Mini Caramelized White Chocolate "Cheesecakes"

Adam and I are making appetizers and baking dessert for 60 this weekend for the annual Glee Club banquet, so get excited for some awesome dishes coming your way over the next few days as I test out the new recipes and we do tons of cooking this weekend.

For the desserts, we wanted to do one chocolate dish, one fruit dish, and one non-fruit non-chocolate dish (without nuts because of allergies), so hopefully everyone would have at least one or two options they would like. We landed pretty quickly on Jeni's Darkest Chocolate Ice Cream in the World (which I make with espresso in place of coffee and is divine) and a fresh fruit tart (which I'll send out soon). The non-fruit non-chocolate recipe was a bit harder. Adam suggested cheesecake, but I wanted to go with something more exciting, so thinking back to David Lebovitz's recipe for caramelized white chocolate, I decided to try inventing a recipe for caramelize white chocolate cheesecake. I found a recipe for white chocolate cheesecake, and just substituted in the caramelized white chocolate.

While my office seemed to like it a lot, I thought the resulting cheesecake was good, but not great. I think it wasn't quite as dense and creamy as I hoped it would be, and the crust was a crumbly mess and too thick, and it got into the cream cheese part, ruining the texture. Given I didn't love it and I had forgotten how much of a pain in the ass cheesecake is (especially messing with cooking it for 2 hours in a water bath and cooling it for 4 hours before unmolding with only 1 springform pan to use for 6 cakes), we decided not to make it for the banquet.

However, I ended up with mini caramelized white chocolate cheesecake-souffles as a delicious accidental byproduct, which is what I'm sharing with you today, and is something that I probably would make again (even though it won't work for this weekend because it requires separate ramekins). Because I didn't have a tall-sided springform pan, I made the large cheesecake in a shallower dish that couldn't accommodate all the filling I had made. Not one to waste delicious caramelized white chocolate cheesecake batter, I poured the excess into 4 small ramekins and baked them alongside the big cheesecake outside of the water bath because there was no room in the roasting pan.

These mini desserts turned out quite unlike the large cheesecake, but very delicious in their own way. They baked up with a nice crust on top and a dense texture somewhere between a cheesecake and a fallen souffle - more cakelike than a cheesecake, more cheesecake like than a cake. The caramel flavor was much more pronounced, and without a crust getting in the way, the texture was significantly improved. Also, without the need to make and bake the crust, or to bake them in the water bath, these are much easier to make - and worth it.

Mini Caramelized White Chocolate "Cheesecakes"

Serves 12

Ingredients

8 oz good quality white chocolate (make sure cocoa butter is a listed ingredient, the more the better)

a pinch of sea salt

3 8-ounce packages of cream cheese, room temperature
1 1/4 cups granulated sugar
1/2 cup heavy cream
5 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
pinch salt

Equipment

Knife and cutting board

Oven and pot holders

Stovetop

Baking sheet

Silicone spatula

Saucepan

Mixing bowl
Measuring cups
Measuring spoons

Hand mixer/standing mixer

optional: immersion blender

10-12 ramekins, depending on their size

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 250. If the white chocolate is in a block, chop it into relatively small pieces.

2. Distribute the white chocolate on a rimmed baking sheet and heat in the oven for ten minutes.

3. Remove it from the oven and spread it with a clean, dry spatula (it's okay if it doesn't spread nicely, just do your best).

4. Continue to cook for an additional 30-60 minutes, stirring at 10 minute intervals. At some points it may look lumpy and chalky (and even unpleasant), but keep going.

5. Cook until the white chocolate is deep-golden brown, and caramelized. It's okay if it's still a bit lumpy - we'll fix that later. Stir in a good pinch of sea salt and set aside. [If you want to make the caramelized white chocolate to use in other things, you can now store in a jar, at room temperature, until ready to use. It should keep for several months, if stored in a cool, dry place.]

6. Increase oven temperature to 325°F and bring the 1/2 cup of cream to a simmer over medium heat in a small sauce pan. Remove from heat and scrape in caramelized white chocolate, stirring gently until melted completely and combined. If there are lumps that won't dissolve (like in mine), use an immersion blender to smooth it out. If you don't have an immersion blender, you could probably pour into a regular blender, or tough it out and deal with a few tiny lumps in your final cakes.

7. With your hand mixer, beat the cream cheese until smooth and lump free. Add the sugar and mix, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed.
8. On medium speed, slowly add the white chocolate mixture. Once combined you can add the eggs, one at a time, beating on low speed until each egg is incorporated. Once you've added all the eggs, mix in the vanilla and salt.

9. Fill ramekins about 2/3 full with the batter. Bake for about 60 minutes or until puffed up and slightly browned on the top, and no longer jiggly.

10. Remove from the oven and allow to cool completely on a wire rack. You can store for several days in the fridge, and bring to room temperature to serve.

Mango, Avocado, and Sesame-Seared Tuna Salad

My regular rule when I eat out is that I don't order anything I think I can make as well or better at home. I gravitate instead towards dishes with hard-to-find or very fresh ingredients, difficult preparation techniques, ethnic foods that I don't know how to make, or very involved recipes. A several fancy restaurants I've been to in the last few years have featured ceviche-like dishes with slices or cubes of raw tuna, often accompanied by avocados, mangos, and citrus fruits. Fearful of doing raw fish at home, I had not attempted to recreate this myself. But when the grocery store had beautiful, essentially sushi-grade, frozen tuna steaks on sale, I knew I had to buy them and give it a try. This delicious recipe is the result. While fancier than I would normally cook on a regular night, it's actually not that expensive if you're buying the raw ingredients, and is great if you want a nicer meal for a special occasion at home. Also, other than searing the tuna, it's really more assembly than cooking, and hard to screw up.

Mango, Avocado, and Sesame-Seared Tuna Salad

Serves 2

Ingredients

1 mango (champagne/atauflo are my favorites)

1 avocado

1 cup cherry tomatoes

2 tuna steaks

1 Tbsp sesame oil

baby greens or other lettuce (optional)

toasted sesame seeds (optional)

Equipment

Knife and cutting board

Saucepan

Stove

Tongs

Instructions

1. Peel mango. Slice fruit from both sides of the pit and along the edges of the pit, then cut into 1/2 inch cubes.

2. Peel avocado, remove pit, and cut into 1/2 inch cubes.

3. Wash and chop cherry tomatoes in half. Toss tomatoes with mango and avocado to combine.

4. Wash and pat dry tuna steaks. Pour sesame oil into saucepan on stove over medium heat. Place tuna steaks in saucepan and cook until the bottom side has become opaque and begun to develop a golden crust on the edges but middle is still raw. Flip and cook on other side, again until opaque and with a slight golden color, but with the middle still pink along the sides (like in the photo below).

5. Using tongs, carefully rotate the tuna steak so it is standing on its short edges. Cook briefly on each edge until the sides are no longer raw (but the middle remains uncooked). [I love my tuna not really cooked, but if you want yours more cooked, then it's fine to cook longer until pink but not raw in the middle. Just don't cook it until gray throughout, you will ruin it.]

6. Remove from the heat and let cool for a few minutes, then slice (see how lovely and raw it still is in the middle!).

7. Plate your greens and top with half the mango mixture or place the mango mixture in a bowl, and arrange the seared tuna on top. Sprinkle with toasted sesame seeds if desired.

Romesco (Roasted Red Pepper) Sauce

I had never heard of romesco until I ate at Veggie Planet in Harvard Square and fell in love with their Portobello Redhead pizza. It features slices of portobello mushroom slathered in a delicious roasted red pepper/almond sauce - sauce I learned was romesco. Now, whenever I go there, I order the sauce by the cup with their bread, a method which has on several occasions enabled Taylor and me to put away an embarrassingly large quantity of this magic spread. Now that I no longer live in Cambridge, I thought I'd try my hand at making it. It was good but not great the first time, but this further modified batch was excellent.

The beauty of this sauce, in addition to its stellar flavor, is its diversity. It's amazing served over oven roasted portobello mushrooms, on shrimp, over pasta, or almost any way you might use tomato sauce. Also great with pita chips or toast. Or a spoon.

Romesco Sauce
6 servings

Ingredients
3 large bell peppers (all red or 1/2 red 1/2 yellow)
1.5 Tbsp olive oil
1.75 cups (15 oz) cherry tomatoes
7 cloves garlic
3/4 cup ground almonds (or 1 cup whole almonds)
1 Tbsp red wine vinegar
1/4 tsp red pepper flakes
1 chipotle pepper in adobo

Equipment
Knive and cutting board
Oven
Stovetop
Measuring cups and spoons
Baking sheet
Silpat or aluminum foil
Tongs or fork
Large saucepan
Silicone spatula
Blender/Food processor/Immersion blender*
Large bowl

*If you do not have a blender, food processor, or immersion blender, you could do a chunkier version of this if you use ground almonds and chop the roasted vegetables into very small pieces before mixing with the other ingredients. Whole almonds will probably not grind well in a blender, so be sure to use ground ones if you don't have a food processor or immersion blender.

Instructions
1. Preheat oven to 425. Line a baking sheet with a Silpat or foil.
2. Wash, de-stem, and de-seed the bell peppers, cutting them into halves or quarters if they are particularly large.
3. Place peppers on lined baking sheet and drizzle with the olive oil. Use your hands to rub the olive oil into the peppers, lightly coating both sides.

4. Roast for 40 minutes, flipping pieces after 20 minutes, until skin is somewhat blackened and the peppers are very soft.

5. While the peppers are roasting, place tomatoes, garlic, (and whole almonds if you're using them) in a large saucepan over medium-high heat. Cook, stirring vigilantly, until there are nice brown spots and nearly all the cherry tomatoes have popped (about 6-8 minutes).

6. Place roasted peppers, pan roasted tomatoes and garlic, ground or pan roasted almonds, red wine vinegar, red pepper flakes, and chipotle pepper in a food processor, blender, or large bowl with an immersion blender. Blend until desired consistency (I recommend until there are no large chunks, but it's not totally smooth).
7. Serve hot or cold over veggies, meat, or bread.