Unbaked Cheesecake

It happened again! My unstoppable craving for cheesecake! Lol. Today it wasn't good enough for me to bake a cake and put it in the fridge over night! I needed to have home made cheesecake within a few hours. I searched the Internet for an unbaked cheesecake recipe and found a great one!

At 7 PM I put my cheesecake in the fridge and at 10 PM I had my first delicious piece. Probably it should have stayed one more hour in the fridge, but I didn't care. Lol.

I hope you'll enjoy this delicious cake too:

20 min. to make.

Serves 8 persons.

Ingredients

• 125g of digestive biscuits
• 75g of softened unsalted butter
• 300g of cream cheese
• 60g of icing sugar
• 1 tsp of vanilla
• Juice of half a lime or lemon
• 250ml of double cream
• cherry preserve or blueberry jam

• Using a food processor, blitz together the biscuits and butter until it looks and feels like a wet sand. Pour and press the mixture in an 8" spingform pan until it covers the whole bottom. Reverve.
• In a bowl, mix together the cream cheese, sugar, vanilla and lime (or lemon). Reserve.
• In another bowl lightly whip the cream until it thickens a bit. You don't have to put too much air in it, it has to be firm but still creamy and not dry.
• Mix together the cream cheese and the cream until they're completely amalgamated. Pour mixture in the springform pan and refrigerate it for at least 4 hours (in my case, I had to refrigerate it overnight because brazilian double cream is not as thick as the british one).
• After the cheesecake has set, pour the cherry preserve on top of it and serve. I [Marianna, grouprecipes.com] prefer blueberry jam, which I dissolve with a bit of water in a pan over low heat, until it looks like a thick syrup. After that, I sieve it to make a smooth sauce.

-Instead of jam or cherry preserve I just added berries. Because I didn't have any patience today ;-) I didn't cook them. Usually I would have cooked them with a little sugar and water. I usually don't cover the whole cake with berries or jam, because some people prefer it on the side.

Source: grouprecipes.com

Bismillah! And insha'Allah you'll love this cake too :-) For a delicious baked cheesecake, check out my post: American Cheesecake.

By the way Blue Pearl once gave me this link to another recipe, which looks amazing too! Yummi: Unbaked Cheesecake with Mint and Coconut. Next time I really need to try that one!

American Cheesecake

Alhamdulillah, the cheese cake I baked yesterday turned out wonderfully :-) It was a joy eating some of it this morning with my husband after having home made bread. How I've been missing time to bake during my exam period :-)

Make your own awesome cheesecake:

Tip: You'll have the best cheese cake(!!) result if you bake it the day before and let it cool overnight in the fridge.

Ingredients

     75 g butter
     200 g crushed Digestive biscuits
     2 large eggs
     400 g cream cheese naturel (It should not be too creamy)
     150 g sugar
     3 teaspoons vanilla sugar
     4 ½ cups sour cream, preferably 38%

 

Method

     Preheat oven to 190 degrees Celcious.
     Oil a springform pan.
     Melt the butter in a saucepan over low heat. Stir in biscuit crumbs.

     Spread the crumbs in the springform pan and using your hands, press it all down evenly.
     Put cream cheese, eggs and 100 g of the sugar and 1½ teaspoons vanilla sugar in a blender and blend until completely smooth.
     Pour the mixture into the biscuit base and smooth the surface (if it's very liquid, you don't need to smooth the surface). 

     Bake for approx. 20 minutes or until cake is set.
     Remove from oven and let it cool for 20 minutes. Leave the oven turned on.
     Mix sour cream with the rest of the sugar and vanilla sugar. Pour it over the cake.
     Place cake back in oven for approx. 10 minutes.
     Let the cake cool slightly and place it uncovered (else it might crack) in the fridge for at least 8 hours. This will set the cake completely, so don't worry about it being a bit liquid in the beginning.

Bismillah!

Source: Kokkekniven.dk

Moroccan Orange Cake

You sisters have to taste this Moroccan Orange Cake! Yummi! It's very seldom that I have tasted such a fresh and delicious cake! And also I've never experienced such a difference between the looks of a cake and the taste of it (I thought it looked a bit boring and dry. Hehe).

I got the recipe here and translated it through Google Translate:

Ingredients

4 eggs

2 cups sugar

2 cups flour

100 g walnuts or almonds, chopped finely

50 g raisins, chopped finely

2 cups canola oil

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon vanilla sugar

The peel from 3 oranges

Syrup:

The juice from 3 oranges

2 cups sugar

The juice from 1 lemon

If you like: 1-2 drops orange flower water


Cake: Whisk eggs, sugar and vanilla sugar until it turns white. Add the chopped nuts, raisins and orange peel. Then add baking powder and flour together with canola oil and mix it gently with the eggs, sugar & vanilla sugar. Bake the cake in a greased springform at approx. 155 degrees Celcious for 35-40 minutes or until it is baked through. You can check by sticking a knife or toothpick in the cake and if there is no dough on it, it is finished. 

When there are approx. 10 min left before the cake is ready, prepare the syrup: 

Squeeze the oranges and lemon and boil the juice together with sugar. Let it boil for 5 minutes and remove it from the heat. You might taste with orange flower water. Pour the syrup over the cake while both cake and syrup are hot. You might help the cake soak the syrup by poking small holes in it.

Bismillah! I hope you'll love the cake as much as I did :-)

And if you have an even better or just another recipe for this (kind of) cake, please share it.

The Watering Can & A Spinach Soup Recipe

Dear sisters!

I hope you've had a wonderful weekend!

I haven't had much going on besides studying... And shopping online ;-) Well, I bought 1 thing. Lol. It cost 2.88 US Dollars - at first. When I had to pay for it, they added 5.57 US Dollars because of it's weight and to send it to my address, they added 13.07 US Dollars so I ended up actually paying 18.65 US Dollars more than I thought I would at first :-/ Wow what a business. But I bought it - and will return it, if I don't like it anyway. What I bought was this (the blue one):

It's definitely not worth that much money!! But I had been looking for a cute and special watering can for such a long time. You know: for the bathroom. As muslims we use it so many times a day (and I'm not referring to watering plants ;-), so why not have a special one? Hehe. And I love how it looks a bit Middle Eastern or something.

- - -
On to something else:

If you don't know what to have for dinner today or tomorrow, you could try this delicious soup (I got the recipe here and had it translated on Google Translate):

SPINACH SOUP with fresh ginger & coconut milk

An easy and very simple soup to prepare. It is also a vitamin and mineral bomb without equal (both A, C, B2, B9, chromium and zinc -from ginger). 

In approx. 40 minutes you have a delicious soup ready for serving.

Ingredients (4 people)

     2 large leeks
     1.5 liter vegetable broth
     3 large handful's of fresh spinach
     1 can coconut milk
     1 tbsp. spicy curry
     1 tsp ground chilli or sambal oelek
     A piece of ginger, approx. the size of a thumb
     Oil for frying (about 3-4 tablespoons.)
     1 clove garlic, pressed
     salt and pepper

Cut off the ends of the leeks, cut them up lengthwise and rinse them in cold water. Chop them coarsely.

Cut the peel off the ginger and chop it finely.

Put leeks and ginger in a saucepan with the oil, pepper and curry.

Fry with medium heat for approx. 4-5 minutes, or until you start to smell the leeks really well.

Add broth, coconut milk and spinach.

Let it simmer, covered, for approx. 20 minutes.

Remove from heat and blend with a hand blender.

Taste with salt, a pressed clove of garlic and the soup is ready to serve.

-You might want to serve it with bread or rice. 

Bismillah! :-)

Cooking & Recipes

I really like to cook and I have learned to use cooking as some kind of therapy :-) - which makes me enjoy it even more. - Of course I also know days, where I don't feel like cooking anything... But mostly I try to be as mindful as possible, when I do prepare breakfast, lunch or dinner. Especially for dinner, when I cut vegetables, I notice how they feel in my hands, when I wash them. How they all sound differently, when I cut them and how wonderful they smell - uncooked or cooked etc. This changes the whole cooking experience and makes me feel very grateful especially for the fact that I can buy almost all kinds of foods and have something to eat every day, Alhamdulillah.

I made a list of dishes, which I cook during the week, to avoid having to think of a new dish every day. Sometimes I like to prepare new dishes though. Often I look for them on the Internet or I borrow cookbooks from the library.

I love the many food blogs around the net, so thank you for taking your time to share those wonderful recipes.

I would love to know some more websites (or blogs) with great recipes, so if you sisters would like to share your favorite ones with me, I'd be very delighted!

My favorite ones are:

foodgawker, foodbuzz and HealthyMuslim

Tomorrow my parents-in-law are visiting and I'm still thinking about what to cook for them for dinner (something vegetarian I think)... :-/ and also I wanted to bake a cake. I thought about baking carrot cake with delicious butter-frosting. If you have any wonderful carrot cake recipes or any other recipes you'd like to share (dinner and/or dessert) they're very welcome!! :-)

A Lovely Day

Assalaam Alaikum dear sisters!

I feel so content right now, Alhamdulillah! This weekend and this day has just been perfect. Today I got to do everything that I felt like doing and needed to do, such as cleaning the house, buying groceries, offering salat, listening to Qur'an, spending time with my husband and his daughter - and my rabbit :) And last but not least my cooking has been perfect to day, Alhamdulillah. I've prepared a Waldorf-salat (the recipe I linked to was not the one I used, I just wanted to post an English recipe (and not a Danish one). I don't add pepper, mayo, lemon juice and lettuce so you could leave that out too :). I prepared spaghetti bolognese (which is still cooking) and baked an Italian foccacia. My family is already excitedly waiting for the dinner and my husband already tasted the Waldorf-salat and fell in love with me all over again. Hehe. Of course these are not my homemade recipes, but still I'm glad the cooking has been a success today and I love serving good food for my family.

I hope you're all having a good day too, and if not, offer perhaps some more prayers and see how you feel afterwards :) Or try to think about 1 thing that you could do right now, that would make you feel just a little bit better, insha'Allah.

Baking Basboosa

Everything looks a bit brighter when the sun shines - and when you just baked a delicious cake! I baked Basboosa, inspired by Alice's blog, where she posted a picture of this cake. I've been baking it many times, but using a recipe without shredded coconut. So today I wanted to try it with coconut and the result was so delicious that I, within few minutes, had three pieces! Hehe.

I want to share my recipe here with you:

Make your own syrup

2½ dl sugar

2 dl water

1 tablespoon fresh lemonjuice

Bring the sugar and water to a full boil in a saucepan, add the lemonjuice and let it cook for 5 min. Take the saucepan off the heat and let it cool.

Almonds without peel

In another little saucepan, bring water to a full boil and add about 14 almonds and let them cook until their peel is loose enough to be taken off. This will only take a few minutes. If you don't know how to get off the peel, you can read it here.

Making the cake

Basboosa - about 14 pieces

200g semolina

100g shredded coconut

100g butter

2½ dl yoghurt

125g sugar

2 eggs

1½ teaspoon baking soda

About 14 almonds without peel

1 or ½ portion cold syrup (depending on how "wet" you like your cake to be). I used ½ portion.

Put the oven on 180°C.

Melt the butter in a small pot.

Put the sugar in a bowl and add the melted butter and stir well.

Stir the two eggs in another small bowl and add them to the sugar and butter and stir well.

Add semolina, shredded coconut, baking soda and yoghurt and mix well.

Put the mixture in a roasting pan, add the almonds on top of the dough and bake it for about 30 minutes.

When the cake is ready, take it out of the oven and cut it into squares or hearts.

Pour the syrup over the cake, while the cake is still warm. Serve cold.

Look at all those delicious pieces :) I hope you will enjoy the cake too, when you've made it, insha'Allah.

Quick Delicious Asparagus Soup

You must also experience these days, where you don't feel like spending hours in the kitchen to prepare dinner. So what to do if you don't want to fast or let your family starve? (Hehe). Find an easy and quick recipe of course - and one of them I just prepared in less than twenty minutes: Asparagus soup. Yummi, it's delicious and with some homemade bread or other kind of bread with it, it's perfect.

I used this easy recipe (for 4 persons):

20 g butter is melted in a pot. Add 3 teaspoons all-purpose flour while stirring. Add 1 l vegetable broth, 500 g steamed white asparagus in small pieces (or 2 cans with asparagus -- if you use fresh asparagus, put them shortly in a blender, then they don't have to cook very long) and 1 dl cream. 

Let it cook for about 7 minutes. Add as much salt and pepper as you like and a little lemonjuice too, if you like that. And voilá! Delicious asparagus soup for you!

Some people add onion and garlic to this soup too - so do as you prefer :)

Perhaps some of you sisters will try this recipe once, insha'Allah.

Kofte with Tomato Sauce

Yesterday evening I found a recipe for kofte in tomato sauce. Here's how it looks in the making of it:

<-- Here's the minced meat with onion, cumin powder, salt and black pepper. In the little bowl to the left one of the koftes is being coated in plain flour.
Here to the right some kofte have just been put in the pan -->

<-- Finished frying the kofte.

And here's the end result with tomato sauce and parsley (and the kofte added to the sauce) -->




The only change I made to the recipe was to shape the kofte differently and to add two more table spoons of tomato paste and I didn't cover the kofte completely with water. It tasted really great! (But remember, especially in the Ramadan, to drink a lot after having eaten this!).

Check this blog out for the easy recipe!

Samosa's and Naan Bread

Here's the naan bread in the making :-) I made 10 or 12 and warmly recommend the recipe.

Today I made samosa's. Hope they'll be delicious. I'm always excited to know if my husband likes what I have prepared. Usually he does, luckily ;-)

It's my 1st time making samosa's. These ones are vegetarian. Next time I'll try with mincemeat, I just need to find a good recipe.