Open Source Cook

This recipe actually belongs to Jesse’s Aunt Terri and it’s one that his entire family loves. Terri usually makes it for Thanksgiving every year and I do have to say that it is tasty….and rich. Jesse has been after me to try and make it for awhile now and with the Chocolate Raspberry Cheesecake experiments, he wants me to use this recipe when I make it again (which, according to him, is going to be twice this week - once to see if I can do it and one more time after that). The first cheesecake came out pretty good, so hopefully I’ll be able to master this one as well.

One thing I was told was that I have to use Hellman’s real mayo, not Mircle Whip or any other kind. It has to be the Hellman’s since it’s actually mayo and not the lab generated stuff. Plus, it can’t be the light version either. The reasoning is the Hellman’s has actually eggs in it and all the others don’t.

Ingredients:
16oz soft cream cheese
1 cup mayo (real Hellman’s)
1 cup sugar
4 eggs
2 cups chocolate chips melted
2 tsp vanilla

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 F.
2. Beat cheese and mayo at medium speed until smooth. Gradually beat in sugar. Beat in eggs one at a time. Beat in chocolate and vanilla until smooth. Pour into crust, place on a cookie sheet and bake at 350 F for 50 to 55 minutes.

GRAHAM CRACKER CRUST
Ingredients:
8 tbsp butter
1-1/2 cups crumbs (about 21 squares)
4-1/2 tbsp sugar
2-1/4 tsp heaping cocoa

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375 F.
2. Mix all ingredients together and pour into spring form pan. Bake at 375 F for 8 minutes.

This is what you get when you think of something and it starts sounding really good. Bananas and chocolate just seem to go so well in my head, and after making Ian’s cake, I didn’t see why I couldn’t do the same thing with Bananas. So here is a variation on the Dark Chocolate Oreo Cake.

Ingredients:
2 packages of Dark Chocolate cake mix
3 packages of whipped chocolate frosting
2 packages of Jell-O banana pudding mix
2 cups of cool whip
3 cups milk
bananas (optional)

Directions:

1. Combine 3 cups cold milk and 2 packages of banana pudding mix in medium bowl. Beat with wire whisk 2 minutes or until well blended. Stir in 2 cups thawed cool whip. Refrigerate at least 1 hour or until set.
2. Prepare and bake both cakes according to box directions. Cool completely.
3. Take one cake and level the top off, making it flat. Layer banana mousse lavishly onto cake. Once completed, gently add the second cake on top of mousse.
4. Frost all sides of the cake.

I’ve been playing around with cakes lately and I decided to give my hand a try at making a cheesecake. The idea actually came to me when I decided to make one for a party I’m throwing, but I wanted to try it out on the guinea pigs first (aka Jesse and his co-workers). I knew it shouldn’t be too hard, so I wanted to attempt something different. Chocolate and raspberries are really good together and I didn’t see a reason why they couldn’t be good together in a cheesecake. So I started looking around and came across a few recipes that I liked - Graham Cracker Pie Crust, Chocolate, Almond, and Raspberry Cheesecake, and Raspberry Sauce - and I ended up using these recipes as a starting point for the recipe I have below.

The recipe itself is pretty easy, but time consuming. The most time consuming part was crushing the graham crackers and melting the pound of chocolate (thank you Jesse for doing this part); however, once you get over this hurtle, the rest is pretty standard baking.

Once we got all the components put together, the cheesecake itself is pretty good although I am changing the amount of extract. You really couldn’t taste the raspberry in the cake. I’m not crazy about the raspberry sauce on the cake. I’m not sure if it’s the combination of the two together or if the sauce needs more work or a different recipe entirely needs to be used. I’ll be interested in peoples thoughts.

Here’s the recipe with my few changes…

Chocolate Graham Cracker Pie Crust:
For the pie crust, I used the above recipe, but I did change a couple of the measurements. Since I’m making a cheesecake and my springform pan was 10″ instead of 9″, I increased the amount of graham crackers to 2 cups and the butter to 1/2 cup. I didn’t change the amount of sugar only because I am making a chocolate cheesecake and it should be rich enough without adding more sugar.

Ingredients:
2 cups chocolate graham cracker crumbs
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter, melted

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 F.
2. Mix together graham cracker crumbs, sugar, and butter until well-combined.
3. Press mixture into the bottom and up the sides of a 9-inch pie plate or tin.
4. For baked pies, preheat oven to 350 F and pre-bake crust for 7 to 9 minutes. Cool before filling. For no-bake refrigerator or freezer pies, no baking is necessary.

Chocolate Cheesecake:
When I found this recipe, I was debating on adding the raspberry liqueur to the cheesecake and just relying on the raspberry sauce for the berry taste. But then it would have been a chocolate cheesecake with a raspberry sauce and that isn’t what I really wanted, but I didn’t want to use the liqueur. When I found the raspberry extract, I went hunting for a conversion ratio and found one - Raspberry Liqueur to Raspberry Extract - 2:1 ratio (e.g., 2 tbsp’s Liqueur, 1 tbsp extract). So instead of using the 2 tbsp of raspberry liqueur, I changed it to 1 tbsp raspberry extract. Either works fine, it just depends on which you want to use.

One thing I did learn from making this, you cannot leave a cheesecake out over night to cool before refrigerating it. Since I made the cheesecake after Ian went to bed, it didn’t come out of the oven until well past midnight. So instead of waiting up another 45 minutes just so it could cool before putting it in the fridge, I covered it with a towel and went to bed; with the intention of putting it away in the morning. Well, when we woke up the next morning, my cheesecake had a little gorge in the middle of it. It doesn’t seem to have affect it, but it’s not something I’m going to do again.

Ingredients:
1 lb milk chocolate, chopped
4 - 8oz pkgs cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup butter or margarine, softened
1/3 cup milk
2 tbsp raspberry extract
4 eggs
1 egg yolk
Sifted powdered sugar (optional)
Sifted unsweetened cocoa powder (optional)
Fresh berries (optional)

Directions:

1. Melt 1 pound chocolate in a heavy saucepan over very low heat, stirring constantly; cool. For tips on melting chocolate, I would check out Hershey’s guide, it’s the one I use.
2. Beat melted chocolate, cream cheese, the 1/2 cup butter or margarine, 1/3 cup milk, and extract in a large mixing bowl with an electric mixer on medium to high speed until combined. Add whole eggs and egg yolk all at once. Beat on low speed just until combined.
3. Pour filling into the nut-lined springform pan. Place the pan in a shallow baking pan on the oven rack. Bake in a 350 degree F oven about 55 minutes or until 1 to 2 inches of outside edge appear set when shaken gently.
4. Remove springform pan from baking pan. Cool cheesecake in pan on a wire rack for 15 minutes. Use a small metal spatula to loosen cheesecake from sides of pan. Cool 30 minutes more. Remove sides of pan. Cool 1 hour; cover and chill at least 4 hours.

Raspberry Sauce:
So I did some of the directions a little backwards with this one. Instead of mashing the raspberries through a sieve/strainer, I started heating them with the sugar first and then once they became pliable, then I mashed them through a strainer. It seems to be working alright, but without doing the other method as well, we’re not really sure which way would have worked better. I did end up using all of the cornstarch mixture in order to thicken it up.

One good thing about this recipe and heating the raspberries first, when you mash the berries through the strainer, what you are left with is essentially jam. Jesse liked this aspect since it gave him homemade jam.

Ingredients:
12 oz. pkg. frozen raspberries in syrup
2 tsp. sugar
1 tsp. cornstarch
3 tsp. cold water

Directions:
Mash raspberries through strainer, throwing away seeds. Add sugar to raspberries and heat in saucepan to almost boiling. Mix cornstarch with cold water. Add cornstarch mixture little bit at a time to raspberries, stirring constantly, until mixture starts to thicken. Cool in refrigerator and serve with just about anything.

This is the cake I made for Ian’s first birthday and I know Jesse was sharing the description around at work, so I decided to make it for them this weekend. It’s a really delicious cake that’s fairly easy to make as long as you have a little patience or not quite the perfectionist that I can be.

When you’re buying the ingredients, it’s important to get the ones I suggested. I know most cakes tend to be moist, but do NOT get the super moist cake mixes. They tend to be a little to pliable and will break apart when you try to manhandle them out of the pan and whatnot. Also, make sure you get the whipped frosting. We tried the creamy, but it tended to ooze down the sides and wouldn’t stick to the cake really well. The whipped frosting sticks a lot easier and I didn’t have to use as much of it.

To make this cake, I used the same method as the Triple Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake, but I improved upon it. Instead of using one cake and cutting it in half, I made two separate cakes and stuck them on top of each other. This made it so I didn’t end up getting three pieces when I really wanted two. The only problem with this method is that cakes tend to round out on the top, so when you stick another one on top of it, you end up with a groove around the edges. This is really easy to fix since all you have to do is cut off the top of the cake and level it out. I’m currently looking for a cake leveler so I don’t have to use a knife, but a sharp knife works really well too.

When we crushed the Oreos, Jesse decided to remove all of the filling this time around and he seems to like it better this way. He says the cream filling was a little overkill, but it’s completely up to you if you want to remove them or not.

Ingredients:
2 packages of Dark Chocolate cake mix
3 packages of whipped chocolate frosting
2 packages of Jell-O Oreo pudding mix
2 cups of cool whip
3 cups milk
1 package of Oreo cookies

Directions:

1. Combine 3 cups cold milk and 2 packages of Oreo pudding mix in medium bowl. Beat with wire whisk 2 minutes or until well blended. Stir in 2 cups thawed cool whip. Refrigerate at least 1 hour or until set.
2. Prepare and bake both cakes according to box directions. Cool completely.
3. Take one cake and level the top off, making it flat. Layer Oreo mousse lavishly onto cake. Once completed, gently add the second cake on top of mousse.
4. Frost all sides of the cake.
5. Take 1/2 of a package of Oreos and remove all the filling. Crush the chocolate sides of the cookies until you get a fine powder. Once you have the powder, sprinkle over the cake and along the sides.

I came up with this recipe when one of Jesse’s co-workers requested food and I found out he liked chocolate and peanut butter. That happens to be one of my all time favorite taste combinations. You want to make my day, give me something that has both chocolate and peanut butter and I will love you for the entire time it takes me to eat it.

I did come across one issues with this cake. Do not get the Super Moist cake from Betty Crocker. As it’s suppose to be, the cake is really moist and tends to be a pain to cut in half. Instead of getting two halves, I ended up with three pieces because the top half broke when I was separating the two.

While this may be one of my recipes, I did swipe the directions for the peanut butter filling. I took it from Cupcake Bakeshop. If you want the filling to be more stiff, than use less milk.

Ingredients:
1 box Cake mix, triple chocolate
1-1/2 container Frosting, triple chocolate
1 (8oz) container Cream cheese
2 cup Peanut butter, creamy
4 cups Sugar, powdered
1 tbsp Vanilla
8 tbsp Milk

Directions:

1. Prepare and bake cake according to box directions. Cool completely.
2. Slice the cake through the middle to end up with two layers. Frost one layer with the peanut butter filling. Place the second layer on top of the peanut butter filling. Frost entire cake with triple chocolate frosting.
3. Peanut Butter filling: Beat cream cheese and peanut butter until combined. Add powdered sugar and vanilla and beat until combined. Add the milk and beat until combined.