Original Recipe: Paw Paw Cheesecake

Autumn is my favorite season. I get giddy as soon as I inhale that first cool whiff of crisp fallen leaves and smoke. Autumn brings physical beauty as well as a collection of truly delicious seasonal themed recipes. Like many autumn fanatics I find myself craving the traditional flavors of this wonderful season, delectable pumpkin, apple and spice flavors find their way into anything and everything I consume. But there is one fruit that is ripe around late September and free for the picking and that fruit is the paw paw! 

And what, you may ask, are paw paws exactly? Well, the Ohio Paw Paw festival offers an excellent description on their website: 

The pawpaw (Asimina triloba) is North America's largest native tree fruit. The fruit has a wonderful creamy texture and a tropical flavor. Southern Ohio is home to some of the largest and best tasting wild pawpaw patches on the planet. The pawpaw is also super nutritious and historically significant. Come wander the hills and discover why George Washington's favorite dessert was chilled pawpaw.

These little paw paws pack quite the fragrant punch. Just transporting them from tree to kitchen left my car smelling like paw paws for a few days (I would not recommend a paw paw flavored air freshener).

For the crust:

2 cups crushed gingersnap cookies

6 tbs unsalted butter

For the cheesecake

3 8oz packages of room temperature cream cheese

1 1/4 cup sugar

1 cup paw paw puree

2/3 cup sour cream

4 eggs

powdered sugar and raspberries for decoration

Preheat oven to 325°F. 

First take the gingersnap cookies and pulverize them until the crumbs have the consistency of sand. I used a food processor but a Ziploc bag and a rolling pin will also do the trick. 

Dump your gingersnap sand into a bowl. Put your 6 tablespoons into a microwave safe bowl and put that into the microwave for about 30 seconds or until the butter is just melted. Pour the melted butter over the gingersnap sand and, using your hands, mix together until the mixture can stay together when pinched. 

Using a 9" springform pan, gently press the crust into the middle and slightly up the sides. Make sure to keep the layer even. Bake crust for 10 min. 

While the crust is baking, it's time to get down and dirty with the paw paws. So, as I mentioned before, this things are smelly! They are also very challenging to peal as the majority of what is inside them are seeds. Imagine a mango but instead of having one large seed that you can scrape around, you have 6-8 seeds, depending on the paw paw. Allow to cool. 

The technique I started to develop by paw paw number four, was to peel off large chunks of the skin with a knife and then take spoon and scrape off the skin. When it came to the seeds I would use the "milkmaid" approach by literally wringing out each seed with my hand. There is a lot of effort involved but if you want a unique flavor, sometimes you've gotta work for it.

Once you have removed as much of the paw paw meat as physically possible, puree the fruit using a food processor or blender. You won't be using a lot of the fruit, so I went with my small food processor. Once the food is nice and smooth, run through a sieve to make sure you don't have small chunks of paw paw seed floating around your cheesecake.

Using a mixer, beat the cream cheese, sugar, and sour cream until light and fluffy. Slow the mixer down and add the eggs one at a time, making sure to beat well before adding the next egg. Finally, add paw paw puree.

Scrape down the sides of the bowl to make sure there are no lingering clumps of ingredients. Pour cheesecake batter into springform pan and pop that into the oven. Bake cheesecake for 1 hour. After the hour, turn the oven off and leave cheese cake in there for 30-45min. or until the cheesecake is slightly brown around the edges. To test if the cheesecake is done, gently shake the pan. The cake should have some movement so don't be alarmed if the cake still looks raw. As long as the sides are stiff with some movement in the middle, you should be good to go.

Let cheesecake cool in the fridge, preferably overnight. Decorate cake with raspberries and sprinkle with powdered sugar. Slice off a piece of that Paw paw cheesecake and enjoy.

A close up of the finished product

Presenting the paw paw cheesecake with raspberries and gingersnap crust!

Spring Birthday Cake Request: Thanks Gesine!

"David has requested a white or yellow cake with fresh fruit. Would you be able to make one for his Birthday BBQ?"Now, as much as I love it when I provide a successful dessert to a group of friends, there is nothing better than being requested to bake a friend's Birthday cake.

The request check-list was: Fresh fruit, white/yellow cake.... the rest was up to me. First I poked around Gesine Bullock-Prado's baking blog G Bakes, a blog I have been following for the past three years. Gesine's recipes provide successful results that have provided me with an excellent blend of enticing options with just the right about of challenge for my baking level. Just know that these recipes usually require a larger amount of ingredients and can be pricey if you are not buying in bulk. 

Prepping the kitchen on day 1: Pastry Cream!

As much as I would like to spend all my time baking, I do have a working life outside of a kitchen and with the Birthday party on Saturday I actually started preparing for the cake on Wednesday. One of my favorite recipes of Genine's is her pastry cream. I've used the pastry cream in a few different desserts and I thought that it would be perfect to put inside the cake with some fresh fruit. Delish! You can find Gesine's recipe for pastry cream in her cookbook Sugar Baby. The pastry cream took about an hour and when I was finished I popped the warm cream in the fridge to cool and the rest of the night was mine. To do with as I pleased. 

Thursday night I made the cake. I only had one 8" cake pan so this took a little while as each took about 40 min. to bake. For the cake I used Gesine's Vanilla Cake recipe but switched the vanilla extract with lemon. I also added some blueberries to the recipe and it turned out great!                               

Once the three cakes were cool, I wrapped them up in some cling wrap and placed them in the fridge so that they would stay fresh for Saturday. 

Friday was filling and stacking. I started by making some simple syrup, which is 1 cup sugar and 1 cup of water warmed over medium heat until the sugar has melted. I added some lemon extract to it. While the syrup cooled I brought out the cakes from the fridge and placed the first round on my cake stand. 

With three layers I noticed that my pastry cream might not be enough to fill both, or at least, I thought it would be lacking for center gooey-goodness. I still had some cream left over so I whipped that up with 1 tbs of powdered sugar for some whipped cream. Yep, perfect with fresh fruit. 

Whirring away at some heavy cream.

 So this cake is taking its sweet time and a lot of mine. Still, dividing the process up over a few days makes it more enjoyable when you only have a task or two at a time. At this point I had my cool cakes at the ready, pastry cream and whipped cream and room temperature. Next step, the fresh fruit. I decided on strawberries for the inside and blueberries for the outside.

Fresh fruit is the best

I topped bottom layer of lemon/blueberry cake with some of the simple syrup (keeps things moist), added some pastry cream, and topped that with about half a cup of chopped fresh strawberries.

Cake+simple syrup+pastry cream+strawberries= an excellent start

Before I added on the second layer I dolloped on some of the fresh whipped cream. I was getting pretty excited about this new addition to the cake.

Whipped cream fills the cake out nicely. 

I repeated the same filling rout for the second layer: cake, simple syrup, pastry cream, strawberries, whipped cream, top layer. I finished the layers off with a final brush of the simple syrup before wrapping the entire thing in plastic wrap. Before placing this baby in the fridge I slid on a cake round and then put a heavy cutting board on top. My hope was to flatten the top of the cake while keeping it all together with cake round and I am happy to report that it worked!

Ready for decoration. 

 Cool and moist cake with a beautifully flat top!

 For the frosting I returned to Sugar Baby for the Swiss buttercream recipe. This was my first time using it and I will most definitely be using it in the future.

4 sticks of butter... you might not want to knowthat

My Sugar baby got hit by a few errant splatters from a minor buttercream explosion.

For the decorations I found this beautiful idea off of Lisa Hubbard's photography site. No recipe but the image speaks for itself!

The final cake

You might not find the perfect recipe in its own, but you can combine many of your favorites to create a great dessert to remember. The cake was a success and I am happy that I could sweeten David's 47th Birthday!

Homemade Bread for the Weak: A cold and flu season recipe

When I think of small town living, I picture a great community of quirky characters (à la Gilmore Girls), scenic landscapes, and bakery. I am pretty lucky that I am currently living with 2/3 but I do tend to complain about the distinct lack of a local bakery. Humph! 

This week I came down with the cold that has been afflicting my fellow quirky town members, leaving me snuffly, exhausted, and grumpy. Oh the joy. Over the past week I had been craving a decadent chocolate cake that I had hoped to indulge with friends. Once I had contracted the cold of doom, I did not have the energy nor the chocolate desire I had once possessed. Still, my baking need was unfulfilled and my hunger for something warm from oven grew. 

Here was my dilemma: I was short on ingredient stock, so my overall baking options were limited. I wanted to stay away from anything too sweet as sugar is doom to surviving a cold; and in that case lets eliminate dairy as well. I didn't have the energy to spend a lot of time stirring, kneading, rolling, or cutting. And my throat was very sore so it would preferably be something that I could save for the following day.  

I looked through my recipe page and came across a deliciously crunchy bread recipe located on the Simply so Good website. This looked like something simple to make and that didn't require too much energy spent on my part. Once I saw that the dough needed 12-18 hours to rise, I was in!

One of the adjustments I made to the recipe was to add an extra cup of water. The dough was a bit too dry after the 1 1/2 cups was added. This is what I achieved after an extra cup was added. 

I find it comforting to work with a sticky mess on days I feel like one.

After basically dumping all the ingredients together and mixing them up, I was essentially done for the day! I promptly covered my dough and went into a NyQuil coma. 

  

The recipe instructs you to cover with plastic wrap. I always enjoy covering my dough with a moist towel.  I don't know why but it makes my dough feel a little more authentic.

I am such a fan of this recipe because I didn't think about the bread until the following day. I woke up, brewed some coffee and turned on the oven. The dough had probably been rising for about 19 hours, which turned out to be fine. Now that my coffee went down easily and my taste buds were active again, I knew that in about an hour I could truly enjoy some warm, crunchy bread with jam! Yum. 

You can't really see the dough, but it is there!

How beautiful

Dream-like crusty bread

Ta-da!

 I've used a few bread recipes in the past. A lot of them were time consuming, and some of them did not turn out as I had planned. I found myself wishing I had a traditional brick oven or something of the sort, because how else would I achieve that dream bread. Well, look no further. If a sickly person can make this, and you have the time/patients to wait it out, this recipe is a keeper!

Fancy Pants Pop Tarts

I grew up in a sugar free household which meant that there was nothing I craved more than the sugar coated, melted toxic goodness of a pop tart. They were few and far between but damn, those were the best.

Today I decided to do a bit of a throwback to the good old pop tart but with the palate of an adult in mind.

Traditional pie crust:

• 2 1/2 cups all purpose flour 
• 2 sticks cold butter 
• 1 tsp salt 
• 1-2 tbs cold water

Mix the flour and salt together in a medium bowl. Chop the sticks of butter into nice little pieces and roll your sleeves up because it's about to get messy! Using your hands, massage the butter into the flour/salt mix. Once everything seems to be well blended but just barely held together, add 1/2 tbs of water and work into dough. Keep adding the water a little at a time until the dough feels like it is holding together without being sticky to the touch. 

 Roll out into a rectangle. Fold in the top and bottom of the rectangle so they touch in the middle. Proceed to fold in the sides. Flip the "envelop" you've just created, roll out into another rectangle and repeat two more times.

Folding away

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Roll out the dough until it is nice and thin. With a knife, slice the dough into rectangles, I made mine about 2" x 4".

 Filling:

• 1 cup jam (I used strawberry)
• 8 oz white chocolate
• 1/2 almonds pulverized! 

In a food processor, blend the almonds keeping a few chunks floating around. You can add your white chocolate to the food processor or you can chop the chocolate into very fine pieces. 

Large white chocolate bar sliced into little crumbs

  On half of our rectangles, place a tablespoon of jam in the center and spread out leaving a little room around the edge. Sprinkle almond and white chocolate mix on top of jam, sandwiching with a second rectangle.

Into the oven they go!

  Using a fork, pinch edges together and poke a few holes into the top.

Egg Wash:

• 1 Egg
• 2 tbs water

Whisk the egg and water together. Brush the tops of your tarts with the egg wash and pop them into the oven for 8-10 min until the tops are golden brown.

The Yellow teacup spies oozy goodness.

 Once the pop tarts are cool they are ready for some icing.

Icing:

• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 1/4 cup corn syrup
• 1 tsp water
• food coloring 

Mix all ingredients together until you get a nice thick mixture. If you want your icing to be a little more running, just add water a TINY bit at a time. Add some food coloring and you're ready to decorate.

Teacup approves of the cooling process

Yummy pink frosting for our strawberry pop tarts 

First bite of a fresh out of the oven fancy pants pop tarts

Cheers!

 A perfect mix of flaky crust, gooey jam, crunchy almonds, and sweet frosting on top. Adulthood is not too shabby!

Taking Care of Bananas

Hello and welcome to The Yellow Teacup Bakery Blog, a place to share my home-base baking adventures! 

Today was a surprise day off! I love those little gifts of time where nothing has been scheduled and you can have an entire day to putter, and putter I did! After a run and a coffee I noticed a creepy dark banana in the fruit bowl. Every time I walked through the kitchen to fill up on coffee, there it was... staring me down. What to do? I only had one banana, not enough for a good banana bread. I looked around the pantry and found chocolate chips and some extra pecans in the freezer. Add a quick google search I found the recipe for oatmeal banana chocolate chip cookies on the Six Sisters Stuff  blog. I added some pecans to the recipe and I am so glad that I did!

Close up of the cooling cookies

Our Yellow Teacup makes an appearance

First bite and I know the banana was put to good use!

Total prep time was about 8min, baking time was 12min. When you're house smells this good, I would that means it was a day well spent.