Eggnog Cheesecake

 

What to do with all that leftover holiday eggnog? Well, actually, if you still have Christmas eggnog this late into January, you might want to smell it first.... I, however, ended up with three quarts of Silk Nog (soy eggnog) left after my Eggnog Cupcakes experiment, and they still weren't expiring until February. I didn't think my family would drink that much soy eggnog in less than a month, especially when all our Christmas decorations have long since been put away (um, last week...) and the carton itself is decked in its own seasonal holiday scarf. Still, there was a very appealing recipe for Eggnog Cheesecake on the side of the carton that kept calling to me every time I opened the fridge and spied the still un-drunk Silk Nog cartons. And where else was I going to find a recipe that specifically asked for three-fourths of a cup of Silk Nog?

I altered the original recipe only slightly, making my own homemade graham cracker crust, utilizing a lighter cream cheese (it has less fat and is also slightly easier on my dairy-challenged stomach) and substituting light rum for dark (we were out of dark rum, but I can also justify this one with the fact that it keeps the cheesecake looking more light golden. While cookies should generally be baked to a golden brown, cheese generally shouldn't...).

Thus, with such substitutions in place, my first ever Eggnog Cheesecake was born!

Ingredients:

For the crust:
1 and 3/4 cups graham cracker crumbs (place graham crackers in a plastic baggie and hammer the heck out of them! Or roll them over with a rolling pin. Or whip out the food processor. It's okay to be vicious here, so have fun with it).
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup butter, melted

For the filling:
16 oz. (2 packages, 8 oz. each) reduced fat cream cheese
1/2 cup sugar
2 Tablespoons whole wheat pastry flour (any flour will do)
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
2 Tablespoons light rum
3/4 cup Silk Nog (soy eggnog)
2 eggs


Directions:


1.) Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. In a large bowl, combine the graham cracker crumbs, butter, and sugar. Press the mixture flat into the bottom of a 9-inch cake pan that's been greased with nonstick cooking spray.

2.) In another bowl (or you could just rinse out the first one like I did), beat the cream cheese, sugar, flour, salt, and nutmeg together until well combined (An electric mixer works best, though I used a fork and my weakling arms to work on building muscle). Beat in the rum and soy eggnog, then the eggs.

3.) Pour the mixture on top of the crust and bake for about 30 minutes. Remove from oven and let the cheesecake cool to room temperature.

4.) Refrigerate overnight, then serve cold the next day. There may be cracks. One slice might fall apart on the plate. But I think it all contributes to a nice rustic look. This cheesecake isn't hoity toity. But it does look decent, removes easily enough from the pan, and tastes absolutely delicious when combined with that graham cracker crunch.

If you really want it to look as fancy and crack-free as possible, you can try baking the cheesecake in a hot water bath as I did for my Creme Brulee (a dessert that truly is hoity toity no matter how rustic you try to dress it down). In the end, however, your guests, family, friends, or whoever you're serving will not remember what Eggnog Cheesecake looked like. They will remember what it tasted like. Rum. Oh yeah, and eggnog. But...rum.

Guilt-Free Creme Brulee!

And the winner is...Creme Brulee! If you don't know which "contest" I'm referring to, check out my first post of the year here, wherein I issued a New Year's challenge for outside ideas/inspiration in selecting my first treat to bake/blog for 2012. Thank you to Elizabeth of Library Eliza's blog for the idea to try my first ever Creme Brulee recipe! Knowing me, I wanted to make it healthier (and edible, given my own lactose intolerance), so my first thought was to experiment with substituting fat-free half and half for heavy cream. Be warned, this substitution does not always work! In coffee? Sure! In pie? Sometimes! In whipped toppings? I wouldn't bet on it. Kind of like with soy products, it takes a little experimentation and taste testing before sharing such a drastic substitution goodie with friends. But I wasn't going for "tastes exactly like Creme Brulee in richness and texture"--I was more leaning toward "tastes delicious and as reminiscent of Creme Brulee as possible." This is where I believe I have succeeded.

Thank you also to Visual Recipes and CD Kitchen for giving me recipe proportions to start with (how else was I to know what temperature to set the oven on the first try?), from which I made my own adaptations into the easy and Guilt-Free Creme Brulee recipe below!

Ingredients:

5 egg yolks
1/3 cup sugar
1/2 Tablespoon vanilla extract
2 cups fat-free half and half
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
Brown sugar for sprinkling

Directions:

1.) Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. In a large bowl, combine the egg yolks, sugar, vanilla, and half and half. Add the nutmeg and continue to whisk until well-combined. (Note: to separate the egg yolks from the egg whites I pass the egg back and forth between the two halves of the egg shell until the whites have dripped off into a separate bowl.  Then later I make a healthy egg white omelet!).

2.) Pour the Creme Brulee mixture into six small ramekins (see below) that have been placed in a large roasting pan (I happened to have a collection of ramekins on hand from a children's library program similar to the one I blogged about here, only we made mini pumpkin pies as seen in the third photo here on our library's district-wide blog: hendersonlibraries.blogspot.com). To make this step even easier, I used a disposable foil roasting pan from the grocery store instead of having to dig out a true piece of heavy metal....

3.) Fill the roasting pan with hot water (tap water is fine--it doesn't have to be boiling) until the ramekins are halfway submerged. This will make a steam bath! Place the entire roasting pan in the oven and bake approximately 40 minutes, or until the tops of the Creme Brulees just begin to turn brown.

4.) Remove the roasting pan from the oven and allow the Creme Brulees to cool to room temperature before removing from the water, drying off each ramekin and placing them in the fridge. Refrigerate at least one hour (though overnight is best).

5.) Once the ramekins are chilled, place them on a sturdy baking sheet and turn on your oven's broiler. Sprinkle a thin layer of brown sugar over the tops. Move an oven rack to the highest spot it will go and place the baking sheet on that rack in order to brown the tops with the fire (if you are the fortunate owner of a kitchen torch--I am not--use that instead. I'd image it's much easier. One of my Creme Brulees did catch on fire when my non-sturdy baking sheet bent in the oven's heat and pushed the ramekin a little too close to the flames...). Serve either chilled or at room temperature.

And you're done! What a simple way to make an elegant, and (somewhat?) healthy dessert! The top might not be as hard as a traditional Creme Brulee that you have to crack (I suspect the kitchen torch might help with this), but the flavor is spot on! My addition of nutmeg also gave this treat a more wintery feel and gave the custard part of the brulee more of a "French Toast"-batter look (I tend to add cinnamon to my French Toast). Which means you could even have it for breakfast! What--that's not weird...I had one for breakfast....

So if you're really looking to try something new in 2012, look no further! You won't have to worry about breaking any resolutions here!

And one final thank you to those who read or commented on my contest idea! Now that I have inspiration, I'm ready for all the baking that 2012 brings! Including some great goodies for Valentine's Day coming up in February. If you work where I work, be warned. There is going to be chocolate.

Happy New Year (Help Me!)

I've got an itch. Four days into 2012, and I have yet to bake anything! Well, that's not entirely true. I made a lemon cake on the night of Jan. 2 for my brother's birthday on Jan. 3, practicing my frosting and decorating skills (I need more practice, but it's fun!). The cake came from a box mix, however, since I didn't have time to make one from scratch. Now I've got nothing against box mixes--and the Dr. Oetker brand one I used happens to be more natural, less processed, and even organic (from Whole Foods Market). But if I've followed the directions according to the package, that leaves little room for experimentation and no recipe that I can post here (It would be a very short blog: Ingredients: On box. Directions: On box).

Part of the problem is that, aside from my brother's birthday, it feels like there's no upcoming occasions for which to bake right now. Christmas has ended. Fall spices and gourds have come and gone. Valentine's Day is still over a month away. I'm sure my family, friends and coworkers are tired of holiday treats by now (maybe?) and have started embracing the New Year's theme of healthy eating and resolutions. If that's the case, good for them! I fully support healthy eating, trying to incorporate whole grains and less saturated fat and no hydrogenated oils or high fructose corn syrup in all my baking attempts. So I guess the real problem is that I need help determining my next baking project. If I don't have a fall bake sale or a Christmas dinner to cook for, how am I supposed to choose a new treat from the infinite number of possibilities out there? I need inspiration!

Should it be cookies or cakes or pies? Include chocolate, fruit, or nuts? For my first recipe of the year...I'm going to let YOU decide! Send me ideas to pick from and I'll experiment my heart out! Maybe you want to see me make biscotti or scones. If you're my coworker and you crave something with icing or without peanut butter, let me know! (I'll likely be bringing extras in to work still...). Or perhaps you'd like me to invent the first ever healthy chocolate cake (I can try!). January is always a time for something new, so I'm willing to look outside my traditional staples of AllRecipes.com and the cookbooks on my shelf to get input from new, fun, exciting sources that only you can provide!

If I get any responses to this post (I'm putting it out on Facebook as well), I'll choose the one that I have the most ingredients for, and do my best to create and blog about it before the month is over. If I don't get any responses (le sigh) I'll just post my own doodles of baked goods like these...

 

...until inspiration chooses to strike me randomly.

Then come February it will be time for chocolate again. A twist on chocolate, perhaps. Maybe that healthy chocolate cake?

I just hope my own resolution to regularly exercise will help me keep my resolution to not gain weight in the face of my resolution to actually blog (and thus bake) even more this year!

Either way, 2012 is going to smell amazing!  Yes, I do love saying that phrase.