Tuesday, February 18, 2014

TWD/BWJ: Chocolate Mascarpone Cheesecake


Let's just say it's been a bad day and leave it at that.
Except for the chocolate cheesecake, whose
only purpose is to make the world a better place.
Thank God.


I thought it might be a full moon. Looked at the calendar. Not quite. Then I remembered Mercury. Have you ever heard of Mercury in retrograde? Whenever I hit a stretch of unexplainable frustrations, little setbacks, things that stop working, people who confuse me or hurt my feelings, Mercury is usually in retrograde. And sure enough, that's the case, Feb 6-28, which means we're right smack in the middle of it now. It might just be a convenient excuse. I don't care. Had myself a good little pity party today. Wallowed in the sadness. Which is OK as long as you don't get trapped there. Chocolate cheesecake helps.

I do think it might be easier, well certainly neater, to make this the normal way with the crust inside the pan. But I'm willing to give anything a try once, and the recipe specified cooking the cake, then flipping it out of the pan and pressing crumbs onto the bottom afterward. You can't make many crumbs stick that way. Which makes all that Oreo crushing seem fruitless. Wish I'd taken a picture of the ball of "middle" cream that I dug out of those cookies. Pretty nasty really. I considered using it for sculpture material. But I digress.

  





All's well that ends well. But next time I'll press the crumbs in the pan first. This recipe can be found in the Baking With Julia cookbook, and the other Tuesdays With Dorie bloggers are here.

Here's a shoe. Close enough for Mercury in retrograde:

7 comments:

  1. Sorry you are having a bad time. I have a mantra "this too shall pass" and it works for me. Your cheesecake looks good. I think the flipping over is unnecessary too and many TWDians skipped that step.

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  2. I skipped that step and just baked the crumb crust in the pan. I too had a pile of oreo filling after scraping my cookies. I admit I ate one or two, but they're kind of gross without the cookie to go with it.

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  3. Why crush? Eat a forkful of cheesecake, take a bite of cookie. Repeat until your planets and stars re-align themselves.

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  4. I too had a pile of oreo filling!! Your cheesecake looks great with the crumbs pressed up the side!

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  5. I was joking the other day at work that mercury must be in retrograde because the past couple of weeks have been a total nightmare. However, I think it will take a heckuva lot more than a cheesecake to make my world right side up at the moment :-)
    I would love to see that Oreo cream sculpture...

    Hope things are looking up

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  6. I just could not fathom the idea of flipping the cake over then pressing the crumbs to the bottom. Made absolutely no sense to me. I did do it the old fashion way. Funny. My gardener just told me, well, gave me a Farmer's Almanac to read about Mercury retrograde! Never heard of it before. I like Arc's idea too!

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