Turrón cheesecake

Another recipe of my invention! This is the second one after the honey and walnut biscotti and is basically a twist on the traditional NY Cheesecake. My recipe substitutes half of the cream cheese with the spanish soft almond nougat and changes the kind of sugar used to muscovado. Also, I refrained from using vanilla essence because I didn't thought that it would suit the flavour of the turrón.

I got this recipe right on my first attempt (incredible, I know!) though it makes a rich and heavy cake so it's advisable to either eat only a small portion each time or use half of the ammounts (quite difficult when it comes to the eggs but I used 3 medium sized eggs so you could try with 2 small sized ones).

Ingredients:

200g digestive cookies
175g muscovado sugar
75g unsalted butter (melted)
300g cream cheese
300g almond nougat (turrón) from Jijona
200ml soured cream
50g flour
3 eggs
1 teaspoon salt
50g milk chocolate (to decorate)

Method:

1. To make the base, crush the digestive cookies with a food processor until they're fine crumbs, or put them in a sealed plastic food bag and crush them with a rolling pin.
2. Add 25 grams of the sugar, the salt and the melted butter. Mix well and press it into the base of a 20cm loose-bottomed cake tin. Chill in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.
3. In a bowl, mix the cream cheese, remaining sugar, almond nougat (cut in small pieces) and soured cream until smooth.
4. Add the eggs one by one, ensuring that each of them is well mixed before adding the next one..
5. Fold the flour into the mixture to form a smooth batter.
6. Preheat the oven to 180ºC. Take the cake tin out of the fridge and spoon the filling over the cooled base.
7. Bake the cheesecake for 45-60 minutes until it's set at the edges and just wobbly in the middle. If the cake is getting too brown in the top cover it with foil.
8. Leave the cake to cool completely in the tin and then unmold it and store in the fridge for at least three hours.
9. Melt the chocolate over a water bath (or in the microwave, but veeeery carefully) and spread it over the cooled cake. Leave the cake in the fridge for another 15 minutes or till the chocolate hardens.

Meringue cake: Pavlova down-under style

I made this cake last summer but I completely forgot about it until today, and I only remembered because I saw the photographs while preparing another post (that now I´m going to delay till next week ^_^U)

The recipe comes from Audax Artifex's blog and I've had it in my bookmarks ever since the post was published. The cake was as soft and cotton like as I was hopping it would be and the fresh fruits (kiwi and banana in my case) add a nice touch to it though it could have been better without the wipped cream. Because the original post is waaay more complete than anything I could make (especially cause I've forgotten the amounts in grams that I used) I won't repeat the recipe here but encourage you to check the original one. The only thing that I can add is that it's delicious and makes a great summer dessert ^w^