Ingredients

Filling
250 grams of reduced fat cream cheese (room temperature)
1 cup of reduced fat condensed milk (room temperature)
juice of two lemons
lemon zest from one lemon
1 cup whipping cream
1 teaspoon vanilla essence

Base
2 cups of finely crushed plain sweet biscuit crumbs
2 rounded teaspoons of cocoa powder
2-3 oz of melted butter

Topping
1 cup passionfruit pulp
2 rounded teaspoons of gelatin
2 oz of hot water

Directions

Base

1. Thoroughly mix biscuit crumbs, sifted cocoa powder and melted butter.

2. Press firmly into the base of greased cheesecake pan.

3. Place in the refrigerator to set whilst preparing the filling.

Plain biscuits can vary in butter content. If you find the base does not form a ball when squeezed in your fist, add a little more melted butter to ensure the base will hold together when cold.

Filling

1. In an electric mixer, beat cream cheese until softened and fluffy.

2. Add condensed milk, lemon zest and vanilla essence until well combined.

3. In a separate container, with very clean beaters, whisk the cream until firm peaks form. Set aside.

4. Add the lemon juice to the cream cheese and condensed milk mixture. Beat well. The lemon juice will start to react and cause the mixture to thicken.

5. On a very slow speed beat in the whipped cream until just combined.

6. Pour mixture onto chilled biscuit base.

7. Place cheesecake into the refrigerator for 3 hours to firm up.

Topping

1. Dissolve the gelatin powder in the hot water according to manufacturer’s directions.

2. Mix dissolved gelatin into passionfruit pulp and place in the refrigerator in a small bowl.

3. When nearly set, but still pourable, pour passionfruit and gelatin mixture over the chilled cheesecase.

4. Return to the refrigerator and chill several hours before serving.

Technorati Tags: aussie, australian, cake, cheese, cheesecake, desert, dessert

If you are like me, I urge you to try this recipe when you have time. You’ll fall in love with it. Trust me… So here it is:

Red Lobster Chocolate Lava Cakes
Number of servings: 6 persons

Ingredients:
Nonstick cooking spray
6 (1 ounce) squares semisweet chocolate, coarsely chopped
10 tablespoons unsalted butter or margarine, at room temperature
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup flour
3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
3 large eggs, at room temperature
1 (10 ounce) package frozen raspberries thawed, puréed in blender
Fresh raspberries, optional
1/2 cup heavy cream, softly beaten
Fresh mint sprigs, optional
Confectioners’ sugar for dusting, optional

Instructions
1. Spray inside 6 individual custard cups or soufflé dishes with nonstick cooking spray; then set aside. In small heavy saucepan over low heat, melt chocolate, stirring until smooth. Add butter and sugar; stir until melted.
2. Pour chocolate mixture into large bowl. In small bowl, mix together flour, cocoa, and baking powder.
3. With electric mixer at medium-high speed, beat chocolate mixture; add eggs and flour mixture; beat about 6 minutes until thickened. Divide mixture evenly among prepared dishes; cover with plastic wrap. Freeze at least 2 hours or overnight.
4. Heat oven to 375 degrees F.
5. Remove and discard plastic from frozen cakes. Bake 15 to 18 minutes, until edges are set and center is moist. Cool cakes slightly before inverting onto serving platters.

Technorati Tags: cake, Lobster, recipe

The first documented cheesecake was at an Olympic game in the seventh century in Greece. It then spread to other European countries and eventually made its way to North America when immigrants crossed the ocean to seek their fame and fortune. Little did they know that the recipe they brought with them would eventually launch a huge following of people who love cheesecake and would balloon into a multimillion-dollar industry across the world.

The decadent taste and texture of cheesecake belies the fact that it is fairly simple to make. Cheesecake lovers know that they can have this delightful delicacy anytime they want by stirring up a few basic ingredients including cream cheese, sugar and eggs, and then pouring it into a pie shell which can be made of graham cracker crumbs or other conventional pie crusts and baked.

So what’s not to love about cheesecake? It can be eaten anytime of the day or night, it’s easy to make and even easier to buy, it tastes divine, and on top of all this, it creates a feeling of well being that only comes from being good to yourself. So go ahead, eat and be jolly! Then you’ll know why I love cheesecakes!

Technorati Tags: cake, cheesecake, deserts, entertaining, food, gifts, gourmet, Gourmet food, holiday, party's

Here are some cake decorating ideas that will help you make any occasion special:

New Year’s Champagne Toast

Bake one 9-in. round and one 9×12-in. rectangle cake.

Cut the round in half. Use one half for the top of the champagne glass.

Cut a 2 or 3-inch long strip for the stem of the glass and a 2 x 4-inch section for the base of the glass. Piece them together to form the champagne glass.  To be sure all the pieces stay together, lightly frost each piece separately before you piece them together.

Place the pieces on a cake board.  Ice the top part (straight edge) of the half-round cake and the stem and base sections in white icing. Ice the bottom part (rounded edge) of the half-round cake in light yellow or light pink icing to resemble champagne.

Easter Egg Hunt   (So easy kids can do it!)

Bake 6 large muffins. Cool and frost them with green icing. Generously sprinkle green shredded coconut* on top of the frosting to resemble grass.  Place colored jelly beans within the coconut so they are half-hidden. Place small bunny toppers on the top of the muffins so they look as if they are finding the jelly beans.

*To tint shredded coconut, place coconut in a plastic bag.  Add a few drops of food color.  Knead color into coconut. Dry on waxed paper.

Spooky Halloween Brownies    (Let the kids help!)

Bake your favorite brownies. When cooled, cut into 3-inch circles, using a cookie cutter or a pattern and sharp knife. Place a Halloween stencil (available in most stores) in the center of each brownie. Sprinkle the stencil with confectioner’s (powdered) sugar. Remove the stencil. Edge the top and the bottom of brownie with tip 14 white icing stars.

Shiny Christmas Ornament

Bake a one or two-layer round cake. Ice the cake smooth with white icing. Pipe tip 5 white icing lines across the top at 1-inch intervals. Vary the shapes of the lines, making one straight, one zigzag, one curvy, etc. to resemble decorations on an ornament.  Randomly pipe tip 5 icing  balls and tip 16 stars between the lines also to resemble decorations.

ADULT BIRTHDAY / SPECIAL OCCASION

Let Me Call You Sweetheart

Bake a heart-shaped cake and a heart-shaped mini-cake.  Ice the larger cake smooth with pink icing.  Place the mini-cake in the center of the larger cake.  Cover the mini cake in tip 16 red icing stars. Add a tip 14 red icing shell border at the bottom of the mini cake and a tip 16 red icing shell border at the top and the bottom of the large cake. Write your message in pink with tip 3 on the mini-cake.

KIDS BIRTHDAY

Rainbow Train

Bake four mini-loaf cakes. (about 3-1/2 x 4-1/2 inches each.)

Ice each one smooth – one with red icing, one with blue icing, one with green icing, and one with  yellow icing. Use the cake iced in red as the engine: Make a smokestack for the engine with 2 large marshmallows. Frost them together with green icing. Attach the marshmallows to the top of engine with a toothpick. Using green icing, attach a piece of white curly ribbon or candy on the top of the smokestack for smoke and attach two white or yellow gum drops to the front of the engine for headlights. With a spatula, place a small mound of yellow icing on top of the yellow car; add small chocolate chips to resemble coal. Place two or three small plastic cars on top of the blue car.  Stick small stick candies, such as licorice pieces on top of the green car to resemble metal parts. Decorate the sides of the cars with various small hard candies for decorations. For wheels: With icing the same color as the car, attach 4 large candy discs, such as peppermint swirls, to the bottom of each car. Connect the cars with one-inch licorice whips or pretzel sticks.

Up!  Up!  And Away

Bake two each: tulip, flower, butterfly and dragonfly cookies (eight  total) and a 9×12-in. rectangle cake. Ice the cookies smooth in various pastel colors with thinned royal icing.**  Decorate the iced butterfly cookie with tip 3 colored icing dots.

Ice the bottom half of the 9×12-in. cake smooth with green icing and the top half smooth with light blue icing to resemble grass and the sky.  Place two small mounds of white icing on the blue half for clouds. Pat down “the clouds” with your fingers dipped in cornstarch. Place the tulip and flower cookies in the “grass” and pipe tip 3 green stems and leaves, if necessary.  Place the one butterfly cookie near the flower cookie and the other butterfly cookie and the dragonfly cookies in the “sky.”  Write your message on the cake with tip 3 white icing.

**Royal Icing Recipe

2 cups sifted confectioner’s sugar

2 scant tablespoons meringue powder

3 tablespoons water

Beat all the ingredients a low speed until the icing forms peaks.

(Makes about 1-1/2 cups)

–

Backyard Pond Installation

Vitilogo and Baldness

Technorati Tags: cake, decoration cake

Turns out, you’d have to search back pretty far to find a time when the Earth was cheesecake free. In fact, way back in 776 BC, long before the first Cheesecake Factory opened, the Greeks are said to have served cheesecake to the athletes at the first Olympic games. The Romans soon caught on and spread the divine taste of cheesecake throughout Europe. From there it was only a matter of time before European immigrants brought their cherished cheesecake recipes to America.

It seems that every region of the globe has embraced cheesecake in one form or another, adapting the recipe to local tastes and adding local flavors. In America, cheesecakes are typically made with a cream cheese base, but even here we vary the recipe by region. New York cheesecake is famous for its ultra-smooth texture and decadently rich flavor– achieved by adding extra egg yolks and a hint of lemon – and you’ll find other regional variations from Chicago-style to Pennsylvania Dutch. Many American bakers add sour cream for a creamy cheesecake that can be frozen without compromising taste or texture.

Italian cheesecakes generally use ricotta cheese, which makes them drier than their American cousins. The French prefer Neufchatel cheese and often add gelatin for a light and airy consistency. The Greeks might use ricotta, mizithra, farmers, feta, Swiss, or a combination of cheeses, while the Germans typically rely on cottage cheese or quark. The Japanese incorporate cornstarch and whipped egg whites into their cheesecakes for a more custard-like effect, and I’ve even heard you can find cheesecake in vending machines in Japan. Now why didn’t I think of that?

You’d be hard pressed to find a culture that doesn’t – or didn’t – enjoy a good cheesecake. Culinary historians cite cheesecake recipes dating back to the first century AD, with additional recipes floating around from the centuries that followed. You’ll find every imaginable flavor and topping in today’s cheesecake recipes, but the basic premise, baking creamy cheese with wheat and sweetener, has stood the test of time.

And let’s not forget savory cheesecakes featuring blue cheese, garlic, seafood, chiles, and other tasty cheese-friendly flavors, or vegan versions of cheesecake-like desserts made with tofu. With so many varieties, you’d need a lot more than a “Cheesecake of the Month” club to sample them all!

Clearly, cheesecake has lived long and continues to prosper. Whether it’s a birthday cake, anniversary treat, or just a “Make-Everyday-Special” indulgence, cheesecake is an ancient delight that will never go out of style!

Technorati Tags: cake, cheese, cheesecake

1. the cake is a lie

Roughly translates to “your promised reward is merely a fictitious motivator”. Popularized by the game “Portal” (found on Half-Life 2’s “Orange Box” game release for PC, X-Box 360, and PS3). During the game, an electronic voice encourages you to solve intricate puzzles using cake as a motivating perk. When you have “broken out” of the game’s initial testing phase (from threat of death), you find scrawls on walls of the innards of the testing center warning you that “the cake is a lie”.
Employee #1: Yo, Dave, manager says we will probably get a promotion if we meet the sales expectations for this quarter.

Employee #2: Yeah, so, don’t get your hopes up on that one, Ed. The cake is a lie.

Employee #1: Really, aw crap.

2. the cake is a lie

expression used when something great has been promised from a third party but it ultimately is not so.
(six months prior to Vista release) “Vista will be the greatest operating system ever!”

(three months after Vista release) “The cake is a lie.”

3. The cake is a lie

Implies that a promised reward for one’s work is false, with the one proffering the reward never intending to give it in the first place, possibly because the reward never even existed (see also: “there is no spoon”). This phrase can be used to express grief or frustration regarding any situation where there is an imbalance between effort and reward. This phrase was popularized by the game “Portal” by Valve Software Corporation.

During the game, GlaDOS, an artificially intelligent operating system and the game’s passive-aggressive guide, uses the reward of cake as a motivating factor in an attempt to manipulate the player. It is first mentioned during the “impossible puzzle room”, where she urges the player to “quit now and cake will be served immediately”. In a later stage, the player can access a “hidden” area of the testing chamber to find a previous test participant had scrawled “The cake is a lie!” among other warning messages. Cake continues to remain the promised reward for completing the test and/or obeying GlaDOS, particularly in the final stages of the game. Finally, in the ending song, GlaDOS cheerfully sings about how “there’s no sense crying over every mistake, you just keep on trying ’till you run out of cake.”

In the game, cake serves as a carefully calculated motivational device, but there are suggestions that it also serves as an essence of humanity–the ability to eat cake, taste it, and experience emotional pleasure from it–which a computer cannot experience even with artificial intelligence. In this less commonly-used sense, the phrase “the cake is a lie” can also imply that one’s emotions or the basis of one’s emotions are false, with cake representing emotion, emotional basis, or emotional capability.
Common Usage Example –
Bob: “We worked hard this quarter, where’s the raises you promised?”
George: “Sorry, Bob, the company is making some cut-backs; no raises this year.”
Bob: “So the cake is a lie. Why did we have to work so hard, then?”

4. The cake is a lie

A euphemism for a girl who has a gorgeous figure (especially the posterior), but an ugly face.
Mark: *seeing a seemingly attractive girl from behind in public* Dude, check her out.

Paul: Damn!

*she turns around to reveal a hideous face*

Mark: *wince* The cake is a lie!

5. the cake is a lie

The phrase the cake is a lie had it’s origins on one of the *chans. It started in the lolicon image board also called “/cake/” or “Delicious Cake” (Lolicon being drawn pornography depicting small children doing sexual favors.) On certain chans (Which will go unnamed) the /cake/ board shows picture of real small children instead of drawn. similar to their /jb/ or jailbait boards. Some of these picture can be found with a tag on them saying “Open with winrar”. When you do this these certain picture open text documents with links or bat info that leads to child porn or “CP”. when people would open these in winrar most of the time they would be linked to such a website as Goatse or tubgirl. The receiver of “CP” would then return to the original thread and tag it with the phrase “The cake is a lie” cake being Child Porn. This phrase is often mistaken for portal where at the end you are rewarded with cake promised throughout the game only to have it taken away. But that would leave incorrect. The meaning of this phrase was lost some time ago and was only brought back when portal was introduced and it fit so well.
“Open in WinRawr”

“OMG DUDE WTF”

“The cake is a lie”

6. the cake is a lie

To win a game, such as Portal.
JOE: How did your soccer game go?
BILL: The cake is a lie.

–

taken from www.urbandictionary.com

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