A little something.. From Claire: Cheesecakes

Showing posts with label Cheesecakes. Show all posts

Friday, 9 May 2008

Back From Golden Week

5th May 2008, Tuesday

The day before was a holiday and this day was a back to work day.. One of the most lovely things about going back to office after a holiday is that there is alot of goodies from all over Japana and even the world!! Colleagues who travelled to different parts of Japan or other countries would buy a little something back and you would see the snack table in the office stocked up like Christmas stockings..

After a long day of preparation for my presentation, I met Hiromi-chan for a meal.. Apparently Tat-chan was invited, so we had to wait for him to finish his over time.. We walked around the region of Hondori.. And I saw this ultra cute dog wearing specs and a captain's hat, riding a little mobile car telling everyone no drunk driving alot.. Haha...

After that, we went to Sogo for a walk and to wait for Tat-chan too.. We each got a mochi cream and Hiromi-chan treated me!! :) Touched**

After alot of chatting with Hiromi-chan, Tat-chan finally came.. So we went to Lark's, a restaurant in the outskirts of the city.. I ordered a rare cheesecake.. Wasn't very special in my opinion.. Not rich enough.. Haha..Sweet Hiromi-chan packed some of the souvenirs her colleagues shared at office and gave me!! Ain't that sweet and thoughtful? Look at this:

7th May 2008:

It was Sakata-san's English lesson again! Today's lesson was at Ajisen Ramen.. It was so disappointing I didn't post the entry.. I think Singapore's Ajisen Ramen is better... But on the way there, I found this chair with publicity scrolls on it.. Sitting there unattended.. The signboard says Air Wave.. So pple interested in hair and make up will just grab the scroll to check out wad offers there are.. Its amazing how no one takes the basket or the chair away..

8th May 2008: Mister Donuts!!

Mister Donuts!!! With flavours so different from our typical ones in Singapore.. The have donuts of different doughs, Strawberry milk chocolate donuts with bits of strawberry in the coating.. The shape is special too.. All thanks to the treat from the Finance team!!

Tuesday, 29 April 2008

Tokyo Day 2: Garden Party at 大久保様家族 (Ookubo's family)

After an entire night of hardwork on a cheesecake, which I have not baked for a super duper long time, Tada!!!! Here's the cheesecake!!!

Unfortunately, the cheesecake cracked cuz I forgot to fill up the waterbath with more water.. Apparently their oven was so powerful that the water evaporated faster than i expected.. Apparently make up for cakes work as well as make up for humans..

Hospitality Cheesecake (Named because of the hospitality from the Ookubos)

INGREDIENTS
15 marie biscuits, crushed (Supposed to Graham crackers, but marie cookies were the only ones i found at Ookubo's place)
2 tablespoons butter, melted
2 tablespoon of brown sugar

4 (8 ounce) packages cream cheese (Using Philadephia Cream Cheese makes the cheesecake rock!)
1 cups white sugar
3/4 cup milk
4 eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
Blueberry filling

DIRECTIONS
1.Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease a 9 inch springform pan.
2.In a medium bowl, mix graham cracker crumbs with melted butter. Press onto bottom of springform pan. (Bake for 10 mins)
3.In a large bowl, mix cream cheese with sugar until smooth. Blend in milk, and then mix in the eggs one at a time, mixing just enough to incorporate. Mix in vanilla and flour until smooth. DO NOT OVER BEAT!!
4.Pour filling into prepared crust.
5.Put spoons of blueberry filling randomly into the pan, use a skewer or a fork to create a marble in the batter
6.Fill Baking tray with water after placing the cake pan in it
7.Bake in preheated oven for 1 hour. Turn the oven off, and let cake cool in oven with the door closed for 5 to 6 hours; this prevents cracking. Chill in refrigerator until serving.

Make up for cracks
1. Whip sour cream or yogurt with some sugar and coat the cheesecake on the top and on the sides
2. Add more blueberry filling and marble the cake
3. Top the sides of the cake with toasted coconut flakes

I woke up to nice breakfast at the Ookubo's.. Bread from Paul! Well, not Paulie Waulie from Aerospace, but a famous bread shop that originated from France.. You can check out Paul La Paisson du pain website or wikipedia it! I'm such a wiki fan cuz they give the best summaries..

Exploration of the kitchen made me say hello to this really cute tomato.. Haha.. Look at how perfectly cute it is!! Cute tomato...

As the title suggest, we're having a garden party!!! And this is the Ookubo family's garden!! Tat-chan told me he has a really ugly garden.. He says its worst than a forest.. bla bla bla.. But does it look that bad to you? Well, apparently, to prepare for my coming, Okaasan spent some money to get someone here to tidy up the garden...

Here's the beautiful mum and cute dad who hosted me in Tokyo... Okaasan and Otousan.. :D

Mrs Councillor and Mr Lawyer.. Haha..

ANd here's Tat-chan's beautiful and slim sister, Nomi-chan and Obaachan!!!

Well, any idea who is this guy? His name is Kazu-san... He's a doctor, and he loves baking too!!! He complimented my cheesecake was really good!!! So happy!!! And oh... He is Nomi-chan's boyfriend... This party had two purpose... First is to welcome me and second was MEET THE PARENTS session for Kazu-san...
HEre's everyone in the party.. Obaachan not here.. She was tired.. So she went to sleep..Haha...
What did we have?? Alot of food!!!!! There's cheese and crackers and vegetables!! I was supposed to help with cutting these.. But i overslept.. Sorry to Okaasan and Nomi-chan..

We had top grade beef that Okaasan bought.. Tat-chan barbequed it and we ate it.. It tastes so good!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Its really expensive... I know Jingwei won't eat this~~

You can see tempura in the background... That was fried with alot of hardwork by obaachan.. But she fried so much we could not finish most of it despite how good it tastes.. Haha...

And after that, we chatted in the living room on the second level... till almost midnight!!!! Tat-chan was offering tips on renovation since Kazu-san was interested in purchasing a house... Tat-chan sounded so professional.... Like an experienced architect... Though they spoke in Japanese, I could feel his professionalism.. Even Nomi-chan agreed with me.. HAha..

All right... Its late when I ended this day and when I end this entry.. So wait for the next Tokyo entry!!

Saturday, 29 December 2007

Tiramisu Cheesecake

Remember my previous entry on the Tiramisu? Well, here, we have the Tiramisu cheesecake.. Insteap of having the sponge fingers inside the Mascapone Cointreau Misture, it forms a beautiful ring aroung the Mascapone Cointreau Mixture.. The sponge fingers are soaked in Kahlua coffee syrup and the base is coffee kahlua biscuit..

Isn't it a beauty? Its totally love at first sight.. The taste is really powerful... In fact, the taste from the alcohol brings out the flavout of MAscapone cheesereally well... The top Marble is the coffee Kahlua syrup, marbled on the Cheese mixture... Yummilicious!!!

If you notice,the cup wasn't well place, so it looks abit sang-ngat... :P

After getting this done (I kinda got this done yesterday before going Yanru's party, but no time since Paul came to pick me and I was still baking.. Haha.. But I finished making it when I got home...) The Tiramisu was just like ice cream when you freeze it... Except that the base was kinda hard.. Haha...

After I got it done, I quickly packed up and took a bus to Far East plaza to meet the Pig on the picture.. Haha... We walked in Isetan's Japan supermarket.. It was kind of a preview of my life in Japan.. :P Oh well.. :P We bought Kettle;'s new flavour of chips: Krinkle Cut Salt and Black Pepper... Its really good!!!

After that, mum and dad were kinda in town liaoz, so we went to meet them.. Poor Dave had a leg injury... So we took our ba-long-long time to walk to meet mum and dad...

Mum and dad booked the Shashilk restaurant to celebrate the birthday of the beauty on the left...

My favourite dish at the restaurant? The Baked Alaska (Daddy calls it Bomb Alaska!! And I keep remembering it as bomb ALaska!!) But its really good... Ice cream with a layer of cake sponge covering it, covered with egg whites meringue and fruits... baked till there's a few burnts as you can see..

They den light up the liqour with fire, pour over the Alaska and....

Voila! A burning ice cream cake!

HEre's me at T3.. Dave's dad treated us at Swensen's at T2..T3 isn't operational yet, but I found out my flight on the 9th Jan night would be at T3!! So i'll be at the airport at 9pm to explore!! Hehe!!

Friday, 21 December 2007

Meeting Sannin... and one of the most tasty cheesecakes in the world!!!!!!!!!

I would be meeting Sannin today in town... But before that, there some things I had to do... Thanks to my late blogging, I kinda foget what happened.. But Dave and I delivered the cupcakes to the Andrew and Grace home.. So before I made a move to pick Dave, I packed a slice of this for Dave and Two slices for sannina nd Choon FEi to try..

This is Hazelnut cheesecake!!! I added abit of Baileys just for the extra flavour.. and the Cheesecake had loads of toasted hazelnuts and grated chocolate in it... ITs really very very very very good.. I'm uber serious about this... Despite the high cost of the ingredients for this cheesecake, I'm really glad that its tasty... Yummy!!!

So after Dave and I distributed cupcakes and the Andrew and Grace home, I dropped Dave back home and made my way to centrepoint... Roar!!! The traffic plus the ERP plus the parking... This has forced me to give up driving.. SO I guess its public transpot for me now... Haha... Apologies to Sannin and Choon Fei for being so late... :P

we had ramen for dinner at some restaurant in centrepoint.. the ramen was one for one.. So an $8 bowl of remen make it $4 instead..Its edible..but not fantastic.. The noodles felt like maggi mee.. haha... Den we did some Christmas shopping.. Poor elvin couldn't find the chocolates he wanted so he ordered 10 boxes of chocolate gift boxes from me!!! Yeah!!! Sho happy!!!!

Here's a photo Choon Fei took for us... Lucky my make up not so thick.. Or else the flash would have made me look like crap... :P
We decided to meet again tml at holland to chill since we enjoyed ourselves so much today.. :P

Here's a very nice pic of Elvin and Damien!! Haha... I like eLvin's shirt!!

Here's another shot we took... Guess who's the photographer?

Monday, 17 December 2007

Tiramisu

I remember making Tiramisu.. But I can't seem to remember wad I did before that.. Sponge fingers for my Tiramisu? Oh well, Was gonna teach Sophie.. The two of us were in this super nua mode... Wonder if Sophie listened to half of the things I was teaching.. Check out her collection of books.. I have to show everyone how messy her table is.. Haha!!

I had to take a photo of this.. Because thanks to Sophie, I finally had an idea where to hand my accessories.. After that, Sophie was gonna follow me to town to meet her friends.. I was gonna meet Suat and Jiemei... Den I couldn't believe I was doing my make up with my student at ehr place.. Well, I was waiting for her to dress up.. SO might as well right?

The blockage of Wisma to the Orchard MRT has caused a million and one inconvenience for everyone.. Especially when it was raining... Roar!!! I had to siam all the dirty water and the great and huge crowds in Orchard... But it didn't help lar... -_-'''

Went all the way to stupid MRT.. Den land up Suat and JM was at Wisma.. had to go through the muds and crowds back there... ROAR!!!!! Suat lor.. Never tell me!! Haha.. But oh well, just walk back.. I was only thinking of dinner, so wadever lar... So we went to the ever so often Food Village... WOnder where is that? Its simply the food court at Taka which neve has available seats due to the crowds... I love the Japanese food there though!! Check out my OMU Rice...

Looks yummi right?

Yummy, but it ain't mine.. hahaha.. Mine is this pathetic Modan Yaki..

Hey... Its tasty ok? Dun think it looks simple.. The sauces are nice lor!!
Jiemei was like: " Is that all you are eating?"

Claire:"What you think? I want Beard Papa!!!!!"