Mini Maple Walnut Cheesecakes for the Top 9 Tea Party

Mini Maple Walnut Cheesecakes

Foodbuzz and Electrolux have partnered to host a Top 9 Tea Party Takeover on Friday, March 25th. For theirTea Party, they hope you will share your perfect tea party recipes. For every recipe submitted by a Featured Publisher Foodbuzz will donate $50 to one of my favourite charities the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund. Electrolux has committed to donate $750,000 to this worthy cause.

For my tea party recipe I decided to make mini cheesecakes that celebrate Spring and a new beginning. The first thing I think of when I dream of Spring is not asparagus or rhubarb but maple syrup! Growing up in Southern Ontario the one thing that was constant was our annual trip to the sugar bush in early Spring. There are few smells as sweet as the aromas coming from a rustic, wood-planked sugarhouse, with the one possible exception being the maple-walnut-stuffed French toast I sometimes served on Sundays.

Lavender Cheesecake with Blueberries and Lavender Honey

Lavender Cheesecake with Blueberries and Lavender Honey

I love to create a menu around an ingredient or an idea so it was time for another personal challenge here at More Than Burnt Toast.  I continued my  B-day celebrations in Vancouver with L'il Burnt Toast over the weekend so there was no baking for the finale of My World is Blue challenge. In short there was no baking at all with the dessert chosen for my final installment due to the heat wave. There were no ovens harmed in the baking of this dessert!!!! For the past week I had taken on the challenge of creating a menu from beginning to end... from salad to dessert... using culinary lavender and infusions, each recipe incorporating a new technique.

Pumpkin Cheesecake with Walnut Topping

We are an international group of bloggers and cheesecake means many things to many people. When you think of cheesecake what do you envision?

An American cheesecake generally relies on cream cheese which was invented in 1872 as an alternative to French Neufchâtel. There are many different styles... New York , Chicago, Philadelphia and Pennsylvania-Dutch style cheesecakes. The difference between them being in the height, texture and cheese used.

LOOK WHAT I MADE!!!!

HoneyB of The Life and Loves of Grumpy's Honeybunch challenged us to come up with mentioning a few of the recipes we have managed to try in LOOK WHAT I MADE.

HERE ARE THE RULES to LOOK WHAT I MADE!

1. List the names of 2-5 recipes you tried from other blogs. Provide a direct link to the recipe. If not available, give the blog link and let the reader search for the recipe by name.
2. Shortly describe your experience with the recipe.
3. Tag 3-5 other bloggers or the authors of the recipes you listed to post the links to the recipes they have tried from other bloggers. Note: If you are new to the blogging world and haven’t had a chance to try any recipes from your fellow foodies, just pass the tag on to someone else.
4. Notify the tagged bloggers about the tag either by leaving a comment on their blogs or by emailing them.

Each and every day when I venture online and visit my favourite blogs I come across a recipe or two that I bookmark to try .....someday. The list is getting larger and larger as we speak for all of us!!! Most of these recipes I haven't had the fortune of trying yet, but my list is slightly smaller by having tried the recipes below. It is time to get some of those recipes out of the bookmark stage and into these pages.....I am working on that!!! I was surprised that I had so few to offer. I apologize to all my foodie friends whom I couldn't mention in this post because I haven't gotten around to making their dishes.

Jessy (and her dog Winnie), the talented 15 year old of Baking Blondie , had a recipe for one of my favourite breakfast foods on her site. Crumpets .Here is her original recipe for crumpets as well. Can't you just imagine all the nooks and crannies dripping with melted butter!!! These crumpets or pikelets as we call them are better than my original recipe. So this is a keeper!!








Julia's site A Slice of Cherry Pie is coming to us from England. Julia is a talented cook. Her recipe for Jersey Royal Potatoes with Feta Watercress Sauce .This is Julia's original recipe for these delectable potatoes . Although we do not have Jersey potatoes here in Canada the watercress feta sauce was fantastic on our new potatoes!!! Another keeper!!!!!!!








I was drawn to a recipe by Amber of Amber's Kitchen . This Explosive Turtle Cheesecake is bound to be a favourite in our household.This is Amber's original recipe for cheesecake here. One of my daughters favourite desserts is another version, but I do like this chocolate cheesecake version as well.




















Peter, in Toronto...my old stomping grounds... at Kalofagas prepared my all time favourite snack dolmades . He baked these dolmades in the oven so I had to try this method. You can find Peters original recipe here complete with lip-smacking photos and step by step photographs.













I couldn't resist Blueberry Stuffed French Toast. This French toast recipe comes from Lisa of Lisa's Vegetarian Kitchen . This was an excellent dish for this particular special occasion or for any breakfast when you want to feel special.

So who is tagged for this MEME. The 5 bloggers whose dishes I have had the good fortune to prepare. If you have time this is a fun MEME!

Jessy of Baking Blondie

Julia blogging from A Slice of Cherry Pie

Amber of Amber's Kitchen

Peter at Kalofagas

Lisa of Lisa's Vegetarian Kitchen

Explosive Turtle Cheesecake

Explosive Turtle Cheesecake

Each and every day out in the blogosphere I come across a recipe I feel the urge to try. I bookmark them and hope that I get around to making each and every one. How are you doing with that Val? Right now I have enough recipes from the Internet and the blogosphere to make something different for the next 2 years!!

From the time my daughter was a year old I would try my hand at making fancy cakes for her birthday. She had teddy bears for a teddy bear picnic; individual Hawaiian girls for a Hawaiian luau; little girls for a fancy tea party; swimming pools, school buses, unicorns.... She always delighted in each and every one. One day when she was about 8 she mentioned the fact that she didn't like icing...so then it was ice cream cakes and ice cream pizzas from Dairy Queen. Now she has moved on over to cheesecakes. It was inevitable this weekend when she was home from university that I should spoil her with her favourite Turtle Cheesecake...it was not her birthday of course...but the spoiling was inevitable.

I discovered this recipe at Elly Says Opa as an entry to her Eat to the Beat event. It was submitted by Amber of Amber's Kitchen . This is a "new to me" version of my daughters favourite Turtle Cheesecake that I thought I would give a try...caramel, chocolate. pecans...certainly droolworthy.

Speaking of Elly I won the latest cookbook "Cooking from the Hip" from Cat Cora on her site. Yay me!!! Cat was raised in a small Greek community in Jackson, Mississippi, by a family for whom cooking and eating were the center of life. It is no wonder she has become on Iron Chef on the Food Network. Look forward to some delicious and droolworthy recipes from the book!!

This version of cheesecake was delicious. I changed the original recipe ever so slightly.

**Explosive Turtle Cheesecake**

Recipe courtesy Jacob Thomas

• 1 -1/4 cups chocolate cookie crumbs (recommended: Oreo or chocolate graham crackers)
• 4 tablespoons sugar for crust
• 1 cup sugar for cheesecake4 T unsalted butter, melted, plus 3 T
• 2 -1/2 lbs. cream cheese, softened to room temperature
• 1-1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 tablespoons all purpose flour
• 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips, melted
• 1 cup sour cream
• 4 eggs
• 1 more cup semisweet chocolate chips
• 1 more cup semisweet chocolate chips, for topping
• 1 cup caramel, for topping
• 1 cup pecans, for topping

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.

2. Lightly grease the bottom and side of a 9-inch springform pan. In a medium sized mixing bowl, combine the cookie crumbs, 4 tablespoons of sugar, and the melted butter and mix together well. Pour the crumbs into the bottom of the pan and press them out evenly. Once completed, set aside.

3. In a large mixing bowl, combine cream cheese, the rest of the sugar, and vanilla. Beat together until light and creamy. Add the flour and blend until smooth. Pour in a melted cup of the chocolate chips and sour cream and mix well. Add the eggs, 1 at a time, mixing each at low speed. Fold in 1 cup of chocolate chips. Pour the filling into prepared pan, bake for 50 minutes to 1 hour, until the center is almost set. (To prevent the cheesecake from cracking you can try several things; allow cake to cool in the oven once it is turned off; invert a large bowl over the springform pan to create an environment) Let cake cool for 10 minutes, then run a knife around the sides and remove rim of the pan. Refrigerate for 8 hours or overnight.

4. In a small saucepan, melt 3 tablespoons of butter and pour in remaining 1 cup of chocolate chips. Mix together on medium-low heat. Once chocolate and butter is combined, pour warm mixture onto chilled cake. Refrigerate for 10 to 15 minutes.

5. In another small saucepan, pour in caramel and chopped pecans, bring to a boil. Let mixture boil for another 2 minutes, stirring constantly. Let mixture cool for 3 to 5 minutes, and pour onto cake. Serve immediately or refrigerate until ready to serve.

10 to 12 servings

(I drizzled both the caramel and chocolate onto the cake and also put a border of pecans around the bottom outside layer)

You are reading this post on More Than Burnt Toast at http://morethanburnttoast.blogspot.com. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to the author/owner of More Than Burnt Toast. All rights reserved by Valerie Harrison.

Thanks for the Memories Pumpkin Cheesecake

We have left The Hills behind and life continues as normal once again. Monday is always hard to get back into the swing of things for us all I'm sure..if you have a Monday to Friday job that is. Today will be extra hard after leaving the spa behind and being catered to hand and foot.

In honour of our weekend together I have reposted one of my favourite recipes for pumpkin cheesecake. I love the gingersnap crust and the caramel sauce. Somewhere around here I have a recipe for a pumpkin cheesecake with Praline Sauce that I will post as well. If it is not here it will be...I just have to locate it. We had Pumpkin Cheesecake as one of our desserts at The Hills. We also had dinner one evening at the 1821 Restaurant where I had Cornmeal Crusted Shrimp Skewers with Butternut Squash Risotto.

It always seems that I wait until the autumn and with it the cooler weather to prepare this delicious cheesecake. It is definitely a comfort food with its creamy and fulfilling textures. This is one of those recipes I am asked for often and have developed over the years, marrying different recipes and coming up with the solution I prefer.

Photo was taken at the Red Barn Fruit Stand in Enderby, British Columbia. Pumpkin season has arrived!


**Pumpkin Cheesecake**

2 cups gingersnap cookie crumbs
2/3 cup chopped walnuts or pecans, toasted
3 T sugar
6 T butter, melted
*****
3 (8-oz) packages cream cheese, softened
1 tsp vanilla
3/4 cup brown sugar
3/4 granulated sugar
5 large eggs
1-1/2 cups pumpkin puree (not pumpkin filling)
1/4 cup whipping cream
1 tsp ground cinnamon
ground walnuts or pecan halves for decoration

******************

Preheat oven to 350F.
Place cookie crumbs, walnuts or pecans, and 3 T sugar in a food processor and pulse 3 - 4 times until combined; add butter and pulse 4 - 5 times, or until crumbly. Wrap the outside of a 10-inch spring form pan with aluminum foil, then press cookie mixture into the bottom and 1-inch up the sides. Bake 8 - 10 minutes. Cool crust completely on a wire rack. Reduce oven heat to 325F.
Beat the cream cheese with an electric mixer at medium speed 3 minutes, or until creamy. Gradually add brown sugar and the 3/4 cup granulated sugar, beating 4 minutes, or until blended. Add vanilla.
Add eggs, one at a time, beating just until yellow disappears. Remove and set aside 1 cup of batter.
Add pumpkin, whipping cream, and cinnamon and nutmeg. Beat on low speed of an electric mixer just until blended. Do not over beat. Pour batter over prepared crust. Dollop reserved batter in a circular fashion and draw a knife through to create a marbled effect.
Bake 1 hour and 15 minutes, or until almost set (it will jiggle in the centre). Remove from oven; run a knife around edge of pan. Cool on a wire rack 1 hour with a large bowl inverted on top of cheesecake in pan to prevent cracking.
Chill 8 hours or overnight. Garnish with walnut or pecan halves and serve with caramel sauce.

**Caramel Sauce**

1/2 cup butter
1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
2 T light corn syrup
1/2 cup whipping cream

Melt butter in a heavy saucepan over medium heat; add brown sugar and corn syrup, then cook, stirring constantly, until mixture comes to a boil. Gradually add cream, stirring constantly. Cook, stirring constantly, until mixture comes to a boil. Remove from heat. Cool to room temperature.

Val's Rhubarb Cheesecake

When Spring finally arrives here in the valley after a long Canadian winter, rhubarb is one of the first garden plants to appear in our garden. It is a very beautiful garden plant with huge extravagant, lush green leaves and pink or red stalks. It is often considered a fruit, but is actually a leaf stem vegetable. If you cut down the leaves after the first harvest in Spring you will enjoy a second late summer harvest in August. The deeper the red, the more flavourful the stalks are likely to be. Medium-sized stalks are generally more tender than the larger ones, which can be stringy. Rhubarb requires the marriage of sugar to combat its tartness. The creaminess of the cheesecake marry well with the natural tartness of the rhubarb for this recipe I devised and is requested often.

Photo was taken in the Spring overlooking Okanagan Lake in Naramata, British Columbia. The Locust tree is in bloom.