The Sweet Things in Life...

...come from Donna Hay!

As I suspected I have cooked something out of my current cookbook challenge book before, but not quite as much as I had expected... maybe they were less than memorable? After flicking through Donna Hays Modern Classics Book 2 (the sweet edition), I found that I have already cooked:

Chocolate Ganache p. 37

Chocolate Truffle Cake p. 82 (I remember this cake being absolutely delicious, but I also remember it being one of my biggest embarrasments! I made it sometime in high school when mum & dad had some friends over, wanting to impress them... it is a layer cake and I didn't trust myself to be able to split the cake into 2 even layers - I didn't know the floss trick back then, thanks Daring Bakers! - so I got mum to do it for me... assembled the whole cake, everyone oohed and aahed over how beautiful it was... until the first person took a bite and we found out that mum had forgotten to remove the baking paper off the bottom of the cake.... to make it worse we had put the bottom layer on the top of the cake, so the baking paper was right in the middle of the masterpiece... aargh... *shudders* I am going to have to make this again just to get it right...)

Cream Cheese Frosting p. 96

Mango Sorbet p. 103 (I posted about this one on my old blog before I moved to the goodness of blogger, and also before I got a decent camera to take pictures of my food! This sorbet was really easy to make and yo can make it with just about any fruit flavour)

Yesterday, the day before my last exam for the year (when I really should have been trying to cram as much knowledge into my brain as possible), I distracted myself by making some brownies! Cheesecake topped brownies because I needed to use up some cream cheese I had leftover from making the Bloody Skull dip for Halloween. Thank-you Donna Hay for coming to the rescue and saving me not only from cream cheese going off in my fridge, but from learning too much... you are a saviour!

In all seriousness though, these weren't the greatest brownies in the world, I found the base to be very cake-like instead of gooey and chocolatey. This could be due to my new ovens tendency to burn the bottom of everything, or the fact that Donna Hay and I seem to have very different ovens... but next time I am going to play it safe and use the base from my peanut butter topped brownies and replace the peanut butter with the cheesecake part of this recipe... which I must say definitely needed the vanilla that I added to it... and you could probably get away with only making half of what the recipe says because with the amount that is written in the recipe you can't make it very swirly, there is just waaay too much of it... If you want a massive layer of cheesecake double what I have put below because I am altering how I write it here... because I can!

Chocolate Cheesecake Brownies Makes 12-16

Preheat oven to 160C. Mix together 185g melted unsalted butter, 1/4C sifted cocoa, 1C caster sugar, 2 eggs & 1C sifted plain flour and pour into a 20cm square slice tin lined with baking paper. (Instead of this base, next time I would use the base in this recipe and top it with the topping below).

In the bowl of a food processor (or using a stick blender) process together 140g softened and chopped cream cheese, 2Tbsp caster sugar, 2 eggs & 1tsp vanilla extract until smooth. Place large spoonfuls of the cheesecake mixture over the top of the chocolate mixture and swirl with a butter knife. Bake for 45-50 minutes or until set. Cool in the tin, cut into slices & serve.

So now, onto Cookbook Challenge book #13, which has been randomly chosen as Australian Womens Weekly - Lean Food. After the amount of butter that was in those brownies I just made I kinda need this book! I'll show you what I make from it next week.

Also, I will be posting a few recipes from our housewarming party tomorrow, including a couple of my staple catering stand-bys - vegetarian spring rolls & pizza pinwheels. See you then :)