Fancy Food

I catered a wedding this weekend.  It's amazing how you cook for 2 weeks and it's all over in 3 hours.   The thing with me making food is, I like to make everything from scratch.  I mean EVERYTHING.  Seriously... I am the exact opposite of Sandra Lee (not that I have anything against Sandra Lee).  Anyways, this proved to be difficult what with me being only one person and all, but I pulled it off with the help of my life sidekick, Zak and my mom and brother.  Mom and brother helped by taking on the baked ziti.  They are masters at baked ziti for a crowd.  I bow to them.  Watching them make baked ziti in large quantities is like watching a masterfully choreographed ballet.  They had 3 huge pans of ziti made and delivered in 2 hours.  They have all of the quantities and ratios memorized.  Amazing. 

Anyways...  Every day this week (well, it might actually take longer), I am going to post a recipe from the wedding.  For today, I thought I'd start out the week with a bang by posting these mini cheesecakes.  When we had our initial meeting, the bride said she wanted mini cheesecakes.  Well, I thought and thought and thought about how I can make them really cute, but not super hard to make.  There's always the mini muffin route, but I hate how the muffin papers get all greasy and moist with condensation on the outside.  Not to mention how they leave a little circle mark of grease/water on the tray you are serving them on.  It's as if they are saying "I was here".  I hate that.  I like to use the Boy Scouts anthem of "leave no trace" when it comes to things like that.  Also, the papers cover up the pretty layers. 

Inspiration struck when I was walking through Ikea.  I found these little glass votive holders.  I bought them and made some cheesecakes in them that night.  They were good, but I thought they were a little bit too small.  Also, I didn't want to wash all of those. 

These were my first try.  Really cute, but a little too small and not practical.

Finally, I thought the best route would be the no bake route.  I searched the webs and the first site I found had these little cups for a decent price so I got them and the little spoons to match.

Behold the glory!  I'm proud of these guys.

INDIVIDUAL WHIPPED CHEESECAKES

INGREDIENTS
1 cup finely ground graham cracker crumbs
2 tablespoons butter, melted
2 tablespoons white sugar

12 ounces cream cheese; room temperature
1/3 cup plus 3 tablespoons  sugar
3/4 cup heavy whipping cream, whipped

DIRECTIONS
1. In a bowl, mix together the graham crackers with melted butter and the 2 tablespoons sugar.
2. Evenly distribute the crust amongst your dishes.
3. In another bowl, beat cream cheese with the 1/3 cup plus 3 tablespoons of sugar.
4. In yet another bowl, whip cream the heavy cream with a stand mixer or hand mixer until stiff peaks form.  Gently fold into cream cheese mixture being careful not to deflate the whipped cream too much.
5. Using a pastry bag, pipe the cream cheese mixture on top of the graham cracker crust.
6. Refrigerate at least 4 hours before serving.


On top of the cheesecakes, we added some raspberry sauce.  This was just frozen raspberries cooked with sugar, whizzed up in a food processor and strained.  I was super concerned it was going to look like blood so I added some corn starch (about 1 tablespoon) mixed with 2 tablespoons water and added it to the raspberry puree and cooked it until it was thick.  That step isn't necessary but it is almost halloween afterall.  Maybe the bloody look is what you are going for. 

For the lemon curd cream I used the recipe for lime curd found here but used lemon juice and zest instead of the lime.  Then 1 qt whipping cream whipped until stiff peaks formed and folded it into 1 batch of lemon curd.  So delicious!  I've been eating the leftovers with a spoon. Which brings up another point... this made a ton of lemon curd cream.