Quick no-bake Oreo cheesecake

We hadn't baked anything in class for a week or so, so to treat the 3rd years (freshman or Year 9's, depending upon in which country you live) my teacher, Miss K, decided we'd make Oreo Cheesecake. Well, technically she had planned for them to make Mandarin Cheesecake, but I couldn't help but notice that one of the other teachers was making Oreo Cheesecake with her class...  So I pleaded, and we ordered Oreos for the students (plus enough for us two to make a cake each too ;) ).

It was surprisingly easy, and after crushing the biscuits and adding melted butter for the base, we whipped up cream cheese with double cream for the filling.  Because Team Becca and I love Oreos so much, I crushed biscuits to put in the filling as well.  The Team knew I would be making this cake in class, and had requested I decorate it as a smiley face for them.  Miss K's more adult design is on the right there.

 We managed to hold off digging in until after the children's dinner, then got a sharp knife and cut decent wedges for us each.  And I have to say, it didn't disappoint.  Rich, creamy, chocolately and crunchy - taste sensation heaven!  As you can see, the Smarties faded in colour over the few hours between making and eating, and the whole cake didn't last too well over the next day or so.

This is definitely best eaten on day of preparation.  Enjoy!!

Cookies and cream bark, and peppermint bark. Christmas treat time

We love to make bark - it's so easy and fun, and there are so many variations and possibilities.  And it always taste so good!  We started, way back when, with classic peppermint bark, and wanted to make a fresh batch for this Christmas.  I did it with milk chocolate, because I had another idea for add-ins for the white chocolate...

We started by crushing the candy canes as best we could with a rolling pin.

And when we'd been in Australia back in October, I'd seen some Christmas coloured M&M's and just had to buy them.  I had felt they would come in handy for something around about December-time, and this seemed the perfect use for them.  

Add in some candy snowflakes, pop it in the fridge for a few hours and crush it up a bit, and Christmas 2014 peppermint bark was born!

Then it was time to try out that new idea I had - strawberry Oreo bark...  We had seen some Strawberry candy canes and bought them specifically for Mini-2, as she isn't keen on mint at all.  Once they were crushed, we added in some crushed mini Oreo's to the mix.

 I added some holly and Christmas tree sprinkles and popped this tray in the fridge too.

Cracked up and popped in a tin lined with baking paper and this new version of bark was ready for dessert too.  Merry Christmas one and all 

Oreo Brownies are a hit

We've made brownies often before, and this time I had some Mini Oreo's that were nearing their use-by date.  So what better to mix together than cookies and brownies?  Mmm.

I chopped up some chocolate and also added 2/3rds of the cookies into the mix, then dotted the remainder of the cookies on top of the brownie before it was cooked.  I had tried Rolo Brownies before, and not been thrilled with them, so was hoping for better results this time.

And I got them - these were perfect.  The right amount of cookies throughout and most pieces ( I cut them small so not every piece) had a mini cookie on the top too.  And the best bit of all?  These were for us, not a customer!  Oh yeah baby!  (Though, because we're good like that, I took some in for Mini-1's teachers - and they gave glowing reviews)

I had my first try out in the garden with a tall glass of cold milk - mmmm...

No-bake cheesecake rocks

I had made a cheesecake once before, wrapping it in foil and putting it in the water bath, and while it tasted great it was a bit of a bother.  So I haven't baked one for quite some time.  I loved the idea of Lakeland's PushPans, and bought a couple, but still hadn't made a cheesecake.  

Then I saw this recipe, for no-bake cheesecake, and I was sold.  (I should at this point have included the link for that recipe, of course, but I can't for the life of me recall where I saw it.  So as soon as I find it, I'll add it in for you.  Promise...........  Ok, great news, I just found it!)

It needed mini Creme Eggs which, despite it being their season, could not be found for love nor money.  Boo hoo.  Then we found some, in the last shop we tried (d'oh, of course).  And it was game on.

The girls were supposed to help me, as it wasn't a difficult recipe and we were making it for a playdate today (we made it Saturday late afternoon) and Mini-1 had a lot of fun crushing up the Oreo's.

But then when it came time to mix up the cream cheese and sugar etc, she didn't appreciate not being allowed to lick the beaters (because we still needed to use them) and her impatience got the better of her.   So we parted ways, me staying in The Kitchen, and her going off to join Mini-2 to play in the back garden.  No harm no foul, right?! 

I think she would have liked to stay around for the cutting of the eggs part... It was pretty plain sailing from there on in, and the cake rested really well in the fridge for the day and a half until it was needed.

Although some of the creme eggs did perish along the way (Mr Becca had a midnight feast methinks) but we had enough for the decoration required.  (Even though I used the PushPan and waited for a while once removing it from the fridge, there were a few little areas of adhesion to the pan, creating a hole here and there.   If you've any hints or tips on how to avoid this next time, please share)

And the taste - oh my goodness!  Fantastic!  So sweet and smooth and delicious, you've got to try it yourself.  I had mentioned it to one of the new school mum neighbours (we recently relocated Becca Towers, thus necessitating new school and new local friends) and given her the recipe, and she had made it too, for her Easter Sunday family lunch.  And texted me to say it was so good that she should have made two!  How's that for yummy??!

A gratuitous interior shot or two for you to drool over, because I'm kind like that.

Happy birthday to our darling Mini-2

Today is our darling daughter's birthday.  That'd be Mini-2 I'm talking about, as we're lucky enough to have two darling daughters (darling son is always loved, never forgotten, but not with us any longer).  Not always darlings, but always lucky to have them.  I had seen a really cool image of a decorated-by-a-child cake a few weeks ago that we all loved, so I bought the requisite food colour pens and was just waiting for the day.  I also wanted to try a couple of other new things, so found out her favourite colours from a limited selection and set to work.

The cake itself is a vanilla sponge with strawberry jam and orange coloured vanilla buttercream in the middle, but the cake is (hopefully) purple and white zebra striped.  Now, you'll see in a moment that their artwork is nothing like as good as the little girl in the above blogpost who decorated the other cake, but our girls had a lot of fun.  And isn't that what birthdays are all about?

The naked cake - you can see little brown marks underneath the white sugarpaste - that's the bigger chunks of Oreo cookies that I didn't macerate quite enough with the mortar and pestle ;)

 They look just like normal markers, don't they?  We'll have to be sure to keep these out of the art box

 You can see that the icing was too soft, by the deep indents made by the pens.  Ah well, lesson learned for next time.

Two very happy crafty girls!!

 

Cookies & Creme cupcakes, can we do it?

A few of the school and nursery mums know I bake, and have taste-tested goodies when I needed help to eat everything.  One of them approached me yesterday to say it was her hubby's birthday and could I possibly make some of those divine (her words) Oreo cupcakes for him?  She would have done it herself but wasn't that good at baking, and mine were so good...  With a build-up like that, how could I refuse?  Ha ha.

I had big plans for a cake for Mr Becca, for our wedding anniversary tomorrow (more on that in the next post) and had to think on my feet to see if I could slot this order in - ummmmm, yep!

I used almost double the recipe-recommended amount of Oreo's, as when I'd made this recipe in the past I'd written notes and hadn't been impressed with the content/amount of Oreo's in the mix.  As you can see above, it looks about right, ha ha.  But just in case, I added a super-cute mini Oreo on top of each uncooked cupcake in the tin.

The recipe for the icing isn't as nice as my signature one, so I don't use it.  And I feel that if you're going to have Cookies and Creme, you may as well overdo it - see how small I crushed the Oreo's for the icing?  The reason is two-fold; taste and ability to use the right icing nozzle to decorate the tops.  Larger bits of cookie sometimes get stuck in the nozzle and makes the swirls look messy.

And we don't want messy icing swirls, do we?!

Cookies & Creme cupcakes, yummy

Uh, I think I've been baking too much and too often, when I can't even remember why I baked!!  (This post is being dated chronologically but actually written a week or so after the event, oops).  I found these photos of Oreo cupcakes on my camera, so figured I may as well share them with you.  Especially as the latter one got so many encouraging comments on our Facebook page (not sure if that link will work, as it's actually for the photo, not just our page).  This first one is to show that not only do I crush lots of additional Oreo's into the batter, I also add a mini one on top, because you can't really ever get enough Oreo's into the batter!!

I did try to make it look a bit arty and just to focus on the food more - and I think I did ok. What do you think??

National Cupcake Week, UK

Well will you look at that?  We have a National Cupcake Week.  A bit of nonsense, really, but fun nonetheless.  Thus I made Cookies & Creme cupcakes today, while the girls were off being educated. 

I got to bash out my frustrations on poor, defenceless Oreo cookies then added more than the recipe suggested to the batter - the last time they simply didn't have enough cookie in them we thought.

Looks like a lot, right?

(a gratuitous shot of the lovely 'messy' biscuits, mmmm)

I also felt that I wanted more cookie, so crushed up more cookie to add into the vanilla buttercream icing.  Here's a wee before and after shot...

I used a wide plain nozzle to pipe on the icing, trying to emulate Georgetown Cupcake 's signature swirl.  But I didn't allow for some of the cookie crumbs to be larger than the nozzle aperture.  So some of the swirls simply weren't as tidy as I would have liked.

Still they tasted amazing, so that's the main thing - right?