Cheesy cake & jammy drops

Wintery weather means hot beverages and hot beverages mean sweet treats and this means some sweet treat and wintery weather recipes for you from the BC team…

Jam Drops 

by Maya Sundari 

These wholesome treats are a crowd-pleaser for all ages.
Makes about 30, depending on your preferred size of drop.

125g butter, room temperature
1/2 cup caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 egg
1 1/4 cups plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
jam jam jam

Preheat oven to 180*C and grease/ line a baking tray.

Combine butter and sugar and beat until creamy. Add vanilla essence and combine. Add egg and beat until pale and creamy. Combine the flour and baking power, and gently mix into the egg mixture. Gather dough into a ball, cover with cling film and refrigerate for about half and hour (this mean the dough will firm up a bit and makes it easier to make textbook jam drops). 

Roll dough into little balls and place on a tray about 5cm apart and flatten balls with a spoon. Make an indent about 2cm wide in the biscuits with finger or the end of a spoon, and fill with jam (about 1/2 tsp – jam will bubble and erupt when baking if overfilled!).

Bake for about 20 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool while you make a big cup of tea.

New York Style Cheesecake 

(Apologies for the slightly hideous picture, we often forget to take a photo of the finished product before getting stuck in – this is what was left the next morning) 

100g graham crackers (we used some wholemeal oaty Arnotts numbers and they worked a treat)
50g butter
250g cream cheese (best left to soften for an hour before using it, for ease of combining)
200mL thickened cream
200mL sour cream
3 eggs, beaten
100g raw sugar
2 tsp vanilla essence
4 (generous) tblsp lemon juice

Preheat oven to 180 degrees and line or grease an 18cm round cake tin (although we used a heart-shaped number).

Combine biscuits and butter in a processor and blend until combined and press into cake tin.

In a bowl, combine cream cheese, sour cream and cream and beat with electric beaters until smooth (try to minimise the cream cheese lumps).

Downgrade to a wooden spoon.

Add eggs, then sugar, vanilla essence and lemon juice, stirring to combine after the addition of each ingredient.

Pour mixture on to of base and pop in the oven to bake for 30 minutes

Reduce heat to 160 degrees and bake for a further 30 minutes, or until it starts to go golden on the top and is clean to the skewer poke – apparently when shaken, about an inch in diameter in the centre should wobble.

Allow to cool (about an hour) in the baking apparatus to avoid a messy encounter (and make sure it cools thoroughly before refrigerating it)

Serve it up yo

Keeps up to 4 days in the fridge or 2 months in the freezer.

NB: Most recipes will tell you not to open the oven door whilst the cake is baking. I continue to open the door and am yet to notice a significant compromise in quality. That said, I like food to look like it has soul…

NB2: On second attempt, the cheesecake was made in a fan-forced oven which seemed to cook it in half an hour, yet we let it cook for the full hour. The result was something like a quiche cake. Still tasted ok but can’t recommend it (refer photo). After some research, the likely conclusion is that the temperature was toooooo hot, and cake exposed to the high temp for tooo long.

“Overcooking also makes cheesecakes crack. As the cake bakes, its weblike protein structure of egg and cheese tightens. Cooked too long, the web begins to squeeze out the moisture it holds. The cake loses its smooth texture, gets grainy, and tastes weepy.”
(Source: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1216/is_n4_v194/ai_16998936/)