Cookies and cream Cheesecakes - again!

Ah, the Oreo cheesecakes. They were the result of one of my first baking attempts, and at the same time one of the best cakes I've ever made (you can read the first post here). Since they're served cold (straight from the fridge), December probably wasn't the most perfect month to bake them, so after all the oohs and aahs about them I decided to make them again. This time during the summer, when they'll actually be a cold treat for a hot day. 

I also bought these porcelain cupcake dishes (because they were so cheap, although I was actually looking for the oh-so-beautiful souffle dishes, which were nowhere to be found). My first thought when I saw them in the store were these cheesecakes because you have to eat them with a spoon or a fork anyway (and on a plate, because the paper liners are really wet by the time you get to eat them), so it wouldn't be weird serving them like that. 

When I was baking them, everything went fine, but I forgot that the batter really shrinks a lot during the refrigeration. So the result wasn't as pretty as I wanted it to be, but it wasn't that ugly either.

This time, I bought two packs of Oreos, because I knew that at the end I would have way too much batter for the few cookies that remain after crushing the rest of them and mixing them into the batter. There were, of course, way too many cookies, but since they taste good, that wasn't a problem. I got 15 cheesecakes from all that batter, but the porcelain dishes are bigger than the paper liners, so if I only used paper liners it would probably make 16 or 17 of them. I only worked with one half of the ingredients, because cream cheese and the cookies are really expensive here. I didn't share the recipe with you the last time, so I'm doing it now.

Cookies and Cream Cheesecakes (makes 30)

42 cream-filled chocolate sandwich cookies, such as Oreos, 30 left whole and 12 coarsely chopped

2 pounds cream cheese, room temperature

1 cup sugar

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

4 large eggs, room temperature, lightly beaten

1 cup sour cream

pinch of salt

1. Preheat oven to 275° F (135° C). Line standard muffin tins with paper liners. Place 1 whole cookie in the bottom of each lined cup.
2. With an electric mixer on medium-high speed, beat cream cheese until smooth, scraping down sides of bowl as needed. Gradually add sugar, and beat until combined. Beat in vanilla.
3. Drizzle in eggs, a bit at a time, beating to combine and scraping the sides of bowl as needed. Beat in sour cream and salt. Stir in chopped cookies by hand.
4. Divide batter evenly among cookie-filled cups, filling each almost to the top. Bake, rotating tins halfway through, until filling is set, about 22 minutes. Transfer tins to wire racks to cool completely. Refrigerate (in tins) at least 4 hours (or up to overnight). Remove from tins just before serving.

Six months later, people still love them, lol. I only got to try one when I made them last time, and this time it was the same. I didn't like them as much as the first time, but maybe that's because I tried the one in the porcelain dish and there was A LOT of batter for one cookie. So there was a lot of cream cheese. Which I actually hate. Anyway, this is the perfect summer desert - it takes only a few minutes to prepare and it's baked really quickly. The only downside is that you have to make them at least 4 hours ahead.

Look: 3/5 (I still don't like the yellow color)

Taste: 5/5

Approximate cost of one cupcake: 0,50 €

Vegan Chocolate Cupcakes (38)

I'm a chocolate lover. I eat food that contains chocolate at least twice a day, for breakfast (in my cereal) and for dinner, sometimes even for lunch and in between. Very healthy, I know. Last week, I wanted to spend a day without eating anything chocolate-y. I did not succeed. 

Unfortunately for me, Martha Stewart didn't feature many chocolate cupcakes in her book (only about twenty, lol). These vegan cupcakes looked very good even though they were vegan and I'm not. The only vegan thing in the recipe is that there is no butter; there's vegetable oil instead. And there's no eggs. You probably have all the ingredients at home already, at least I did.

Vegan Chocolate Cupcakes (makes 12)

1 1/2 cups cake flour (not self rising, sifted)

3/4 cup granulated sugar

1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder, plus more for dusting

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon vegetable oil

1 tablespoon distilled white vinegar

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1 1/4 cups water

confectioners' sugar, for dusting

1. Preheat oven to 350° F (175° C). Line a standard muffin tin with paper liners. Sift together cake flour, granulated sugar, cocoa, baking soda, and salt.
2. With an electric mixer on medium-high speed, mix together oil, vinegar, vanilla, and the water until well combined. Add flour mixture and mix until smooth, scraping down sides of bowl as needed (batter will be very thin).
3. Divide batter evenly among lined cups, filling each three-quarters full. Bake, rotating tin halfway through, until a cake tester inserted into centers comes out clean, 20 to 25 minutes. Turn out cupcakes onto a wire rack and let cool completely.
4. Cupcakes can be stored up to 3 days at room temperature, or frozen up to 1 month, in airtight containers. Dust cupcakes with cocoa and confectioners' sugar just before serving.

I liked this recipe. It was really simple to make and one batch didn't make 50 cupcakes, which I hate (although the recipe contains no eggs, so it would be very easy to make only a half recipe or even less). The ingredients are cheap too, it's actually the cheapest recipe I've ever tried, I think. Considering they're vegan, they taste good too, although they were a little dry. The best thing is, that there were no exotic ingredients in the recipe, meaning I had EVERYTHING at home (and that is extremely rare) when I decided to make them. I'm sure there are a lot of better tasting vegan recipes out there, but this was the first one I made and I don't think anyone who tasted them knew they were vegan. 

Look: 5/5

Taste: 4/5

Approximate cost of one cupcake: 0.10 €

Two Fat Cats Whoopie Pies

I read somewhere that whoopie pies are the next cupcakes. So I had to try and make them right away! I found a recipe in Rose Levy Beranbaum's book and decided to trust her with it. This is the second recipe I made from her book.

First, I baked the little cakes and tried to peel them off the parchment paper. That didn't go so well (and I lost almost one third of the cakes in the process because they were so stuck to the paper). Then I made the buttercream and filled them. The cakes were really sticky and even stuck to a glass plate. Weird.

Well, I didn't really like this recipe. Maybe it's because I'm European and most of the cakes I eat here aren't that sweet, but I really hate the sweetness of buttercream. (I tried Rose's and Martha Stewart's and I like Martha's better though.) The batter was sweet too and not chocolate-y enough. We didn't know whether to eat it with our hands or with a fork, because they looked like sandwiches, but were really sticky! I hope all of Rose's recipes aren't like that because the two that I've made so far weren't as heavenly as the book suggests. Anyway, I think I'll stick to cupcakes in the future. Me and whoopie pies are over.

Look: 4/5
Taste: 2/5
Approximate cost of one pie: 0,45 €