Chocolate Vanilla Cheesecake

This was my greatest triumph at Christmas and it was so good I'm making another one for New Years Eve. The cheesecake is made in a 25cm springform tin so it serves at least 8-10 people, but as it's so rich you could probably stretch it out to serve 12. The other beauty of this dessert is it freezes really well, minus the cocoa powder topping, so it's a useful dessert to have stored away in your freezer to pull out for unexpected guests or impromptu get togethers.

When raspberries come into season I will try it again with a handful of raspberries in the cheesecake mix and a few TBSP of raspberry liqueur, that would be lovely I think.

Have a wonderful New Year. I will be resuming normal service on the blog next week.

Chocolate Vanilla Cheesecake Recipe
Ingredients: for a 25cm Springform tin
For the base
85g Hot melted butter
14 Dark Chocolate Digestives, blitzed in a processor to crumbs
For the cheesecake filling
900g Full Fat Cream Cheese
200g Caster Sugar
4 TBSP Plain Flour
2 TSP Vanilla Extract
3 Large Eggs, beaten
285ml Soured Cream
For the topping
142ml Soured Cream
Cocoa Powder for dusting
2 Cadbury's Flakes, crushed to sprinkle on top


Method:
Step 1: Preheat oven to 180c/fan 160. Line the base of a 25cm springform tin with baking paper and lightly oil the sides.
Step 2: Mix together the base ingredients, press into the tin and bake for 10 mins, set aside to cool.
Step 3: Switch the oven up to 220c/fan 200. Beat the cream cheese and sugar until really smooth (I used my kitchen aid) then add the flour, vanilla extract, eggs and soured cream. Pour the mixture into the tin and bake for 10 minutes. Turn down the oven to 110c/fan 90 and bake for a further 25 minutes. Turn off oven, open door and leave in their to cool.
Step 4: Smooth the soured cream on top and put it in the fridge to set (or freezer if freezing), then sift over cocoa powder and sprinkle over the crushed flakes.

I need help with my new camera... plus a leftover festive salad recipe

I have a new toy...that I am still trying to get to grips with *snigger*. My lovely hubby bought me a Canon DSLR for Christmas, so for the last few days I have been playing and fiddling A LOT....still haven't quite got the perfect picture though. I'm all confused (it doesn't take much) with aperture/exposure/ISO/f thingies/white balance. So, I have a question for all you really good food photographers out there.....in normal daylight conditions what settings should I be using to shoot food (and should I be doing so on manual, program, macro (I have a macro lens too which I haven't even opened yet), av.....??? HELP!!!! All hints and tips would be most welcome.

On to the salad, which is basically a concoction of leftovers from the fridge, in this case salad leaves, cucumber, apple, walnuts and cranberry goats cheese, finished off with a simple white wine vinegar dressing. It was delicious and a most welcome 'lighter' meal after all the heavy rich food I've been eating over the last few days. As much as I like Christmas, I'm now itching to get the decorations down, clean my house and get back to normal in time for the new year...hubby and kids have been calling me scrooge!

Leftover Festive Salad

Ingredients (to serve 1...the kids and hubby had cheese on toast):

Handful of salad leaves, washed

Cucumber, chopped...a small handful

1 Apple, chopped

Handful of toasted walnuts

75g crumbled goats cheese

Dressing:

Glug of White Wine Vinegar

Glug of Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Seasoning

Method:

Step 1: Combine all salad ingredients in bowl.

Step 2: Mix together dressing and pour over salad.

Cheesy Fish Bake

I received some lovely Young's Seafood products in my latest Fish is the Dish package including a few of the new products from Jamie Oliver range (my kids loved the fish fingers), haddock fillets, fishcakes of varying sorts and also three packs of the Easy Cook frozen diced fish - Salmon, white fish and smoked fish (£2.99 each). Its these last three products I used to create a cheesy fish bake.

Instead of doing the typical fish pie I decided to create a fish bake, with a cheesy sauce and crumble topping. I flavoured the cheese sauce with some thyme, onions and bay and the diced fish can be used straight from the freezer, which is ideal if you are one of those people who always forget to take things out to defrost. I served it with some peas, but if you wanted to make it more substantial some garlic bread would go nicely with it too.

Cheesy Fish Bake

Ingredients: to serve 4

3 x packets of Young's seafood frozen diced fish

1 onion, chopped

2 Bay Leaves

55g Butter

50g Flour

600ml Milk

200g Cheddar, grated

175g Plain Flour
75g Butter, diced

50g Parmesan, grated
1 TSP of dried Thyme

Seasoning

Method:

Step 1: Preheat the oven to 190c. 

Step 2: Fry the onion and Bay leaves in the butter until soft.

Step 3: Stir the flour into the buttery onions - cook for a few minutes before adding the milk gradually - use a whisk to prevent lumps forming. Bring to the boil then take it off the heat and add the grated cheese and frozen fish, season well (discard the bay leaves). Pour into an ovenproof dish

Step 4: Rub together the flour and butter until crumbs form then stir in the cheese, thyme and seasoning. Sprinkle over the fish.

Step 5: Bake for about 25-30 minutes - cover the top with foil if starting to brown too much.

Tea and Cake

What tipple do you enjoy drinking with your Christmas Cake? For me it's not alcohol (which you may find a little surprising)...it has to be a good honest cup of tea. There is nothing better than snuggling down on the sofa on a dark, cold, late December evening with a huge slice of my Walnut and Whisky Christmas Cake (the whisky icing is the best bit!) and a steaming mug of tea (I'm partial to this one). Cake and tea just seem to go hand in hand...especially during the Christmas festivities.

I was therefore glad to see Twinnings, one of my favourite tea brands, getting into the festive spirit this Christmas with their Mulled Spiced Tea Caddy containing 20 envelopes of mulled spiced tea - a rich aromatic tea with all of the flavours of the season... I'm pretty sure it would go well with a slice of my apple cake. They also have plenty of other Christmas Tea Gifts on offer too - my tea obsessed hubby would love the Twinnings Tea History Hamper containing 2 boxes of tea, a white china tea-pot (I've always wanted a white china teapot) and a pair of bone china mugs, but it's the gift vouchers available in their online tea shop that would be REALLY useful for that awkward tea obsessed Auntie and Uncle that you just have no idea what to buy. The good news is you have until tomorrow (21st December) to place orders that will guarentee a delivery by Christmas Day!

Sponsored Post

Gingerbread House

Ever made a Gingerbread House? No, me neither so when I received an email from Tesco Real Food asking if I wanted to try making one...I thought why not, how hard can it be? Thanks to the How to video on the Tesco Real Food website it really wasn't that difficult at all (barring a small incident with a boiled sweet!). The video goes through everything in a step by step manner  - useful it it's your fist time. Granted, Kate does make it look effortless...and she doesn't have two excitable children wanting to join in the decorating but it's certainly not as tricky as I had first imagined.

My effort above obviously isn't going to win any prizes (I am artistically challenged at the best of times) but it's a lovely little project to do with the children on a wet and windy December afternoon, of which there have been plenty of those over the last few weeks!

As well as the How to Video guide, Tesco's are also offering advice on all matters cooking related via Twitter. On Christmas Eve (10am-8pm) and Christmas Day (8am-4pm) they are only a tweet away, eager to help avert any impending culinary disasters in your house. All you have to do is direct your food related question to @tescorealfood and they will get back to you with any advice, tips and practical help that could literally save the day!

Thanks Tesco Real Food for sending me all the ingredients to make the gingerbread house.

Smoked Salmon Pate

A few weeks back you will remember I received this fab seasonal box from Forman and Field in association with Knorr. In it was some gorgeous London Cure Smoked Salmon, which I have duly transformed into an ideal Christmas Day starter to serve 8. A little smoked salmon goes a long way in this recipe, helping keep the costs down but not compromising on flavour or quality.

Will you be serving a starter on Christmas day, or do you and your family prefer to get stuck straight in to the main event?

Smoked Salmon Pate

Ingredients: to serve 8 as a light starter

200g tub of Cream Cheese

200g Smoked salmon

1 heaped TBSP of Horseradish sauce

Juice of 1 Small Lemon

3 TBSP Chives, snipped plus extra for garnish

Method:

Step 1; Blitz together all the ingredients in a processor, season and garnish with extra chives.

Step 2: Serve with melba toasts or brown bread.

Christmas Chestnut Cupcakes

Last Christmas I bought some tins of Creme de Marron (sweet chestnut puree) but unfortunately they did no more than linger at the back of my baking cupboard.... until today that is. Getting into the Christmas spirit I was flicking through Delia's Happy Christmas this morning when I spotted a recipe for chestnut cupcakes using creme de marrons. I decided to adapt Delia's recipe a little bit to suit what ingredients I already had in the house and came up with these little treasures. 

If you're not keen on mince pies or heavy fruit cake, these would make a great sweet alternative.

Christmas Chestnut Cupcakes

Ingredients: to make 8

150g Creme de Marron

110g Soft Butter

2 Eggs, beaten

110g Plain Flour

11/2tsp Baking Powder

4 TBSP Milk

Topping:

100g Cream Cheese

100g Sour Cream

100g Creme de Marron (handily creme de marron usually come in 250g tins)

Icing sugar to dust.

Method:

Step 1: Preheat oven to 170c and put 8 large cupcake liners into a muffin tin. Whisk together the butter and creme de marron until pale and fluffy.

Step 2: Add the beaten eggs slowly and continue to mix.

Step 3: Sieve in the flour, baking powder and fold in then add the milk and mix gently until combined.

Step 4: Spoon into the cupcake cases and bake for 25 - 30 minutes.

Step 5: When baked, remove from oven and leave to cook. Meanwhile make up the topping by mixing the cream cheese, sour cream and creme de marron in a bowl until combined.

Step 6: Spread onto the cupcakes once completely cold.

Eat Your Books

I've recently stumbled on a website that may possibly change your life.....well it will if you own a lot of cookbooks and like cooking!

The website in question is called Eat Your Books and is essentially an online cookbook search engine. All you do is add your cookbooks to your own personal online bookshelf (they also index popular food magazines and some blogs too) and then you can search your online bookshelf for recipe inspiration at the click of a button....no more hunting through stacks of books.

It's proved useful to me in two ways. Firstly if you want to make a specific dish, lets say trifle, but you aren't sure where to start looking for recipes, you can type 'trifle' into the search box and up comes all the trifle recipes in your cookbook collection. Choose the one you want to make and go and find the cookbook!

Secondly it's really useful when you need recipe inspiration. The other day I had Stilton and bacon in my fridge that needed to be used. So, I typed 'Stilton and bacon' into the search box and up came some results...I chose to make Rachel Allen's Bacon and Blue Cheese Cornbread from Bake - a recipe I had long forgotten about!

To add unlimited books and magazines to your online bookshelf costs $25/year or $2.50/month. You can also buy gift subscriptions, which would make a fab Christmas present for any cookbooka-holics in your family. However, Eat Your Books has kindly given me one lifetime membership to give away to a Jam and Clotted Cream reader.

All you have to do to be in with a chance of winning is

1) Leave a comment on this post

For an extra entry you can tweet the following

I've just entered the @EatYourBooks competition on @jamandcream food blog http://bit.ly/enFhjs

Let me know you have done so in the comments section.

Don't forget to like Eat Your Books on Facebook too...and me if you haven't already!

Competition open to everyone and closes at 5pm GMT on Friday 16th December.

Cauliflower and Broccoli Cheese

If you read my blog regularly you will know I had A LOT of cheese delivered last week from JustCheese.co.uk. One of the samples was a beautiful Montgomery's Cheddar from Somerset, which has a beautiful sharp, strong taste and mild blue veining running through it. As I was cooking some roast beef yesterday for Sunday Lunch, I decided to make a cauliflower and broccoli cheese to serve alongside (I could quite happily just eat the cauliflower and broccoli cheese if I'm honest!). You can mix and match the cheeses you use, any blue cheese would work well as would a mixture of cheddar and Parmesan. If you did want to serve the dish as a meal in itself, some fried bacon or chorizo stirred into the cheese sauce at the end would be lovely, or for vegetarians some extra veggies such as spinach.

Cauliflower and Broccoli Cheese

Ingredients: to serve 4 as a side dish, 2 as a main meal

1 head of Cauliflower, broken into florets

1 head of Broccoli, broken into florets

25g Butter

25g Flour

300ml Milk

175g Cheddar - I used Montgomery's cheddar, grated

Seasoning

Method:

Step 1: Bring a pan of salted water to the boil and add the cauliflower and broccoli, cook until tender then drain and put into ovenproof dish.

Step 2: Preheat the grill. Melt the butter in a saucepan, add the flour and cook for 2 minutes, continuously stirring. Add the milk gradually then bring to the boil - it will thicken up.

Step 3: Take off the heat, add the cheddar and stir in until melted, season and pout over the cauliflower and broccoli.

Step 4: Pop under the grill until browned on top.

justcheese.co.uk

A girl doesn't turn down cheese does she? The answer is most definitely no....especially for a girl that would rather nibble on cheese than chocolate.

JustCheese.co.uk, an online artisan cheese retailer, contacted me to see if I would like to sample some cheeses from one of their festive selection boxes called 'The Dinner Party' (£37.95). It arrived this morning by courier and contained the following;

Berkswell, a hard nutty sheep's cheese 

Brie de Meaux

Dorset Blue Vinny, an unpasturised blue cheese 

Montgomery’s cheddar

A.O.C Comte which is rich and slightly sweet 

(The Dinner Party box also contains Brillat-Savarin, made from full fat cows milk with added cream).

Each cheese is accompanied by a 'business card', containing details of the cheeses origin and flavour - useful if you are going to include them on your Christmas cheeseboard as you can impress your guests with your fantastic cheese knowledge!

Of course I will be enjoying the cheeses as they are, but I also want to use them in some recipes..... here is what I plan to make;

• Creamy Brie, Smoked Bacon and Petit Pois Penne
• Dorset Blue Vinney, Pear and Walnut Pizza
• Chorizo, Roasted Red Pepper and Berkswell Frittata
• Cauliflower Cheese Gratin with the Montgomery Cheddar and Comte

Keep your eyes peeled for the recipes coming soon.