Maple Cheesecake and Charred Pears: No Cracks!

This was my first official homemade cheesecake, and I'm proud to say there were no cracks! Granted, there were definitely some small air bubbles in the batter because I turned the mixer to high for 5 seconds before I remembered that was probably a bad idea...but still! Even if there were cracks to be found, I guess it wouldn't have mattered too much since I covered the whole thing with pears anyways.

Being me, I couldn't aspire to make a ~normal~ cheesecake for my first cheesecake attempt, but no some gorgeous one I found on the internet made with maple syrup and the most beautiful burnt pears delicately laid out on top in a circular pattern. While I don't think I "nailed it," I definitely didn't fail. The pears on top were all supposed to be 1/8th inch thick, but unless you have a mandolin and super skillz, it seems pretty impossible to get evenly thin slices of pears, which is why I have a smattering of burnt and not-so-burnt slices on top. I think that's a sign that I probably shouldn't go into anything surgical in the future.

 Speaking of future and completely not food related, I just wanted to share with the world that I've been accepted into some medical school programs after several months of interviewing (and one more month to go), so there's a lot in my life I'm very happy and thankful for at the moment. It's a great feeling knowing that you'll actually get to pursue what you want to do and that all your hard work paid off and that the faith that wonderful, intelligent randos put into you was worth it. Ok not randos, but you get the gist of that incredibly run-on sentence.

Anyways, back to food. While the cheesecake did taste, as I quote my sister, "pretty good" (which is a huge compliment from her), it didn't actually taste like maple cheesecake? More like a normal cheesecake, which was a bit disappointing. After all, what's the point of putting in some real grade A kirkland signature maple syrup into your batter if you can't actually taste it? The crust was also supposed to be made of digestive biscuits, but since we're in America and shopping at Vons, I only found butter cookies. I think there must have been salt in the cookies to begin with because the crust ended up being a little too salty, and a little short. Maybe double the crust recipe next time since more is probably better than not enough, even if it looks ~rustic~.

Recipe from SippitySup

Holiday Cookies: Seasonal Seasonings and an Apology

Contrary to my incredibly passive personality that some may consider weak-sauce, I can be incredibly judgmental about things. Like how sometimes food blogs will just go MIA for months on end, and then randomly return. Or just disappear and never come back. I do a lot of judging of online food people it seems (see food photo ramblings in earlier posts). And yet, it seems the more I judge, the more I end up doing the exact same thing. So clearly I need to cut the world of internet people some slack here (someone write up a Pride and Prejudice- Food Blogger Edition or something).

Anyways, while I haven't been posting recently due to a variety of excuses I can make, I have been baking and cooking regularly. I made things for thanksgiving, I failed spectacularly on some meringues, and even made a pot of soup large enough feed a small country's army. But for now, lets just focus on the holiday season that is coming up.



Even though I don't follow or believe the religious affiliations of Christmas, and nowadays not much of the whole gift giving consumerism thing, I still find holiday music and holiday decorations to be fantastic. Not so much nativity scenes, but I'm all about the lights, wreaths, and big fancy trees in all the buildings. It just makes everything so cheery regardless of what you may or may not believe. Then again, I've grown up in the US where Christmas traditions has become deeply embedded in just the general majority culture without much thought of exactly where they came from or why we do these things. I mean, the way we count years is also based off the birth of a guy? And presents come from a clearly unhealthy man?


Obviously being a food blog, I am mainly about the cookies, not the historical accuracy or cultural implications of the holidays. Ok, so that was totally grammatically incorrect, because I'm literally a person. Not a food blog. All of that is rather fascinating, and something I could/should google if I really wanted to delve into it.



Anyways, words. Look at these gingerbread and sugar cookies. Side note: molasses tastes terrible on its own even though gingerbread is delicious. I think I'll try making a gingerbread house at some point in the future--one of the classic holiday baking projects I have yet to complete.



Gingerbread recipe from food.com.
Sugar Cookie recipe from the kitchn.
Royal Icing from Bake at 350 (I used the one batch and was able to decorate with plenty of colors with no problems).