Mini cheesecakes! A report!

[which_chick]

Yesterday I mentioned I was attempting mini cheesecakes using the smash cake pans I had purchased some time ago. And so I attempted.



Here's a picture of the one I delivered to Lala this morning for her birthday-weekend breakfast:



Cooking time needed to be adjusted slightly but otherwise it went fine and they decanted nicely from the silicone smash cake pans. Yay!

The cheesecake topping in my world is sour Montmorency cherries because of course it is. I picked them over the summer with my friend Lala up at the local orchard (Ridgetop) where I about fell off the ladder and bruised the shit out of my leg. I was going to tell you about that but was distracted by actual government people proposing #bountiesforillegals, but better late than never:

Bruise (this was three days later for peak color):



Beautiful, perfectly ripe, delicious Montmorency sour cherries:



I don't remember how many pounds of cherries we picked, but it was double digits and I have a whole bunch left for further sour cherry offerings. They are delicious.

The amount of cheesecake batter needed for 6 smash cake pans is about two tablespoons less than the amount of cheesecake batter generated by the recipe I use. Mine is lime flavored because Lala does not like lemon in sweet items. (Except lemonade, and it's OK in savory items. No lemon meringue pie, no lemon bars, no lemon sand tarts, and no lemon cheesecake. Lime is fine so I use lime.)

Reader, I ate the remaining raw batter. It was delicious. I do not wish to discuss raw eggs. I feel fine and do not regret my life choices.

It is snowing today, which looks lovely and which is predicted to be between 3 and 14 inches, which is a lot of variability. We'll get what we get. Right now, the woods look pretty but if it keeps snowing as predicted I'll probably have to go deal with it. *ugh*

Here's the lovely, before I have to deal with it:

Comments

[ranunculus]

It looks like there is a lot of "dealing with" potential!

Cheese cake looks very tempting!

[which_chick]

Happily the ground was warm enough that despite it snowing all day and half the night, we had a non-plowable (under 4") snow event. Daytime temps this week should be above freezing and it should resolve without any intervention from me, so yay.

[adafrog]

yum.

Great picture.

[spiffikins]

That looks AMAZING. I would be SO impressed if someone made me that for a birthday cake!

Also, what is wrong with Lala? Lemon is the BOMB - "No lemon meringue pie, no lemon bars, no lemon sand tarts, and no lemon cheesecake" - MOAR FOR THE REST OF US, I GUESS!

What is a "smash cake pan" though? what makes it "smash" ?

That is very pretty but no thank u.

[which_chick]

I made six of them (one was consumed by me for quality control but she got the other five).

I'm not sure what the issue is with lemon sweets but I just make them into lime instead. That works ok.

A "smash cake pan" is the utility name for small cake pans like the ones that I used to make this and the previous small cake efforts. They are sold, mostly to people with small children, for "smash cakes" which are small birthday cakes -- decorated and pretty -- that you put in front of a very small child (age 1, 2, or 3) and then take pictures of the child mauling the cake like a lion with a gazelle, as if the adorable, pastel-wearing tot were a predator on the Serengeti.

This is a thing people do. I mean, it's not a thing I do, but it is a thing people do.

If you search amazon for "smash cake pans" you will 100% get the results that will lead you to buy the things I have.

[spiffikins]

Ah, so the pan does not smash the cake, the pan makes a smashable cake! makes sense.

Also reminds me of my 4th birthday party - really my ONLY birthday party as I think my mom instantly regretted doing it.

She had made the cake (angel food with chocolate frosting) and had it sitting on the counter. At some point, my 2 year old brother managed to clamber up and reach up and GRAB handfuls of cake - she walked into the kitchen and he was just stuffing his face with chocolate frosted cake.

So, whilst we were playing, she had to make a WHOLE OTHER CAKE, let it cool, and frost it - so that we had a "full" cake for me to blow out candles etc.

I had no idea at the time, but after we blew out the candles, she took the "good" cake back to the kitchen, and cut pieces off the mangled cake for us to eat. Then she sat my brother in his high chair, put a bib on him, and gave him the rest of the mangled cake, and said "go to town, kid!"

Everyone (except my mom) won!

[which_chick]

Yeah, see, the child grabbing fistfuls of cake and making a royal mess of it, that's the photo op. I cannot understand why it has to be a whole decorated cake for the child to maul, but that is the style of the thing. And obviously having a small cake for this looks cuter than giving a toddler the whole entire cake. As well, the remainder of the cake batter can be made into cupcakes or other smash cake sized cakes (the set of 6 pans works really well for standard 9x13 cake recipe) to be fed to adults. The whole thing is less wasteful with the small cake concept.

[spiffikins]

I especially like the idea that I could make a cake and freeze 5 of them for later, and just eat one now :D

[jlumen]

Looks beautiful and yummy!

I do not understand smash cakes, at all. I have enough messes to clean up.

[mistressofmuses]

That is a wonderful looking cheesecake.

And a spectacular bruise.

Those bright red cherries look fake, like the platonic idea of what you picture when you think of red cherries.

Quite the potential range in snow totals. It does look lovely and picturesque, there.

[which_chick]

Thanks! I try to make reasonably attractive food but if it's ever a question of having to choose pretty over delicious, "pretty" always winds up a pretty distant second to "delicious".

I loved how red-like-a-sportscar the fresh cherries were, that's why I took a picture of them. The color is pretty accurate. (Montmorency cherries are skinned bright red but their actual flesh is a sort of disappointing yellowish. They're not colored all the way through like Bings.)

Happily we got about 3" of snow total and nothing that I had to deal with. Picturesque is a feature of where I live, it's the old exchange -- good scenery, but comes with a side of limited job options for the young generation. *sigh*

[mistressofmuses]

It's great when the food looks good, but the taste is definitely more important. I'll take delicious mess over photoshoot-worthy bland/gross/etc. any day. "This is the eatin' food, not the lookin' food," is usually the joking phrase we have for when it doesn't look quite as hoped.

That red really is wildly intense. Bummer that it doesn't carry all the way through, but the skin looks too red to be.

Hooray for the fairly reasonable snow total!
It is a tough balance. I love and long for the picturesque places... but yeah, often tough to find a decent job that pays enough to live.