Frozen Orange Cheesecake

Here's one to save for the holidays - it's good all year round, but I'd particularly recommend this to end a heavy holiday meal. Frozen cheesecake is always good (I have two other versions, here and here) but this one is really quite something. Orange compound might sound fiddly but can be prepared well in advance, and it's not at all difficult.


Frozen Orange Cheesecake

200 gram cream cheese
3 eggs, separated into yolks and whites
200 ml sugar
300 ml heavy cream
1 tbsp vanilla sugar

150 g digestive biscuits
50 g butter, melted

to decorate: Pomegranate seeds


Orange compound:
oranges - ideally seed-free
sugar

Start with the oranges. Scrub as many as you'd like to use - I used two, and have about twice the amount of compound I needed. Place the oranges in boiling water for one minute. Drain, and repeat twice - basically you're boiling the oranges three times, each time for one minute, in fresh water each time.

Let the oranges cool a little, then weight them. Add half as much sugar as the weight of the oranges. (Mine were 460 grams, so I added 230 grams of sugar.) Mix until completely smooth in a food processor. Let the compound drain a little if it's very runny.


Place 200 g in a bowl and let it cool completely.

Next, for the crust:
Use a springform pan. Blitz the digestive biscuits in a food processor. Add in the melted butter. Press this firmly into the base of your pan.

Cream the cheese, egg yolks and the sugar. Beat the cream until it forms stiff peaks. Carefully blend with the cheese cream. Beat the egg whites until stiff, and fold those in too. Stir in the orange compound.

Pour carefully on top of the crust in the pan. Put in the freezer for at least six hours or overnight. Take out about twenty minutes before you want to eat, and decorate with pomegranate seeds. This keeps well in the freezer.

Strawberry Delight

Here's the dessert I made for Fourth of July this year.  I found the recipe - like almost all the recipes I made this year - over at the Homesick Texan. Awesome blog, awesome book.

Seeing it listed in her recipe index, I have to admit I had my hopes for a jello-based strawberry dessert with whipped cream - something I've only had once, at my friend Rebecca's then-boyfriend Greg's home. His grandmother made it for special occasions, and the recipe was well guarded. I don't even like jello but that was indeed something special. If anyone knows of something that might be it - do let me know!

Alas, this was very different, of course - and I'm sad to say it didn't turn out all that great. The crust became really hard and thus super-difficult to slice, and the topping was tasty but hard to eat it, with large chunks of frozen strawberries. Next time, I'll slice them a lot smaller. I did add fresh vanilla to the filling, which was really tasty.

Strawberry Delight

Crust:
120 g pecans
150 g flour
60 g brown sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
115 g melted butter

Add the first five ingredients to a food processor and mix the pecans are finely chopped. Add the melted butter and whizz for a few seconds until the mixture starts to clump. Press into a springform pan,  mine is 24 cm in diameter, and bake at 175°C for 15-20 minutes. It should get a little color but definitely not too much.

Filling:
500 g strawberries
60 g brown sugar
1/2 lemon
1/2 tsp ginger, ground
1 vanilla bean, scraped out
2 egg whites
5 tbsp sugar, divided
250 ml cream

Cut the berries into small pieces or slices and let them macerate with the brown sugar, juice from 1/2 lemon, the ginger and the scrapings from the vanilla bean for an hour or so.

Beat the egg whites with 4 tbsp of sugar, until you have a stiff and glossy meringue.

Beat the cream with the remaining tablespoon of sugar, until fluffy. Fold in the berries, and finally fold in the meringue.

Spread the filling on top of the cooled crust. Freeze over night. Let it thaw a little before serving.

Lime Ice Cream with Berry Sauce

We're having very, very, very warm weather at the moment (well, for Sweden) so I'm trying my best to cool down. Ice cream is always good, and I've been trying out a bunch of different smoothies from the smoothie contest as well! (I hope I can announce a winner this weekend, so stay tuned for that.)

This is a super fast ice cream that I made a few weeks ago, as a light dessert. It doesn't contain eggs, so there's no need to make a custard and let it sit overnight. Instead, you do all of your hard work - not so hard - in a food processor. There's a similar recipe in my favorite ice cream book, The Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz, but using lemons. Will definitely try that, too!

The berry sauce should be fairly sweet to go with the tart ice cream. I use a white baking syrup which I imagine is close to corn syrup. You can use honey instead, if you'd like.

Lime Ice Cream
zest from two large limes
125 g sugar
125 ml fresh-sqeezed lime juice (I needed three large limes for this)
200 ml milk
300 ml cream (full-fat)

Zest the lime directly into a food processor, and add sugar and lime juice. Mix until the sugar has dissolved - about five minutes. Add milk and cream, and process for a few more minutes, until it's well mixed and starts to thicken.

Place the mixture in the fridge for at least an hour, then freeze in an ice cream maker.

Berry Sauce:
150 g strawberries
150 g raspberries
3-4 tbsp white baking syrup

I used frozen berries - semi-thawed, but it'll be just as good - maybe better using fresh berries. Mix berries in a blender and add syrup gradually. Taste to see that it's sweet enough, and not overly sweet. Serve with the ice cream.

Recipe in Swedish:
Limeglass med bärsås