Day 6

Day 6

Dessert, Vanilla cheesecake. Sort of.

Cheesecake seemed like the perfect dessert for my make ahead menu. Quick and easy to make, and you can pop it in the fridge at least 2 hours ahead of serving.

Strangely enough Mr decided that he wanted to make the dessert. Strange because I was not aware that he knew what the kitchen was for and strange as he has never made a dessert in his life!!!  I know I mentioned his mash making previously but that is as far as he goes normally and I must say that I am happy with that. Not because he can’t cook I just prefer to do the cooking because I enjoy it where as he will do it but all you hear is F**king this and stupid C**ting that. Where as I find it very relaxing and enjoy the chopping and stirring in peace and quiet.

The first challenge with this recipe was the biscuit base. The French have the sweetest tooth and you simply cannot buy a slightly savoury biscuit like a digestive. Everything is covered in chocolate, sandwiched with fruit paste, dusted with sugar, flavoured with all sorts or rich and buttery. Nothing that even slightly resembled the humble digestive. Then I found something that was a ‘cereal biscuit’ that had a sheaf of wheat on it with the breakfast cereals so thought I would try it as that was as close as I could find.

I told Mr to read the recipe 1^st, he read the ingredients and ploughed in. The biscuits turned out to be chocolate flavoured!! But that was fine, it was as close as. I was cooking & prepping the rest of the meal whilst Mr got going with the pud. I was trying not to interfere but when I saw him pour the melted butter onto the whole biscuits (instead of crushed) I had to ask him if he was going to crush them to form a base, he replied he was doing it. He then proceeded to mash it all up together, amusing but he managed to make a respectable base even if it was chocolate flavoured and a bit arse about faced in the construction.

Now on to the vanilla topping. cream cheese and double cream with some vanilla.  Another weird thing about France (one of many but that is another story) is that almost all of their cooking has cream in it but you can’t seem to buy it. So I opted for crème fraiche instead which is in abundance. Mr mixed the right quantities but it tasted of cream cheese and/or crème fraiche!! Added more vanilla, no better. Then, because I was completely interfering by now I suggested some raspberry coulis that we needed to use up. The result was kind of like raspberry ripple, so much better.

After a couple of hours chilling it was actually ok but for future reference would leave out the majority of crème fraiche & add a bit of sugar maybe. The base actually tasted quite good as chocolate and raspberry are a good combo so all was not lost but it was maybe not the vanilla cheesecake it set out to be!!

So, the end of my first menu de jour. I do hope I have not bored you to tears with my weeks worth of culinary discovery as I will be testing out another one next week with Mr as my pattiserie chef, he is going to make lemon meringue roulade nex