Easy Roasted Pumpkin Cheesecake with Peanut Butter Oreo Crust Recipe

Halloween is coming and I feel obligated to do something pumpkin to compensate the lack of slutty costume planning. So this is what I did.

You know my baking is the exact opposite of refined. No cute decoration, it's not a super smooth cheesecake, not done in a proper cake mold. It's pretty rough around the edges with bits of roasted pumpkin in it...or maybe I should call it "rustic".

And don't ask me what's with the peanut butter. Why did I think that peanut butter plus roasted pumpkin plus oreo would be a good idea? I don't know. But, luckily, the end result was pretty damn delish. Phew!

Recipe
- 1 block of cream cheese
- a quarter of a small (around 15cm diameter) pumpkin, remove seeds, remove skin
- 3 tbsp sugar
- 3 tbsp cream
- 1 egg
- 1 tsp corn starch
- 1 whole packet of oreo
- 2 heaping tbsp peanut butter
- 1 tbsp butter

Preheat oven to 180C, roast pumpkin until soft. Meanwhile, prepare crust. In a food processor, pulse oreos + peanut butter + butter until smooth. Pour into lightly greased pan. Set aside.

Once soft, remove roasted pumpkin, set aside to cool down, cut into chunks. Cut cream cheese into chunks, throw it into food processor, add the rest of the ingredients, pulse until everything's combined. Don't worry about little bits of pumpkin. Pour batter onto the crust, bake in 150C oven for about 20 minutes. Cool down and refrigerate.

Or spoon the custardy warm batter fresh out of the oven with a spoon, and ofcourse, lick the spoon clean.
Yum!

Now tell me more about your slutty Halloween costume...

White Chocolate Cheesecake with Oreo Crust and Strawberry Compote

Finally! Something I baked that SC likes!

I baked this white chocolate cheesecake to celebrate SC's birthday, and I am sooo happy he likes it! (Normally he doesn't like my baked goods...I like things fluffy and he likes things...exactly the same as what we can buy from Hong Kong bakeries, and I am no Hong Kong bakery...)

Anyway...it's really easy to make, and it's yum.
Rich, creamy, buttery white chocolate + savory-ish cream cheese + chocolatey oreo + sweet & tangy strawberries and sugar = fantastic...
It's almost as certain as 1+1 = 2, right?
I'm so good at math, it's scary.

Recipe
Oreo Crust
- 1 pack of Oreo cookies
- 3 tbsp butter
Throw everything into food processor, pulse until smooth, pour into greased pan, level it with spoon and push them down until packed. You can pre-bake this before adding cheesecake batter at 180C for 5 minutes, but I didn't bother...

If you don't have a food processor, place the cookies in a glad bag and bang em good.

White chocolate cheesecake
- 1 bar of Lindt white chocolate (100 gr), chopped into chunks
- 1 box of cream cheese (250gr), chopped into chunks
- 5 tbsp cream
- 1 egg
- 2 tbsp flour
- 1 tsp corn flour
- 1 tbsp sugar
Pulse everything in food processor until smooth and mixed well, taste and see if you need more sugar (the white chocolate is already sweet though), pour into greased cheesecake pan, onto the oreo crust, bake in a 180C preheated oven with over a water bath for about 30-40 minutes or until it's just a bit wobbly in the center. Let cool and refrigerate. Bring it back to room temperature before serving.

Again, you can totally do this without a food processor. Soften the white chocolate and cut the room temperature cream cheese into smaller pieces. Just mix 'em smooth using a hand mixer or a whisk.

Strawberry compote
- 1 cup strawberries, halved
- 3 tbsp caster sugar (or more, if needed)
Pour strawberries and sugar in a sauce pan, cook on low heat until you see some strawberry juice and it thickens a bit. Keep tasting and add sugar if you want it thicker and sweeter. Add some of the compote when serving the rich and creamy cheesecake.

My apologies for these crappy "recipes", I really normally just adjust as I go along T_T

Yo Mama's Chocolate Frozen Yogurt

Have I not learnt anything from my previous fro-yo lesson? I did say that chocolate froyo doesn't taste like froyo right? But look at the above cup from Yo Mama! It's so dark! Black, almost. How could I not give it a try? I chose chewy mochi and oreo crumbs as toppings.

How was it?

It surely didn't taste like yogurt, it didn't even taste like dark chocolate ice cream...it's more like...chocolate paste.

Does it mean that it's bad?

It's not too bad, but if you're expecting a mix of dark chocolate & yogurt flavor, this is not it.
:)

...and please excuse me for posting this scary photo, but when you just had something sticky and dark, remember to check and clean your lips and teeth in the mirror before smiling.

Yikes!

Choco Oreo Brownies: Love-Hate Relationship with Food Blogging

My love-hate relationship with food blogging...
I LOVE...
- Orchestrating yummy treats for family, friends, and most of all...myself (a truly selfish bitch, aren't I?)
- Discovering that most of my newfound blogger friends from all over the world share unconditional love for chocolate and Anthony Bourdain
- Finding out that someone out there...committed the same ultimate culinary sins as myself (burnt dishes, blah dishes, slipping while sprinting to check on dishes, mixing up salt with sugar, to name a few)
- Continuing to develop myself into something I am not (a great cook/photographer/writer)
- and so on and so forth

I HATE...
- ...it when there are too many great things, too little time (great recipes, blogs, people, ingredients, ideas, whennnn will I get to try them? I guess one step at a time, eh?)
- ...it when work interferes with passion. Yep, I still need my salary to finance all this cooking, photo-taking, writing thing...so somehow I had to make work my passion, most of the time. Arrrgghhhh
- taking gadzillions of pictures of the dish in front of me and I still can't get it right
- having loads of yummy dishes with nice pictures, without any ideas on what to write (I simply can't post just recipes...I need the something extra)

and....just like today's case...

- I hate it when I found a nice and easy recipe, tried it, it worked, the result was unbelievably great.....only to find before posting that I forgot to bookmark (!!!) and I can't remember whereeeee the freak was the recipe from....dammit dammit dammit! I spent a good few hours searching loads of possible sources..and finally found it!

It is super easy and it is darn good. Well it has chocolate, sugar and oreos...I didn't think it's ever gonna be bad.

Choco Oreo Brownies

Recipe
(adapted from Cooks.com, reducing the recipe by 1/2)
- 1/2 cups sugar (the original recipe called for 2 cups of sugar for 1/2 cup of flour, but I figured the oreo cookies will make it sweet enough. I am not crazy about sickly sweet things)
- 1/4 cups flour
- 5 tbsp cocoa powder
- 1/2 cup vegetable oil (I used peanut oil)
- 2 eggs
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 tsp vanilla essence
- a whole bar of oreo cookies, crushed

Preheat oven to 175-180C. Mix all ingredients in one bowl, pour into a greased pan (I used a loaf pan), bake for 30 minutes, let cool for a while and cut into squares to serve. They are perfect with hot tea, or milk. Yum!

I also hate it when I have nothing more to say to end a post. Oh well.

Super Easy Peanut Butter Oreo Mousse

I am losing it. Totally losing it. I meant my waist line (sob-freaking-sob), and I only have myself to blame. OK. I've never been stick thin. I always have chunks of meat here and there, but there were at least kinda at the right places ;). I had quite a waist before. Boy, I miss it.

There are a few (or a lot) of reasons behind the disappearing waist line....namely:
SOUS CHEF
Yes! I wrote this in capital letters. Plus, he can't argue against it here, so I am gonna blame it all on him. HA HA HA! Seriously. If you had a partner in crime, who shares the same flaming passion for tasty treats, the temptation gets too great to resist. Sous chef loves desserts, (despite all the denials) especially anything rich and chocolatey and I received regular, if not daily requests or demands to bake something decadent. A huge chocoholic myself, how could I resist? When faced with chocolates, my will power to resist automatically reduces itself to sub zero.

I am not really a couch potato. Unbelievable as it sounds, I actually enjoy physical exercises. However! If it's a situation such as:

An hour of body combat class (even if taught by Mr. Super Sexy Instructor)

-VS -

Mr. Super Sinful, Rich, and Gooey Dark Chocolate Cake

What is it gonna be?
Right.....(PS. If any one of you chose the class, kindly click the X button to exit this blog right now. Hehe)

I faced such situation almost daily now...and what made it even worse? Midnight Snacking! I guess, the more we eat, the hungrier we get. Yesterday, at around 11 pm (after having a proper dinner at around 7 pm, and a bite of dessert at 8) I mentioned that I fancied a bowl of the (again) sinful Indonesian Indomie Goreng (dry instant noodles), and then I thought better of it and decided not to go for it. However, my sweet sweet sweet loving Sous Chef, ever so kindly, insisted to cook the noodle and brought it to my already embedded on the couch lazy ass. Tell me how to say no to THAT?!!! My will power...I probably didn't even have one in the first place. LOL!

Aaaanyway...as long as I am enjoying every second of it...it's worth it!

Here's another worthy reason to indulge...
Super Easy Peanut Butter Oreo Mousse

Recipe
(yields 4 small cups)
- 1 cup of whipping cream
- 2 tsp sugar (you can omit if you don't want it so sweet)
- 3-4 tbsp peanut butter
- 4 oreo cookies, crushed

Mix cream and sugar in a mixing bowl, beat the heck outta them until fluffy, add peanut butter, beat until well mixed, fold in oreos, pour into small cups, refrigerate to set. No egg, no bake, easy peasy.

I am submitting this to...

NO BAKE!
by The Peanut Butter Boy

Shoot. Sous chef is probably now flexing all of his IT related muscles trying to find a way to delete this blog. I should stop blaming lol