Fig Topped Cinnamon Cheesecake

It is time for me to make a confession. I was not confident enough to say it until now but it is a real problem for the blog at the moment and therefore I have to share. So here we go:

I don’t have an oven. Since I have moved to Berlin, where I am about to start studying, my kitchen contains no oven, nor the possibility to place one inside the new flat.

cheesecake4

Until I move out, it will not be possible for me to bake sweets in my new home, so baked goods might be shown here less often (you might have already noticed). Nevertheless, I have prepared some things for you that should keep the blog going until my kitchen supplies have changed and I hope you like the result shown in the pictures as much as I do.

cheesecake1

You know I love figs. Hells, I REALLY love them. When visiting my grandma in Bulgaria this year, I kind of occupied her oven to experiment. This is a result, isn’t it? Cinnamon cheesecake with a crunchy cookie crust, topped with sweet, soft and juicy figs and in between a caramel note due to the decorative parts.

cheesecake2

So this is how things are going right now and I really hope to be able to show you more of this as soon as possible. But for now, we remain with this beauty here. And this is the recipe:

Fig Topped Cinnamon Cheesecake:

crust:

250 g (8 oz.) Hobbit cookies
125 g (1 stick) butter, melted

cheese layer:

600 g (20 oz.) cream cheese
200 g (7 oz.) sour cream
200 g (1 cup – 1 tbsp.) sugar
3 eggs
3 tsp ground cinnamon
1 pckt. vanilla pudding powder (or 2 tbsp. flour)

fig topping:

400 g fresh figs
50 g (1/4 cup) sugar

Preheat oven to 175°C (350°F).

Crunch the cookies in a freezer bag. Mix the crumbles with the melted butter and spread in a round cake pan with 26 cm (10´´) diameter. Press down the cookie and butter mixture with a spoon.

In a large bowl, combine the ingredients for the cheese layer and beat with a mixer until the mass is smooth. Pour the mass over the cookie crust and bake for about 45 minutes (until the center stops jiggling).
Don’t turn off the oven yet.
Let the cheesecake cool and prepare the figs in the meantime.

Place the figs in a large pan. Spread the sugar on top and bake in the preheated oven for about 20 minutes, until there is a jelly-like liquid at the bottom of your pan.

Place the figs on top of the cake and pour the jelly all over them.

You can decorate the cake with caramel ornaments, if you wish. (Heat about 75 g/ 1/3 cup of white sugar in a saucepan until it melts and spread the caramel on a sheet of parchment paper to harden.)

Tastes best with… nah, it tastes good enough the way it is. Enjoy!

Food on the go III

Barcelona. Sweet city of my dreams, city of culinary delight. May I present to you the culinary experience of a Strawberryelmo at the Mediterranean?

Barca really tickled my senses and I feel like I have eaten tons of new stuff there.
First of all, this city has a huge food market – La Boqueria. There are a lot of tourists there, but, hell, it’s really worth the stress. You get some really fresh and interesting food there.

barca9
… e.g. smoothies…

barca14

…mini burgers…

barca12

…eggs from various kinds of birds…

barce1

…pretty much everything to fulfill your dreams of sweet sin…

barca13

…and some organic (orgasmic) Mexican food. Be careful what you choose there, because the spicy stuff is really really spicy.

barca8

The district “el Gotic” has a lot of touristic restaurants with way too high prices. We were lucky and found a tiny restaurant offering fresh made pasta. Therefore I recommend to you the “Pasta Bar” in C. Escudellers street.

barca5

If you find a Spanish baker’s or pastry shop, go in there and buy something. We were lucky to have a bakery right around the corner next to our hotel. They had some great goods. I liked some puff pastry filled with crema Catalana, a kind of vanilla pastry cream. “Our” bakery (I call it this way because we bought a lot of things there) also made the best donuts ever. Seriously, forget about Dunkin’ Donuts. These soft babies are just perfect. I have never seen such a good donut dough.

Don’t miss churros with dulche de leche or chocolate sauce.

barca10

barca7

barca2

I also had a special ice cream with chocolate coating at Vioko’s. It was yummy, but not really worth the price of 4,5o Euros.

barca3

We were very happy to get to know El Cangrejo Loco, a noble but not terribly expensive reastaurant offering seafood. A friend of mine recommended it to us and told us the local specialty was not paella but fideuà, a skillet meal with seafood and small noodles. It was savoury heaven.

barca4

So if you ever get to Barcelona, I can tell you for sure you foodies will not be bored. And it this is one more reason to actually go there and try some things yourself.

Chocolate Cream Cheese

While I am still enjoying the heat of September in Bulgaria, I present to you the easiest, most-addictive topping for everything.

cream cheese

It is helthier than Nutella and oh-so-creamy. You can prepare a lot of it ahead and store it in an airtight container in the refridgerator.

cream cheese2

Basically, you can choose any kind of chocolate for this cream, but I like dark chocolate the most, because it contains a lot of cocoa and has the strongest taste.

If you are a chocolate-lover, you should just grab the following two ingredients and make yourself some happiness topping.

Chocolate Cream Cheese

150 g (5 oz.) cream cheese
50 g (1 2/3 oz.) dark chocolate

Chop the chocolate and microwave in a bowl until it melts, heating for not longer than 30 seconds at a time. You can also use the water bath method to melt the chocolate.

Mix chocolate and cream cheese until well-combined.

Let the topping cool in the fridge for about 30 minutes, so it gets a little firmer.

Spread on bread, cupcakes, cake and the like.

Enjoy!