The easiest cheesecake of ever

So as you may well know if you've been friends with me for any length of time, yesterday was World Nutella Day. As Deidre now has a job (RUDE), I was forced to celebrate on my own. Given that it's approximately a million degrees in Melbourne (AGAIN) this week, I decided to keep things simple and go with something that wouldn't require me to use the oven. Pinterest failed me, because all the no-bake Nutella things on there seem to require a tub of Cool Whip, which a) you can't get in Australia and b) I would refuse to use anyway because I'm pretty sure it's not actually food and is instead a giant tub full of chemicals.

ANYWAY.

Luckily, Google delivered in the form of Chocolate Suze's No Bake Nutella Cheesecake. And she really wasn't kidding when she said it was super easy. I used Leda brand arrowroot biscuits for the base, because I needed it to be gluten free, and they were surprisingly awesome. Annoyingly, gluten free biscuits only seem to come in 200g packets when you need 250g, but OH WELL. I also used unsalted butter because that's what we happened to have and also because I really don't like salted butter. I added the butter a little bit at a time because sometimes with gluten free stuff, the quantities of wet ingredients are a little on the high side, and I probably had 5-10g of melted butter left over at the end.

Other than that, the only alteration I made was to stick the jar of Nutella in the microwave for about 20 seconds, just so that it was easier to get out! It looked pretty promising when it went into the fridge:

When I took it out of the fridge five hours later and popped the springform pan, the cheesecake started to split. But that was quickly fixed by locking the pan shut again and running a butter knife around the inside to loosen it!

The verdict? It's pretty rich but totally delicious. The arrowroot biscuits help cut through some of the sweetness and I was really REALLY surprised at how well it set considering there's no eggs or gelatine in it and it wasn't baked. Plus, I had the whole thing made and in the fridge within about 20 minutes. TOO EASY.

How did you celebrate World Nutella Day?

K xx

Dessert Day - the vague and lazy edition

Today, Deidre and I held yet another Dessert Day. Due to both of us (read: me) being vague to the point of forgetting to print out the recipe, check the ingredients AND make a shopping list, we decided to go with only one recipe and a movie that requires negative infinity brain ability.

The recipe we chose to make was these Nutella stuffed double chocolate chip cookies. We made a couple of changes because we're lazy it's not Dessert Day if we don't. You'll need the following:

2 1/4 cups gluten free plain flour
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
250 grams butter, softened
3/4 cup caster sugar
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup dark chocolate chips
2/3 milk chocolate chips
1 large jar of Nutella

Start by creaming the butter and the sugars together in your handy dandy Kitchenaid. Add the eggs, one at a time, followed by the vanilla. Slowly add the dry ingredients and mix until just combined. Mix in the chocolate chips and hang on to your Kitchenaid for dear life because you probably should have done this part by hand. Cover the bowl and refrigerate for two hours.

Meanwhile, take the jar of Nutella, and place teaspoonfuls onto a tray lined with baking paper. We did the one and a half teaspoonfuls recommended in the actual recipe, and it was a liiiiiiiiittle too much in each cookie, so knock it back to a teaspoon. You'll need between 20 and 30 spoonfuls. In case you care, an entire jar of Nutella in blob form looks like this:

Stick the Nutella in the freezer for at least an hour. We had it in there for the same length of time as the cookie dough was in the fridge.

While the cookie dough is hanging out in the fridge, go and watch a cheese-tastic movie. We went with Rock of Ages, which delivered us such gems as "Did you just sigh audibly?" and "Concrete Balls are very heavy" (both courtesy of Russell Brand). It also taught us that the 80s featured much less blue eye shadow than we'd been led to believe, and that men very rarely wore shirts because it interfered with showing off their nipples. Also that Tom Cruise isn't a completely terrible singer, but his back looks increasingly like an old man's. And that Malin Akerman deserved hazard pay for some of her scenes. Oh, and that Catherine Zeta Jones should always sing Pat Benatar.

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After the two hours have elapsed, preheat the oven to 175°C. To assemble cookies, take about two tablespoons of dough. We used a cookie scoop to ensure ours were even:

Yes, that's an enormous amount of dough. I know.

Roll it into a ball, then make a hollow in the middle. (Deidre did the hard work on this while I stood around vaguely, manning the cookie scoop) Take a blob of Nutella from the freezer, press it into the centre, and mould the dough around it. Ensure that there are no gaps/holes, otherwise the Nutella will ooze everywhere in the oven.

Frozen Nutella blob

Smoosh it in the dough

Stick giant cookies on a tray

Bake for 9-12 minutes (ours were at the upper end of that due to being gluten free), then let them cool on the tray for about 10 minutes before moving to a cooling rack. The recipe says to sprinkle chocolate chips on the top of them before baking. We tried that with one batch and decided it was overkill, but if you want to, go ahead and add another 1/3 cup of milk chocolate chips for that purpose!

 The verdict? Holy crap, these are amazing. They're rich and gooey and Nutella-y and generally delicious in every possible way. They COULD stand to be a little smaller so that you feel marginally less like you're about to spontaneously develop diabetes just by looking at them, but on the whole they were a massive win. And really, when you're feeling tired and vague, what more do you need??? 

K xx

Dessert Day: World Nutella Day edition

Yes, it's that time of year again - the time when it's okay to consume half a jar of Nutella in one sitting!!

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First of all, I'm going to address the Americans among us. Y'all need to work on your pronunciation of Nutella. It's made of hazelnuts. HazelNUTS, see? Therefore, it's Nut-ella. Not Noo-tella. Nut-ella. Got it?

MOVING RIGHT ALONG.

My partner-in-crime for all things Dessert Day, Deidre, emailed me a list of about ten recipes while I was still in the US. Yesterday morning, we were standing in the aisles at my local supermarket trying to work out a) which recipes to make, and b) what ingredients said recipes would require. It probably didn't help that I was running a 38.7 (102) degree temperature, and was therefore even more vague and useless than usual!

Anyway, we settled on making Nutella brownies, and Nutella filled doughnuts. We had absolutely no idea how either of them were going to turn out gluten free, but what is Dessert Day if not an opportunity to potentially fail in a spectacular fashion?!

We started out by making the doughnuts, which required rising time. I say WE, but I really mean "I measured stuff out, and Deidre did all the heavy lifting to keep my germs as far away from the hands on parts as possible". We were both a little apprehensive about the whole doughnut thing, because a) gluten free yeast containing dough, and b) DEEP FRYING OH GOD. So we were pleasantly surprised when the dough came together beautifully:

Once the dough was done, we made it go and sit by itself outside on the basis that it was warm outside and surely it would rise nicely there. Instead, I think it mostly just made friends with a wasp... (To clarify - the bowl was Glad Wrapped. The wasp was on top of the Glad Wrap)

While the dough was busy making new friends, we got started on the Nutella brownies. Has anyone ever come across a recipe that calls for 1 1/4 cups of cocoa? NEITHER HAD WE. We left out the espresso powder, and used about 50g less chocolate chips than the recipe called for, because we were a little afraid of how chocolate-y they already were.

We also overcooked them a little. But when we first took them out of the oven, they wobbled very much like this:

I was going to say "But with less velociraptors...", but Clever Girl was helping out yesterday! (If you have no idea who Clever Girl is, you should probably go and watch yesterday's vlog. Hell, just go watch yesterday's vlog full stop because it's awesome)

Anyway, so the brownies were super wobbly, and we put them back in the oven for another ten minutes. Which was probably sliiiiiiiiiightly too long. Sigh. It probably didn't help that we were watching Pride and Prejudice while they were in the oven, and got a little distracted by Colin Firth...

Anyway, they're pretty delicious. But the amount of cocoa in them meant that you could barely taste either the chocolate chips OR the Nutella. Which seemed, to me at least, rather against the point of putting them in there. I'd have preferred more Nutella and less cocoa, I think...

From there, we made the dough say goodbye to its friend the wasp (which was rather more difficult than anticipated - the wasp did NOT want to go), and took it back inside to start the deep frying process. Which led to many questions:
- "How big a saucepan do you need to deep fry stuff?"
- "How many do you think we can cook at a time?"
- "How do you know when the oil's at the right temperature?"
- "Where the hell have I put that stupid thermometer??"
- "How many does this make, anyway?"

The answers, in order, are: Not very, 4 or 5, if you dip a wooden skewer in the oil and it makes lots of bubbles it's good to go, I still don't know, and about 45.

While I took care of the deep frying, Deidre was in charge of filling them with Nutella. In hindsight, I think we should have tried to get the Nutella to a pourable consistency before we tried to pipe it into the doughnuts. But pfff, whatevs, they were still AMAZING.

Plus, if you felt the need to do so, you could easily fill them with raspberry jam instead of Nutella and just roll them in sugar! (Incidentally, you'll want to use caster sugar rather than white sugar to roll them. You get a far more even coating, and they look much prettier...)

Who knew gluten free doughnuts would be such a massive success!!

Did you participate in World Nutella Day?

K xx

Dessert Day: World Nutella Day edition

In case you've missed all my squealing about it over the past few weeks (and if you follow me on Pinterest, I apologise heartily for for the entire board dedicated to it), today is World Nutella Day. (You're welcome - there's still enough time to celebrate.)

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!

Obviously, World Nutella Day was far too good an opportunity for Deidre and I to pass up, and we promptly scheduled a Dessert Day in honour of it. After much dithering and "OHMYGODLOOKATTHISRECIPEWEHAVETOMAKETHIS!!!!-ing, we decided upon two recipes: Nigella Lawson's Nutella cake, and a Nutella pound cake.

You really can't go wrong when you start with ingredients like these:

Yes, TWO jars of Nutella. And yes, it was entirely necessary.

Both the cakes were remarkably easy to make. Although roasting the hazelnuts for the top of Nigella's Nutella cake was a) a learning experience (because we had to Google "how to get the skins off hazelnuts") and b) rather painful - turns out hazelnuts that have been heating in a cast iron skillet for 15 minutes are really rather hot when you pick them up with your bare hands to peel the skins off! #whoknew

Hazelnut skin massacre

In hindsight, we may have gotten ever so slightly carried away with the number of hazelnuts we added to the top of the cake:

But it was pretty delicious. (Although I think if I were to make it again, I'd ditch the hazelnuts on the top and replace them with strawberries to cut through some of the richness. There's enough hazelnut flavour in it already, between the hazelnut meal and the entire jar of Nutella...) It's a really moist cake, almost like mousse. A small piece is definitely enough, despite Nigella's claims that it serves 8 people!!

When making the pound cake, we made a slightly fatal error, and didn't read the recipe properly. Which resulted in us not flouring the tin as well as greasing it. Which is how it ended up looking like this:

Despite appearances, it was quite possibly one of the most delicious cakes I've ever eaten. You basically make a standard pound cake, and then swirl an entire jar of Nutella through it. Uh, EPIC NOMS. I'm definitely going to have to make it again as soon as possible. But I might try lining the tin to avoid any "oh crap, it's stuck and falling apart at the same time" dramas!

So there you have it. World Nutella Day 2012. Who else is baking up a Nutella-y storm? Or, you know, just eating it off a spoon straight out of the jar? You can tell me - I won't judge! ;)

K xx