Last Monday my friend chh invited me and rojak to her house for a cheesecake-making session. It was our novice attempt but the results turned out well. No credits to me as I was distracted by our chatting, gossiping, and chh's lovable dogs, in turn I exasperated my girlfriends with my lousy zesting technique and equally hesitant egg-separating methods. Real bakers simply break the egg into the bowl and scoop the yolk up in one confident motion, they don't have time to fiddle with egg shell halves and the back-and-forth pouring thing I like to do. I did a better job reading the instructions on the recipes, though we nearly forgot the lime juice. We used up a gigantic brick of cream cheese! And we ate up her watermelon which was looking too inviting in the fridge, indeed it was very sweet and juicy.
Here's a cool tool. It looks like a cement layerer but is more commonly used in making the layers in kueh lapis. This time we used it to pat the biscuit base evenly.
The final products were a New York cheesecake and a chocolate espresso cheesecake, in addition there was also a chilled version of lime and coconut. All three cakes needed to rest and chill for about two days, when they were ready chh very kindly delivered them to my home. It was a lot of cake, fortunately they freeze well.
The husbands liked the chocolate cheesecakes whilst I preferred the lime and coconut version because citrus and coconuts are my favourite dessert ingredients. chh also made lemon curd, its tart creaminess accompanied the New York cheesecake perfectly. I still have the lime and coconut cake in my freezer, every now and then I scoop out a bit and eat it like ice cream, replaying lazily in my mind the events of the afternoon- the laughter and teasings, putting up with the heat and curious dogs, various other minor catastrophes, the triumph (and relief) of pulling out the evenly baked cake with no crack lines on the top. The cheesecakes tasted great, the making of them was just as enjoyable and fun.