Dangerous Baking: Key Lime Cheesecake

I spend a lot more time stumbling for recipes than I should but I forgive myself every hour of time-wasting when I come across a treasure like this.

Key Lime Swirl Cheesecake

It had me at Lime, and then knocked me over with Swirl and Cheesecake. After picking myself up off the floor I high-tailed it to the kitchen to make it.

This recipe comes courtesy of Heather from Sprinkle Bakes guest posting on Confessions of a Cookbook Queen. Both blogs are fantastic and the pictures are juicy enough to have you drooling from the start.





But these, however, are my pictures.



 I have never made Lime Curd before, much less ever needed a thermometer to bake with. I guess that goes to show how much of a fledgeling I am. But apart from some caramelized sugar it came out like a dream. Note: good dreams take the form of cheesecake.

Limes. Limes take me to places where it doesn't rain on long weekends. I used about five for the cake itself and then one more for the Strawberry-Lime Coulis.

So as it rained I juiced

and mixed

and simmered

and stirred

and baked

and chilled...

and then, of course, I ate. My family might never forgive me for bringing this recipe into their lives. You honestly can't get enough of it.

Do you want me to share? Ok, I will. But you have to promise you'll go look at the blogs they came from. Promise? Alright then, children, let us begin.



I really like taking pictures of limes.



Key Lime Swirl Cheesecake

Crust:

2 cups graham cracker crumbs (about 28 crackers, crushed)

1/2 cup (or one stick) butter, melted

Preheat oven to 325° F. Line a 10 inch pan (I used a springform) with parchemin paper. Combine the butter and cracker crumbs so that the crumbs are moist and press evenly into the bottom of the pan. Bake for 5 minutes and cool completely.

Filling:

2 bricks (8 oz. each) of cream cheese, softened.

1/2 cup granulated sugar

2 large eggs + 1 large egg white

1/2 cup sour cream

1 tsp pure vanilla extract

2 tbsp all purpose flour

3/2 cup prepared Lime Curd - you can buy this at the grocery store or make it yourself. (divided, see instructions).

Liquid food colouring - green and yellow.

1 - Beat cheese and sugar on medium speed until smooth. Add eggs one at a time at low speed and mix well after each one. Add sour cream, vanilla and flour until just combined. Remove 1 cup of batter and set aside. Pour the rest on top of the cooled crust.

2 - Tint the lime curd with food colouring until desired limey-green is achieved. Mix 1/2 cup of the tinted curd with the reserved cheese batter. Dollop the mixture onto the batter in the pan in any old way you like (while maintaining an artistic air). Dollop the remaining lime curd across that. Swirl the colours together using a skewer until you have achieved the desired artistic effect.

Wearing a beret at this point is optional but entirely recommended.

3 - Bake for 35 minutes at 325° F. Let it cool completely in the pan and then refrigerate completely.

4 - Serve in a pool of Strawberry-Lime Coulis with a dollop more on top for good measure.

And here is where I would have a picture of the final presentation. But, my friends, it's honestly just that good.

My Brain Takes a Long Weekend

These next two weeks bring the gift of back to back long weekends. It seems my brain is gone and left without me. Unfortunately the weather does not look too promising here so it (being my brain) is probably off on a beach somewhere sipping something delightful.

Even though it's just one extra day the long weekend towers over all else. It is inflated with possibility. I spent most of today daydreaming about the baking I would get done. Fair warning: browsing recipes is not something you do when you're hungry and stuck in an office.

That extra day tells me I can spend more time reading while still doing all the baking and knitting I want. That extra day leaves room for a game of Frisbee or a quick spin with my watercolour pencils. The camera can even hope to come out of its hiding place.

And even if I don't accomplish everything I had planned to do I will still have had an extra day to lie around and daydream. That alone is worth the resentment of all my unfinished projects.

Aspirations

If you've known me for this long you know I love to work with my hands. From a circle my hands can create a face on paper. In the darkroom my hands coax pictures from light and chemicals. My hands spin friendship into fabric and love into food. I love my hands and I thank them.

I had aspirations of becoming an artist but I caved to the litany of protest. I was 'too smart' as if artists were dumb has bricks. I would never find a job and consequently I would never make any money. I caved because at sixteen years of age I was still sure that what adults told me was the truth.

The TED talk re-enchanted me with art. It reminded me that no artist has to be bound to one style or identity though many artists do indeed fall into that trap. If I was to make art I would want to do it like this. I have no interest in excluding audiences sharing an obscure inside joke.

I'm not perfect. Those old fears still hold me back. I draw yet the pictures don't often reflect what is in my head. I don't feel I have to freedom to create as I would like and this upsets me. You always see these messages where you are reminded to care little for what others say and live your own life. I would be lying if I said I take that message to heart every day.

Letting go takes a second. Convincing myself to do so is a continuous and frustrating process. The little girl who didn't have many friends still wants to be accepted, included and well liked.


Why am I still afraid?

Needy Thoughts

There's a series of thoughts running a near constant loop in my head. These thoughts, when expressed, result in much eye rolling from the Lad. Let me go back a ways.

Caution - this post involves stuff about relationships (although nothing bad). I won't be offended if you want to go read something more interesting.

I was determined not to be that girlfriend. We all know that one - she saturates all mainstream movies, TV shows and songs about That-Girl-the-Singer-Likes/Has/Had. She's tiresome because she wants to watch 'girly' movies. She is sulky when her man goes to play with his friends or wants to *gasp* watch sports. She treats all other women as potential threats to her relationship. She nags. She cries to get her way. She's needy.

Needy - I desperately didn't want to be that. And I tried. And by that I don't mean acting like the Ice Princess but the more I thought about it, I didn't know exactly what counted as needy .

Well, at least I don't like chick flicks.

As it turns out, I think about the future a lot. Having never been in a real relationship before I wasn't aware that I had this tendency. Recently it spawned something more complex. What began as 'what would happen if we lived together' is growing into 'how would we raised the kids we might have together?'.

I honestly don't know where this came from! We've only begun being 20-year-olds together and, as I constantly tell my overactive brain, this is neither the time nor the place. And yet the thoughts return with a vengeance.

I still want to have adventures; I'm not ready to become stable.

However, there might be something to all this domestic dreaming. We still live apart from each other. He goes to one school and I to another. He works to make money to pay for his school. I work to gain expereince in my field (and the school thing but I don't live on campus). At their simplest form these thoughts express my desire to continue building a life with the Lad.

Only for the moment I would rather we have adventures together without all the looming questions of stability.

This was decidedly less suscinct than I wanted it to be. I'm probably over-complicating things. Feel free to pat me on the head saying 'there, there little one. All things shall come and go in their own time.' I'm less inclined to believe such things when they come from my own mind.

Twenty-Two

I turned twenty-two today and I got this tantalizingly, horrendously good cake. My Mom sure knows how to make the mouth water.

I had larger celebrations when I hit the last legal-limit milestone last year (yay, I'm legal in the grand majority of countries). I'm not officially a Twenty-Something. I got to feel special for a few days and I can't ask for more than that. Oh, and being taken out for lots of yummy food.

With every birthday I don't feel like I get wiser, or smarter, or more capable of running my life. In my mind I'm still a very shy, slightly spotty, awkward 16-year-old. I'm told that this feeling never really goes away.

Someone is bound to realize that I don't know what I'm doing. "What is this kid doing in an architecture firm?" they will exclaim in shock. "She's just pretending to be grown up!"

Do I just keep pretending to know what I'm doing until everyone thinks I am capable? To pull up a tired yet relevant phrase : fake it until you make it.

But rather than focus on where I am as a person in relation to who I was a year ago I'm going to focus on all the fun I had this past weekend. I went to the annual Beerfest and you can guess how that went. My family took me out to a restaurant I love. I received roller blades and Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking volumes I and II. And best of all, I got bouquets of lovely flowers to commemorate the simple fact that I exist on this planet.

I'm not quite ready to stop being strange. In fact, I rather prefer myself that way. Hopefully my new (and yet the same) strangeness that is a year older will continue to amuse you, dear readers.

More on my weekend adventures and why I shouldn't wait to write off-the-cuff posts before going to bed on Thursday. A bientot!

Drama Fish

I hadn't realized my fish were Drama Fish until they had fully adjusted to life in their new tank. Now, the mornings when I roll out of bed, there they are, bobbing expectantly at the side of tank closest to my bed, mouths doing that fishy openey-closey thing. I turn on the tank light and they frantically dart close to the surface.

That in itself is not overly dramatic, but then I found out what they do when I don't feed them enough. If they have deemed the Food That Desendeth From Above is inadequate, they will dive dramatically to the bottom of the tank and begin desperately (and a little judgmentally) searching for scraps in the gravel.

With a little work I could probably turn them into self-cleaning fish as long as they stop judging me. But that's just the morning routine.

When I come home from work and plop myself on my bed they all come fluttering over. Once again they watch me. I'm told that they cannot see through the glass of their tank and yet somehow they know when I'm there. Oh, my needy Drama Fish.

Thunderstorms, flickering lights and blown fuses which cause their tanks to shut down don't faze them in the least. But don't feed their royal fishninesses to their satisfaction and they'll make you pay.

And So We Drove A Lot

The Lad and I went on a road trip last week. We haven't taken one since Prince Edward Island which was two years ago. This time it was Niagara Falls; a first for me but the Lad has been there before. We did all those things you have to do just to say you did. So the Maid of the Mist and all that but I learned my lesson with the wax museums. I did not like them in P.E.I, still don't, and I'm confident that I never will.

 

It was less about the Falls than spending some hard-earned alone time with the Lad. We can probably do that at home but it was good to have an adventure while we were at it.

We had good, stupid fun. We played arcade games at the Midway and walked up and down Clifton Hill so many times we could pinpoint each garish noise. Whenever I go on vacation I have to play a round of mini-putt, so we did that too.

There was also the Botanical Gardens, the Boardwalk on the Rapids and the Butterflies. I have to mention the butterflies.

The Lad made a friend.

They were everywhere!... (in the Butterfly Conservatory). The Lad was honestly afraid I would panic and swat one which is not an unfounded fear. I'm skittish when just one thing flutters in my face, let alone a fleet of things.

I felt like all the pictures I took were the same ones being taken by everyone else. The world is filled with identical photographs of Niagara Falls. You could probably construct a perfect map of the area based solely on the photos taken by tourists.

Despite all the tourist action I feel a strong love for this region. All the travellers in the world cannot detract from it's striking and unique natural beauty. Oh, and did I mention the wine tour?

Rows of grape vines run off to the Lake.

The Lad and I played at sophisticated adulthood and signed up for a wine tour. What a delight! We were chauffeured around in a really nice car to four wineries to sample our fill of the fantastic Niagara Valley wine. We eschewed the widely available souvenirs in favour of some bottles to bring home. And wouldn't you know that the tour got more fun as the day went on? Here I insert a shameless plug for Niagara Vintage Wine Tours, they absolutely know what they're doing when it comes to guiding you through the ins and outs of wine tasting. 

So we had a great trip and I'm glad to have new pictures to share with all of you. With that I'm back to pedalling the streets of Montreal with one hand holding the hem of my skirt down.