The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat

I like to think I'm a pretty good cook. I've made all sorts of things, from your standard grilled chicken to a variety of ethnic foods including falafel, chicken tikka masala, Moroccan braised beef, coconut curry, enchiladas and so forth. My cooking career really began with baking, when my mom taught me how to make bread (Sally Lunn bread. I won a contest.) I've made the typical chocolate chip cookies, brownies, raspberry white chocolate layer cakes, biscotti, and the ubiquitous rice krispie treats. I've made mousse, custard and real pastry dough. Last year, for Jon's birthday, I tackled my first real cheesecake (the type that takes days to make, not the kind where you pour some flavored cream cheese in a pre-made crust). I felt confident. On top of my game. Nothing could stop me.

Until I tried to make a Mexican chocolate cheesecake for Jon for Valentine's Day.

First of all, we do not go in for big, fancy Valentine's Days. Neither of us particularly like the holiday and my birthday is a mere 10 days before it. We tend to keep it simple and just celebrate by cooking something fancy. In past years we've done Chateaubriand. This year we were trying beef tenderloin in an orange and poblano pepper sauce. We were having margaritas and spanish rice with it. I thought, what a perfect sort of treat! A Mexican cheesecake! And promptly found a recipe for it online.

Saturday rolled around and I began working on the cake. I was a bit confused when the recipe didn't require you to bake the graham cracker crust at all, as my limited experience with cheesecakes has required that in the past. "No biggie," I thought. "I'll just bake it anyways." And so I did. No problems so far.

The recipe then requires you to mix the cream cheese (24 oz) with 6 eggs, sugar and vanilla. So, in the process of doing this I realize that the cream cheese isn't really incorporating with the eggs and sugar. I have this sort of eggy soup with blobs of cream cheese floating in it. I try a different attachment on the mixer. No luck. Finally, I strain out the cream cheese and put it in the food processor where it finally gets to be the right creamy consistency. Now I slowly add the eggy soup back into it. Except, we have a problem Houston. There is far too much liquid than the processor can hold and it begins to seep out the bottom of the bowl. I quickly add in the melted chocolate before too much more leaks out.

Having very little hope at this point, I pour it into the springform pan and there is WAY too much batter. I set the timer for an hour like the recipe says. After an hour the thing is STILL soup. I leave it in for another hour and then it seems to be done, though looks pretty bad.

After it cools, it looks like this. The ugliest cake in the world.



I took it to Jon's feeling quite depressed that I'd spent so much time (and used up perfectly good ingredients) on something that looks like that. Somewhat surprisingly, it didn't taste terrible. Not quite like cheesecake, but not nearly as bad as it looked. However, I will NOT use that recipe again. Lesson learned.










Because I'm a glutton for punishment, today I decided to try to make homemade baklava. Luckily, this process went very smoothly from start to finish and I am proud to present these goodies:



Haven't tasted them yet, but they hold much more promise than the ugly cake. I feel a bit redeemed :)