Little treasures...

I was thinking this morning that every time I use one of my mum's recipes, I am only satisfied with the result if it tastes exactly like hers :-)  Even if my dish is nice - if it doesn't taste like my mum's, it's not right.  As a little girl she learned to cook and bake from watching her mother and I guess that's how it happened for me as well.  Having a mum (or dad, for that matter) in the house cooking and baking is a very good inspiration.

My mum makes the best baked cheesecake in the world!  It has a hint of vanilla to it and she sometimes puts raisins into it as well - delicious.  Her recipe uses quark (a type of soft curd cheese) and the cake is just lovely and light.  I will ask her for the recipe, so I can share it with you.

In the meantime I have one for baked mini cheesecakes that I think you will enjoy.  We found that these tasted best the day after baking which is ideal if you want to prepare something for guests in advance.  They also freeze incredibly well - just defrost and you have fresh cheesecakes.  Perfect! 

I will give you the original recipe below which uses cranberries - I replaced these with tinned cherries, cut up into small pieces and put a spoonful of cherry sauce on top (made by reducing some of the juice from the tin plus a few cherry pieces and some sugar over a medium heat).  I also used a different base for the cakes as described below.

Mhm...I could do with one of these little treasures right now...

Of famished food bloggers and muffins

Now, this will make you laugh:  yesterday was a busy day with one thing and another - so busy in fact that in the afternoon I started to feel sick.  What happened?  It turns out that I had forgotten to eat!  How silly is that - a food blogger who forgets to feed herself? :-)  It did make me laugh (once I felt a bit better).  I think it was because I spent most of the morning in the kitchen, preparing food, having little tastes here and there and I just didn't feel hungry when it came to mealtime.  I won't let that happen again!

One of the reasons I was busy was that I was making a batch of muffins for our local community centre.  I think you will like these too - they have been inspired by the German cake "Donauwelle" ( = waves of the river Danube) which is normally baked as a tray bake.  It's a lovely mixture of marble cake, cherries, cream or cream patisserie (basically custard) and chocolate.

I needed the cakes to be portable and easy to eat, so I chose to make muffins and instead of a thick layer of whipped cream, I dug a little well into the muffin and filled it with creme patisserie.  A cherry on top, a light sprinkling of melted chocolate and a dusting of icing sugar...job done!

I'd probably call these "Black Forest Muffins" as they remind me of a Black Forest cake - what do you think?