I had some oats in the base, and chose a light version brand of cream cheese, so a small attempt to move it away from the full fatness.

The result?
A lovely creamy texture, but disastrous crumbly base.

Ok, so this was definitely the cheesecake to go for but the base clearly needs sorting out. The oats have to be toasted before adding biscuit crumbs and butter to form the base. I probably should have known that it wasn't going to work properly - it was pretty much in bits when I was pressing it into the tin. But yes, in my silliness, I just assumed this would set anyway. So when it splayed oats everywhere when cutting into it, I knew that next time, I'd need to toast the oats a little longer and use a bit more butter.

Well, that didn't work at all. I went the other way and burnt the oats instead! I chucked the black mess straight into the bin and made a simple biscuit and butter base instead. The rest was pretty much the same process as the second cheesecake above, and into the fridge it went to set overnight. So all was going to plan.

Until I decided to dress it up with a strawberry topping.

I'm not entirely sure what went wrong but as I spread some fresh strawberries over the top, the cheesecake started to sag a little at the sides. Noooo...

Of course, I thought it'd be an easy error to correct and tried to use a knife to smooth it around again. Er, no. It was starting to make strawberry swirls in the cheese, which is no bad thing - unless it makes the whole thing droop down the sides in a very uncheesecake-like manner. Whoops.

Despite this, I have to say, it tastes REALLY good, so here's the recipe as it stands. I probably should have put the strawberry topping on before releasing the cheesecake from the tin, as the cheesecake was quite firm when I took it out, so I thought it'd be ok. Maybe I just pressed the strawberries down too hard!

So, you could safely say that I haven't particularly solved the cheesecake dilemma. The healthy version doesn't taste amazing, but judging from the various mishaps of my cheesecake making this week, perhaps I just need to focus on getting one version right before experimenting with others...any tips are welcome!

More Hungry Jenny cakes here.

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Ten in 10 Week 5: Beware the Ninja Biscuit

I was attacked this week.

It's left me with giddy shakes and nervousness for fear of being hit again.

Worst of all, it was the most unexpected of intruders...

The Ninja Biscuit.

It was all very innocent. I simply bought a packet of light digestive biscuits for some weekend baking. It was also my turn to do the biscuit round at work, so I picked up a couple of packets for the office. Up until now, I had found that having braces would prevent me from a dangerous scoffing attack.

Yes, it works to stop those custard creams, those jammy dodgers, those bourbon creams - anything with the potential to lodge its chewy texture amongst the metal brackets and wires in my mouth.

But with bread off the agenda for this challenge, I cannot help but crave anything cake-like. And the Ninja Digestive, with its crumbly texture and soft breakability, knew this.

I'm not sure how I will recover from this but I will be strong and fight through it. The important thing I felt I had to do though was to speak out to you, in the attempt to stop this happening to another innocent soul simply trying to be healthy.

Arm yourselves with celery sticks to protect yourselves, my healthy friends, don't let the Ninja Biscuits defeat you.

You might be interested to read my other posts on the Ten in 10 Challenge.

Other Hungry Jenny healthy food thoughts you might be interested in
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Friday Pie-Day: The Fruity Chicken Pies That Weren't

Right, so - I haven't made my own pastry for quite some time, choosing to use those ready-made ones you get instead - simply because life's too short for me to waste hours trying to get that pastry right. But this week, I felt like giving it another go as I wanted to make some mini pies.

Mini pies = less pastry = less chance of screwing it up.

That was the theory anyway.

Ok, so they don't look too bad, do they? Well, let me just say that the pastry wasn't the only problem...

I've got to be honest - my heart just wasn't in the whole pie-making business this week *collective gasp from pie lovers everywhere*. I think I was just tired. This is probably why I felt like being lazy with this recipe hoping it would still turn out nice.

Wrong.

These were meant to be soft mini pies, with tender chicken pieces, oozing with a fresh apple-y, cheesy sauce, and wrapped lovingly in a parcel of crumble-in-your-mouth pastry.

But I used mince instead, diced the apple rather than turning it into a puree and er, forgot to add the cheese altogether. And when you have to make a focussed effort to break the darn thing in two to eat it, you know the pastry has gone wrong.

Even though the pies I make each week aren't always pastry-based, I thought I'd be at least a bit better at it by now! Erm, I clearly have a long way to go.

Pie out.

Read my other Friday Pie-Day adventures.

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Say NO to Takeaway: Try this Tasty Teriyaki Chicken Instead!

This is easily one of my favourite dishes. It's one of the few things that I've actually made twice!

Er, I realise that makes my recipes look a bit dodgy when I imply that I don't repeat my own dishes. I promise you, the only reason I rarely make the same thing twice is so I always have new stuff to blog about. Lucky you, eh?

The most satisfying part of this dish (apart from eating it so happily of course), is being able to make the sauce, oh-so-easily. It would be very difficult to get the measurements wrong for this. Yes, I m bold enough to make such a claim.

So, first, the ingredients for the teriyaki sauce.

Teriyaki sauce is made out of sake (a Japanese rice wine), mirin (a sweet Japanese cooking wine), soy sauce, brown sugar and ginger. Ok, so the last three you probably have in your store cupboard. But the sake and mirin not so much? That's ok, you could use rice vinegar, white wine vinegar or sherry instead for the sake, and honey instead of the mirin.

Now I'm not particularly well-versed on ratios, but to make the sauce, you basically have equal parts of soy sauce and sake, half that of mirin, then about half that of brown sugar and a bit of ginger to taste.

Make sense?

So to make roughly 100ml of sauce, you would use:

6 tbsp soy sauce
6 tbsp sake
3 tbsp mirin
1 tbsp brown sugar
1 tsp grated/ground ginger (fresh is better!)

All you need to do is gently heat it up until the sugar dissolves! If you want to make it as a dipping sauce instead, just mix in some cornflour to thicken it up as you heat it through.

But to continue making this Tasty Teriyaki Chicken (for 2-3):

1) Marinade 250g diced chicken in your newfound teriyaki sauce for at least 15 minutes.
2) Fry the chicken with some chopped red onion, reserving some of the marinade.
3) Add a large handful of broccoli florets and diced aubergine, mixing well. Cook over a low heat for about 5-10 minutes.
4) Mix in some grated ginger and serve with fluffy steamed rice.

And there you go - your own healthy take-out alternative!

If you liked this, you might want to try making these other takeaway alternatives too.

Have a look at my other recipes!

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Butternut Block Cake

Do not fear this Butternut Block - he will not harm you.

He's a big softy really.

This is one of the softest, sweetest cakes you'll ever eat. Butternut squash might seem like a weird ingredient for a cake but it's naturally sweet and makes it really moist. Ground almonds are used instead of normal flour which gives it a subtle nutty flavour and a bit more interesting texture to the cake.

Butternut Block Cake

Click on the recipe name for full details.

1) Gently boil the squash for about 15-20 minutes. Drain well, mash and leave to cool completely.
2) In a large bowl, mix butter, sugar and baking powder. Beat in eggs.
3) Add the squash, followed by almonds.
4) Pour into a loaf tin and bake at 180 degrees C for about 45-50 minutes.

These went particularly quickly after aikido training and I wish I'd made more!

More Hungry Jenny cakes here.

Have a look at my other recipes!
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Ten in 10 Week 4: Listen to Your Body

Right, so I had a bit of a slip-up last week on the Ten in 10 Challenge. Trying too hard to keep up with the challenge on top of work and life was leaving me exhausted and stressed.

But one small change I made this week has made a massive difference, and has put me back on track to healthdom...

Switching off my laptop to get a proper night's sleep!

Yes, I'm still rushing around a bit too much like a crazy lady and working loads but by having an actual 'cut-off' point, it forces me to STOP.

Despite eating relatively healthily and doing regular exercise, my skin was getting inflamed, my brain feeling constantly fried and I was getting stressed too quickly and too often. Even exercise was leaving me tired and aching the next day rather than pumping up my energy levels and releasing all those happy endorphins.

It took me a silly amount of time to work out that the main culprit of all this was the early starts for exercising and late nights of web surfing (not like that you filthy so!). I've been seriously sleep-deprived.

A simple lesson I learned here - any effort to maintain a healthy lifestyle can pretty much be undone if you start to overdo it and don't allow your mind and body time to rest.

So listen to your body - and don't ignore the warning signals.

You might be interested to read my other posts on the Ten in 10 Challenge.

Other Hungry Jenny healthy food thoughts you might be interested in
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Friday Pie-Day: A Kinda-Healthy Funny-Looking Quiche

Quiche.

Quiche has always confused me.

It's never been a part of my life. In fact, I've only ever ordered it at a restaurant once. It's the unknown that I fear. I mean, I just don't get what it is.

Is it a pie?

Is it a tart?

Is it an egg custardy thing?

So I decided to make one to find out.

And it came out a bit funny-looking...

Eh? So it looks a bit like a demented pizza. *sigh* Another puzzler to add to the quiche equation.

Despite appearances though, I chomped on, and found that it was actually rather tasty.

I think I've always been a bit put off them because of the egg-custardy look. Then there's the whole question about whether they're actually healthy or not. For some reason, I was always under the impression that it's a healthy choice to have. Then you remember it's got pastry with all that butter and flour, and a filling that's often quite creamy or cheesy. Hm.

So, I used cottage cheese, with hope that the low fat, high protein content would make this a little healthier. It didn't seem to mix very well with the eggs and slopped out onto the filling in lumps but it did solidify in the end :-)

Right, so - do you fancy a slice of this cottage-cheesed, er, pizza?

Low Fat Salmon and Broccoli Quiche

Click on the recipe name for full details.

I sell them well, don't I?

Pie out.

Read my other Friday Pie-Day adventures.

Have a look at my other recipes! Continue reading this post..