Mini Bite sized Lemon Orange Cheesecakes

I was having a dinner party and wanted to try a dessert I hadn't made before. I was looking in the healthy dessert (like that's possible!) section on food network website and saw a recipe for individual chocolate orange cheesecakes by Giada. The little things looked so beautiful! Coincidentally, I had just bought a mini muffin pan 2 weeks ago, so thought I should give it a try!

I am quite lazy about planning ahead for parties, my husband and I decide the menu on Thursday and we end up shopping for all the ingredients on Fri evening for a Sat party. So, it's a one stop shop and if I dont find one of the ingredients in that store, I just pick up some substitute.

Well, this time I couldn't find the chocolate wafers! I couldn't believe that there were no chocolate wafers in the store! So, I decided to just substitiute it with the only wafers sitting in the snack aisle, lemon wafers. Hence, the chocolate orange cheesecakes recipe turned into a lemon orange cheesecake one :)

They are really perfect for curbing calories and still enjoying some dessert at the end of a meal (well, as long as you eat just one).

RECIPE

SERVING SIZE 

12 individual bite sized cheesecakes 

INGREDIENTS

Wafers - Lemon Wafers (1/3 cup) (or can try chocolate too)
Butter - 2 tbsps
Ricotta cheese - 1/4 cup 

Cream Cheese - 2 oz
Sugar - 1/4 cup + 2 tbsps
Orange - 1 zested (keep the fruit, you can use slices of them too)

Egg - 1
Cooking Spray/Butter - for greasing

Equipments -

Mini Muffin Pan
Food Processor/Blender
Baking dish that can hold the Muffin Pan 

PROCEDURE 

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

2. Grease the mini muffin pan.

3. The wafers I bought had lemon cream in between 2 layers of wafers. I am not sure what kind of wafers the original recipe asks for. I separated the wafers from the cream (reminded me of my childhood...) and put them in a blender. I thought they might be too lemony, so I added 2 crackers as well (used Marie Digestive Biscuit from Indian store, I guess you could use Graham crackers).

4. Melt the butter and add to this mixture and mix well.

5. Take spoonfuls of the mixture and put it in the mini muffin pan. Use something like the bottom of a shot glass and press down on the mixture to pack it tightly.

6. Place this in the oven for 4 minutes. I think this makes sure your crust is done well and won't break when you pop these eventually.

7. Now prepare the cheese mixture. If you don't have a food processor, use a blender, worked fine for me. Combine the ricotta cheese, cream cheese, 1/4 cup of the sugar, half of the orange zest, and the egg.

8. Blend until smooth.

9. Pour the mixture over the lightly baked crust. Don't fill it till the top.

10. Place the mini muffin tin in a baking dish and pour enough hot water in the baking dish to come halfway up the sides of the mini muffin tin. I read reviews for this recipe and most people said this was an important thing. Since I didn't have a baking dish large enough to hold the muffin pan, I used one of the large aluminum foil dish that I had got for a party long back.

11. Bake for 30 minutes (5 mins more than original recipe).

12. Let them cool for about 30 mins and then refrigerate for 15 minutes.

13. Take them out and using a knife, gently pop the cheesecakes out of the muffin pan cups.

14. Now, its really your choice whether you want to put the garnish just before you serve or add it and put it back into the fridge. If you do the latter, the sugar garnish melts slightly and I kinda liked that better. Anyway here are the garnish details.

Garnish -  combine the remaining orange zest with the remaining 2 tablespoons of sugar (granulated). Top each individual cheesecake with about 1/4 teaspoon of the orange zest mixture. Slice very thin slices of orange fruit and place them on top of each cheesecake over the sugar mixture. If you want more colors, stick a sprig of mint on top as well!

15. Enjoy the mini delight!

Eggless Date Cake

It was my mom's birthday recently and she loves fruit cakes. My aunt made an eggless date cake for her and I heard from Mom that it was great. So, I found a recipe online for the same and tried it out.

RECIPE

INGREDIENTS 

Seedless Dates - 15-18
Milk - 3/4 cup
Sugar - 3/4 cup (I used brown sugar)
Whole Wheat flour - 1/2 cup
All purpose flour - 1/2 cup
Oil - 1/2 cup
Baking soda - 1 tsp
Nuts - a handful of chopped walnuts and cashews

Cake pan - I used a round 9 inch one
Mixing bowls

PROCEDURE 

1. Chop the dates and put it in milk. Heat this either in microwave or stove for a bit. This is mainly to soften the dates so that you can make a paste of it.

2. Preheat oven to 350F. 

3. Once this mixture has cooled, add all the sugar and grind it into a paste.  


4. Add the oil to this paste.

5. Mix all dry ingredients (2 kinds of flour, nuts, baking soda) together separately. I used half whole wheat & half all purpose flour just to make it healthier. You could try making it completely with wheat flour as well. I might try it next time.





 

6. Now, add small portions of the dry ingredients into the paste and stir it in. It's mainly to avoid any lumps.

7. Grease your cake pan well and pour in this mixture.

8. Bake for about 30-35 mins. Let it cool and then invert the cake onto a plate. ( I didn't have much success inverting them onto a plate, the sides seemed to loosen from the pan, but the bottom was well stuck)!










9. Enjoy the almost healthy cake!

Notes

1. Will try next time with less oil, seemed like 1/2 cup was a lot, the cake was quite greasy.
2. The cake I made was kinda brittle, so maybe I'll try it with Baking powder instead. The original recipe blog said this makes the cake harder. Also maybe bake it for a bit longer.
3. Will try sans the all purpose flour and make it completely with whole wheat.  

Muesli for Breakfast

2013 is here and I have decided to take care of my body by feeding it some healthy stuff this year. I am starting off with making changes to make my breakfast more nutritious. I love cold cereals and I thought why not try making Muesli at home.

We tried this wonderful wonderful breakfast at a cafe run by Europeans during our vacation in Hawaii.  I fell so much in love with this breakfast cereal, we went 3 days straight to the same cafe for breakfast! Well, it was also for the most delicious quiche, crepes & omelettes that these guys made...

If you are ever in Kauai Island, try the Hemingway Art Cafe close to downtown and you wont be disappointed.

Muesli is basically a cereal that you can make at home and add as much healthy ingredients as you want to it. There are so many versions of the recipe out there, but anyway here is mine which turned out quite good.



You need to first make the dry cereal which can be stored. Then, when you decide to devour it, you will need a couple of more ingredients to make it.








SERVING SIZE 
About 1/2 cup is one serving and probably this mixture will give about 7-8 servings.

INGREDIENTS

Dry Ingredients -

Oats - 2 cups rolled/old-fashioned oats (I got the Bob's Red Mill Extra thick whole grain rolled oats)
Bran flakes - 1 cup (The kind with more fiber/protein and least amount of sugar)
Ground flax seed - 3 Tsp
Almonds - sliced 3 Tbsp
Raisins - 20
Cranberries - 20
Dates - 6 chopped

Wet Ingredients - 

Milk/Yogurt
Fresh fruits - Bananas, Berries
For sweetness - Brown Sugar/Honey/Agave Nectar 

PROCEDURE

1. Mix all the above dry ingredients and store in a air tight container. A serving of 1/2 cup is quite filling. 
2. Now, you can either make this a hot or a cold cereal. I haven't tried the hot version, but basically you just take this mixture and cook it in milk/water just like you would cook oatmeal and top it with fruits and sugar/honey.
3. For the cold version, take about 1/2 cup of the cereal and soak it in milk/yogurt. You can either soak for 5-10 mins or overnight. I think overnight tastes really good because the milk gets the flavor of all the ingredients into it.
4. Next morning, add honey and fresh fruits on top and mix. There! It's ready.

Obviously you can add different kinds of nuts & dried fruits to the mixture and you can soak it in juice instead of a dairy product. You can also add unsalted sunflower seeds or any other healthy dry ingredient you can think of. Go easy on the nuts and other dried fruits if you want to curb calories. Overall, I think this can be a very healthy breakfast with lots of fiber, protein, good fats and omega acids and most of all, you get to control the quality & quantity of all the ingredients.

The cold version has uncooked oats in it and if you don't like this texture, you can first cook the mixture, refrigerate it and have it as a cold cereal.