Nutella Cheesecake

A good friend is in the Army, being all that he can be. He told me over the summer that he would be shipping out for his duties around the holidays and requested a Nutella cheesecake as a going away gift. I was only too happy to oblige.

I used this recipe: http://www.grouprecipes.com/19204/creamy-nutella-cheesecake.html

I started with these quality ingredients:

As an aside, I did not need that large of a jar of nutella.

This creation was made during the great camera/phone crisis of '11, so the photos are dreadful, but I started by food processing the cookies:


then I added some sugar (and the secret ingredient - love!):


Crust before going into the oven:


I creamed the cream cheese and snapped this shot before adding the eggs:


Before going in the oven:


After cooking and then cooling:


And a slice taken out to eat:


My soldier friend loved it!

Corset Sugar Cookies

Ugh, I really need to keep on top of this. I can't find any of the proper links now.

So my best friend Carmz shared an image (maybe a link) with my in the beginning of February. It looked like this:

but there were also butts with thongs drawn on with icing, and the piping detail was less fine and precise (read fancy lol). She suggested that I try it. I indicated with valentine's day coming up I definately would, I made them two days after.

Since it said it was just sugar cookies, I used my KitchenAid mixer Sugar Cookie recipe.

I started with these quality ingredients:





I creamed the butter and eggs:





In a separate bowl I combined the dry ingredients:





I combined them (forgot to snap a photo), chilled the dough, and turned it out onto a well floured board:





I carefully monitered the thickness, maintaining a 1/4" throughout the sections I used the cookie cutter on:





Then I cut out as many hearts as I could:




I reshaped the remainder dough, rerolled it to the right thickness and cut more:





I set them on foil-lined, well-greased pans about one inch apart:





And they came out PERFECT!!!





Look at those undersides!:





Of course I had to taste one! But seriously, look how fluffy it is and how it maintained it's thickness!



(Seriously, this picture makes me want one right now and they've been gone for like three weeks!)



Then I got the icing materials ready:





Rainbow Bright helped me melt the candy:




Then I coated the cookies and piped the icing on. I tried using the new cookie press/icing gun, it is very FAST, it will take much practice to get used to.


Here are my finished products - YUUUMMMMMMM!!

Returning...and an apology ;-)

There is no excuse when a writer disappears, but nonetheless I shall attempt one. I have not posted in nearly a "quarter" in business terms. Things have been busy. I've still been baking, but not new things, just my stalwart favorites. I was very dejected at the loss of my camera phone over the holidays. I have since purchased an exceptionally expensive progressional grade camera. Let's see what that does to the pictures...

Expect a few posts I was shocked to see that I hadn't posted yet flying out in the next few days and from there maybe we can get motivated to do some new and interesting stuff with all the cool supplies I picked up over the holidays. (In addition to the mini-cupcake maker that I can't stop using, I got a pretzel maker and a cookie press/icing machine)

Thank you all for reading (and eating!) and I look forward to many more tasty treats as the year wears on.