We don't just swirl soap...try cheesecake!

#valentinecheesecake #raspberry #whitechocolatecheesecake

#yum

Monday and Tuesday, February 9 - 10, 2015

No soap - cheesecake! It tastes so much better!

Since Alison has the crud, she is staying away, for which I thank her as I don't want it!  I have cleaned, gotten a haircut, done some yard work, and baked cheesecakes. A friend of mine is having a birthday this week and I have been asked to bring her favorite....cheesecake.  Actually I made two different cheesecakes. The first one tasted ok but fell apart; the second one was a success.  

The birthday gathering will be small - only six of us, so I figured we didn't need a full sized cheesecake.  After scouring Pinterest and Google for small or individual cheesecakes, I found a recipe for 12 cupcake sized cheesecakes.  I decided to use my large (6) cupcake pan and simply make them a little bigger - just what I needed.  I got busy and before long I had 6 mini cheesecakes, replete with raspberry preserves on the top.  

They were the right size, but I still wasn't sure, so I sacrificed one to make sure it was ok.

I was glad I tried it. The graham cracker crust totally fell apart, plus there wasn't much flavor in the "cake" part.  I had used Dickinsons Seedless Raspberry Preserves on the top which was the best part!

Time to look for another recipe.

(Editorial note from Alison here:  Don't let Kathy fool you!  She never thinks anything is good enough.  I can tell you that if it were my birthday, I would have been as tickled as anything with those little cheesecakes.  In fact, I was finally back in the Soap Lily kitchen today (Thursday) and tried one of these while Kathy was birthday partying with the final cake.  I figured between a sick child who decided to share the nasty germ with me and my resultng illness, my past week has not been all unicorns, rainbows, and sunshine. So heck!  I'm gonna try one of the little rejected cheesecakes.  So what if the cookie crust was a little crumbly?!  This was DANG good cheesecake!!)

Finally after spending way too much time perusing, I settled on a recipe from +Allrecipes called White Chocolate Raspberry Cheesecake. 

I think the reason I chose this one was the hearts swirled on top.  I love swirling color into soap batter so logically cheesecake  swirling is the next step.  In fact the "hearts" on top of the cheesecake are a technique that both Alison and I have wanted to try in soap but never have, so now I can be the experienced "heart" maker and show her how to do it.

Here is my cheesecake adventure. Hope you enjoy.

The ingredients for the crust:

1 cup Nabisco Chocolate Wafers; 3 TBSP granulated sugar; 1/4 C melted butter

The ingredients for the filling:

3 - 8 pkgs cream cheese; 1/2 C half & half cream; 2 C white chocolate chips

1/2 C granulated sugar; 3 lg eggs; 1 TSP vanilla 

The ingredients for the raspberry sauce:

1 (10 oz) pkg. frozen raspberries; 2 TBSP granulated sugar; 2 TSP cornstarch; 1/2 C water

1 9" springform pan

First the crust

1/4 C butter melted

3 TBSP granulated sugar

1 C crushed cookie crumbs

Mix butter, sugar and crushed cookies together in Cuisinart till crumbs hold together.

Put into springform pan.

Tamp down, I used a glass to flatten.

Now on to the raspberry sauce, I made it now so it will be cooling off.

Thaw berries before you start.

Put into pan over med - med hi heat.

Add in the 2 TBSP of granulated sugar.

Then the 2 TSP of cornstarch.

Then add the 1/2 C water

Use a potato masher to smash the berries into mush.

Bring to a boil, and continue boiling 5 - 7 minutes, or until sauce is thick.

Strain through mesh strainer to remove seeds.

Set sauce aside until later.

Now for the "cake."

Pre-heat oven to 325 degrees.

Put chips in glass bowl over a pan of simmering water, add the half & half, and stir occasionally. 

When chips are melted and mixture is smooth, remove from heat.

Set aside while you mix up the cream cheese etc.

In large bowl, on med low speed, mix cream cheese and 1/2 C granulated sugar until smooth.

Add eggs 1 at a time, mixing between each addition.

Blend in 1 TSP vanilla, and

the melted white chocolate.

Mix on low till completely blended.

Pour half the batter over the crust, completely covering it.

Spoon 3 heaping TBSP of raspberry sauce into batter (you don't have to be neat)

Swirl it, being careful not to push the skewer into the crust. 

Looks a lot like soap, doesn't it?

Pour remaining batter over swirled layer, being careful to completely cover swirled layer..

(practice heart making)

Put drops of raspberry sauce in concentric circles on batter,

cross your fingers!

Draw skewer tip through center of sauce dot into the next one until you have completed the circle.  Do it again on each row...presto, you have a heart filled cheesecake!

Time to bake it.

I watched an +Alton Brown show about cheesecakes once and have baked cheesecakes  this way ever since.

 Used 2 layers of heavy duty aluminum foil as protection.

(I don't trust my springform pan to be waterproof)

Placed cheesecake on a folded tea towel in the bottom of a 16" cake pan with enough water to cover the bottom of the pan.  

(tea towel keeps the cheesecake from slipping around) 

Added enough boiling water to come 1/3 of the way on the side of the cheesecake pan.

Baked about 55 minutes, removing from oven while still a bit giggly in center.

The finished birthday cheesecake.

I will try to get pictures once it's plated with the raspberry sauce.

I am thrilled that it turned out so well; hope it tastes as good as it looks!

**********************************************************

Thursday, Feb. 12, 2015

The party was today, and the cheesecake has been sliced and consumed. Following are the final pictures.

But first the whipped cream. You didn't think we would have cheesecake without it, did you?

I poured half of a carton of heavy whipping cream into the (pre chilled) bowl that goes with my mixer.

I started mixing slowly, then increased the speed as the cream began to thicken.  

I added 2 - 3 TBSP of granulated sugar as it was mixing, then also added an overflowing TSP of vanilla.

Once the sugar and vanilla were emulsified, I ramped up the speed to high and

stopped mixing when I had stiff peaks.

Final presentation.

I piped whipped cream on the end, then using a squirt bottle, I drizzled the raspberry sauce back and forth.

Yes, it was good!!!

Total Hot Swirl

#coldprocesssoap #DNAHelixswirl #soapchallenge #totalhotman

Monday, February 9, 2015

One DNA/Helix swirl down.  Time for another run at it.  Just in case you wonder why this particular swirl has its name, we have included an illustration of a DNA Helix swirl.   The name alone gives me flashbacks to high school and college biology classes.

Illustration from Duke.edu

Friday we used our Old Faithful recipe and it started getting thick a bit faster than we liked, so we decided to do two things different today: 1. We used a different recipe, and 2. We used a different mold.  We wanted to use a different mold just to see how the design looks in a different setting.

We added Tussah silk to this batch of soap.  The more we use it, the more we seem to use it.  Know what we mean?  It just gives a batch of soap an extra layer of luxury.

One of our popular masculine fragrances is Total Hot Man from +Natures Garden .  We need more, so we decided this would be a good way to replenish our stock.

We picked colors for this swirl with the words "hot" and "man" in mind.  The visual appeal should be masculine and should represent heat, so we went with Sangria Mica and 24K Gold Mica from +Rustic Escentuals, Copper Sparkle Mica, Tangerine Wow, and Fizzy Lemonade from +Bramble Berry and Icicle Mica from +Rustic Escentuals added to the Tangerine and Lemonade colors.

Above you can see the colors after we mixed them with a small amount of oil.

This soap recipe does not contain palm oil, but does have Shea butter.  After we combined the oils with the lye/silk/distilled water, we added the fragrance oil and then mixed until we had reached a light trace - that means that when we lift the blender out of the batter, the drips leave a light trail across the surface of the batter.

We learned from Friday's session.  

We didn't even try to pour the batter into the bottles without using the funnel.

We tried to keep the amounts in each bottle as even as possible.  But we just eye-balled it; we were neither scientific nor specific.

 We added the colors to each bottle. 

Above you can see the colors after we mixed them and had them ready to go.

We poured all of the base batter into the mold.  Friday we used the log mold, but today we decided to use the 18-bar mold.

Then it was time for us to place the colors.  We started out putting down a layer of each color using a continuous zig-zag motion from one end of the mold to the other.  Once we zig-zagged each color once, we went back and put the colors down in stripes until we had used up all of the colors in the squirt bottles.

Next came the fun part.  We used a skewer to make the designs on top of the soap.  First we created very tiny "s" swirls up and down the length of the mold.  That design would be gorgeous left alone, but we are working on the DNA/Helix swirl, so we added that detail to our swirl. 

One other thing that we did differently today was in the depth of the skewer.  Friday, we were careful to only go into the colors on the surface of the soap.  Today, we took the skewer all the way to the bottom of the soap with each swirl.  It will be interesting to see if we get any swirl action in the body of the soap this time rather than the completely solid color.

The following two still photos give you a closer look at the swirl once we had completed the DNA/Helix swirl.

We added the dividers, sprayed the surface with alcohol to lessen the formation of ash, then put the soap up to cure and harden for a couple of days.  

This soap recipe is actually rather soft.  It still felt "squishy" after two days, and we were afraid that if we pushed the bars out of the mold we would squish the bars or leave thumb prints in it.  We let it sit and harden a bit longer than our usual recipe.

Thursday, February 12, 2015

Today, the soap still feels soft, but we handled it gently and finally removed it from the mold.  Now it can get air all around and really cure and harden.  

The Total Hot Man DNA Helix swirl will be ready to go on March 23.

A new design AND color, color, & more color

#soapchallenge #DNAHelixswirl #coldprocesssoap

Friday, February 6, 2015

Back in January we entered Amy Wardens soap challenge calling for a "butterfly swirl" design. It was a tough challenge and our efforts, which smelled terrific, never quite got us to the "butterfly."  Since we were extra savvy and entered 3 challenges at a discounted price, we now have another one for this month.  We promise we won't go quite so crazy this time, but it does help that the swirl seems almost manageable after the butterfly swirl last month. 

So what is it?  It is the DNA helix swirl!  Sounds like something you'd find in a science lab, doesn't it?

This swirl involves lots and lots of color, squirting, dragging a skewer back and forth through batter, then finishing with an artsy swirl.  We can do this soap in either a log mold or in our larger slab molds, and we will probably do both.  Luckily the entry will be a picture of just the surface of the soap, where the design is, so we don't have to worry about a design for the body of the bar.

So here is our first ever....DNA helix swirl.

We decided to mix Litsea Cubeba EO with The Vert (both from +The Lebermuth Company then top them off with a little Sweet Pea FO from +Natures Garden.  We combined drops on a paper towel (very scientific) until we found the ratio that we liked.  It smelled great, and we are hopeful that the soap will too.

From what we've read, this is a very colorful swirl, so we will pile on the colors.  +Bramble Berry is where all our colorants came from today: Fizzy Lemonade, Fired up Fuchsia, Green Chrome, Amethyst Purple, and Titanium Dioxide.

The colors have been mixed with a small amount of Safflower oil, and are ready to go into the batter.

Eventually we will put a bit of uncolored batter in each squirt bottle, then we will squirt it into the batter, but I am getting ahead of myself.

First the oils.  We used our Old Faithful mix of Coconut (76 degree), Palm, Olive, and Castor.

We added Tussah silk to the lye/water; it will give the soap lustre.

In the picture above we have just added in the EO and FO's.

We didn't mix the batter much because we want it loose and runny to give us time to pour into all of the bottles, add the colors, and shake them to mix it up. Our fingers are crossed that it won't get too thick before we can do all of that.

We tried free pouring the batter into squirt bottles; it wasn't going to happen.

We used a funnel; that worked.

Using a bit of the Fired Up Fuschia, we colored the remaining batter in effect making the body of the soap pink.

The top will be a different story.

According to directions, we start by squirting colors across the mold, using all the colors, no need to be neat, just work as fast as possible.

Here we have the fuchsia and the amethyst down, we can afford to be sloppy at this point.

But not too sloppy!

The squirting is done, now we pipe wide-ish lines of color, stopping and starting with each line.

After a bit it was obvious that the soap was getting THICKER, we constantly had to shake the bottles, sometimes a squirt would kind of explode, or start curly cueing. We really hoped it wouldn't make a difference.

All layers of soap lines are in, now we do a "linear swirl"  basically dragging the skewer up and down and staying as close together as possible.  This swirl alone is quite pretty and we've used it several times.

The "linear swirl" is done, now to the helix part.

Starting at either end using a skewer (but not sticking it very far into the batter) swirl lazy S's in the batter, making sure to cross in the middle (notice my junctions are off center). It's supposed to be evenly S swirled. This one, not so even.

This is the finished product.

A close up.  

Not bad for the first time! 

We learned that Old Faithful sets up too fast, have to find a plan B batter.

Learned that the swirling junctions should be in the center of the soap, not to the side. Also learned that if we want the swirl to look like a DNA/Helix, we need to make sure the S swirls are evenly spaced.

We'll do better next time.

The finished soap.

 Thinking maybe a hanger swirl would liven it up, although there is nothing wrong with light pink soap.

This soap will be cured on March 20.