Making of: Pumpkin Pie

I went through my local grocery store and there it was: a rather big hokkaido pumpkin. I simply HAD to bake a cake :)

The recipe is taken from The Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook, just in case you wonder why I start using cups and spoons instead of grams.

What you need is:

For the shell:
1 1/4 all-purpose flour
2 tbsp. sugar
1/4 tsp. salt
1 stick cold butter (about 120 g, I usually use half a package, meaning 125 g)
4-6 tbsp. cold water

For the filling:
2 cups mashed pumpkin
1 cup sugar
1 cup heavy cream (I used single cream)
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg
1/8 tsp. ground cloves
1/8 tsp. ground allspice
1/4 tsp. salt
3 large eggs

Mix all the dry ingredients for the shell. Then scatter the butter and 4 tbsp. water over the mixture and mix again until well combined. If the dough is too dry, add more water by the tbsp. Form the dough into a disk, wrap in cling foil and put it into the fridge for about 1 hour.

Then, preheat the oven to 200°C, roll the disk out into a circle of about 32 cm and fill it into a 26 cm tart pan. Line the pan with baking parchment and baking weights. Bake for about 25 minutes, then remove the baking weights and bake for another 10 minutes. 

Meanwhile, prepare the filling. If you use canned pumpkin (no pumpkin pie filling) it is time enough to prepare the filling now. I used fresh pumpkin instead. You have to cut it in half and put both halves onto a lined baking tray and bake on  175°C for about half an hour, until it is soft. Then, scoop out the seeds and scoop out the flesh. Puree the flesh or press it through a sieve and then proceed as with the canned pumpkin.

Combine the mashed pumpkin, sugar, cream, spices and salt in a pot and cook until hot, but not boiling. Slowly whisk in the eggs one by one and heat again, stirring constantly. Do not cook the mixture! 

Pour the filling into the crust and bake for about 30 minutes, or until it does not look wet anymore. The pie might be jiggly when you take it out of the oven, but it will set when cooled down. 

The pumpkin I used made about 2 3/4 cups of mashed pumpkin, so it was too much for one pie, so I rolled the dough out thinner and thus had enough for 3 muffin-sized pumpkins :)

Making of: Chocolate Cheesecake

And yet another Cheesecake. Actually, I wanted to make my own version of Cheesecake Factory's Chocolate Mousse Cake, but the cheese mass grew so high that there was no space for the mousse left within the shell. So, this is simply a Chocolate Cheesecake.

What you need is:

For the shell:
200 g flour
50 g sugar
100 g butter (cut into chunks)
1 egg
1 sachet vanilla sugar
2 tblsp. cocoa powder

Simply put everything into a bowl and knead it with a mixer until well combined. Then roll out half of the dough into a circle (26 cm) and put it into a 26cm-springform pan that is laid out with baking parchment. Butter and flour the sides of the pan and roll out the rest of the dough into stripes, so that you can cover the sides of the pan with them.

When finished, it should look like this:

Cover the crust with baking parchment an fill it with a kilogramm of dried peas for blind-baking:

After blind-baking the shell for 20 minutes at 200°C it should look like this:

While your shell is in the oven you can prepare the filling.

4 eggs
100 g sugar
500 g curd cheese
500 g chocolate cream cheese (e. g. Philadelphia)
1 sachet custard powder chocolate flavour
1 sachet vanilla sugar

First, mix the eggs and the sugar until the mixture gets light and fluffy. Then, add the other ingredients and mix again.
Fill the cheese mixture into the shell.

Put your cake into the oven for about an hour at 170-175°C. If it gets too dark lower the temperature a bit and cover the cake with aluminium foil.

Break is over

Hi all, finally my non-posting-time is over. Why didn't I post anything within the last month? Well, first, both cameras broke (in one or the other way) and I did not have the time to search for an appropriate one and then there was a wedding. My wedding. :D
But now we do own a brand-new camera and I have already started taking pictures of cakes. Within the next days there will be a Pumpkin Pie and a Chocolate Cheese Cake and if I can find nice pictures of our wedding's cake buffet, I will post them as well.