Blueberry Cheesecake

Oh. My. Heavens.

Did you ever see that Friends where Rachel and Chandler discover a mail-order cheesecake in their building and accidentally eat it all and then order another and drop it on the ground and end up forking it straight off the floor because it is just that good? Did you, like me, pass the rest of the episode in a haze because you were distractedly wondering how amazing that cheesecake tasted? I mean, how unbelievable must a cake be to achieve eat-off-a-NYC-floor (however fictional) deliciousness?

Well say hello to your answer. This mini cheesecake is worth throwing your friends and family to the ground should they stand between you and it. Toss a few elbows. Wield your fork. It's pillowy soft and disappears on your tongue, except for that impossible richness that makes it cream cheese's best effort to date.

It requires a mini springform pan, which is not really part of everyone's kitchen arsenal, so if presentation is not essential to your enjoyment, you could just make it in a cake pan (with very tall sides), and dig it out one piece at a time. The blueberry topping was my addition, and could be replaced with many other fruits (just follow the same proportions) or maybe even some chocolate. Because this cheesecake is almost as tall as Rachel and Chandler's apartment building, I have a hunch that this downsized recipe could be halved to make an equally satisfying cake at a reduced height (just be sure to shorten the baking time).

Mini Blueberry Cheesecake

c/o Epicurious; makes one 6-in cake; active time about 15 minutes, plus baking and cooling

For Crust:

1 cup graham cracker crumbs

4 Tbsp melted butter

2 Tbsp sugar

For Filling:

16 oz cream cheese; room temp (do NOT try to go low fat here)

3/4 cup sugar

2 Tbsp flour

2 eggs

8 oz sour cream

2 Tbsp milk

2 tsp vanilla

For Topping:

2 cups blueberries

2-3 Tbsp sugar

1. Preheat oven to 375º. Wrap outside of 6-in springform pan with foil. Mix crust ingredients together in a processor or by hand and press into bottom and 2-inches up sides of prepared pan. Bake about 8 minutes, then take out and set aside to cool. Maintain oven temp.
2. Meanwhile, beat cream cheese and sugar with an electric mixer until smooth and sugar is dissolved. Add flour and blend, then egg and blend, then sour cream-milk-vanilla and blend. Pour into crust. Place springform into a larger pan and add water to said pan--enough to come 1 inch up sides. Bake until center is just set, edges begin to puff and turn a golden brown, about 50 minutes. Turn off oven and let cake sit undisturbed for another hour. Transfer springform to fridge and chill overnight. (I know it's hard, but believe me, it will be so much better if you wait it out.)
3. For topping, add berries and sugar to a saucepan over medium heat. Berries will warm and the sugar will cause berries to create juices. Stir periodically until thickened. Spread over top of cake and let dribble down the sides a little. People like that.

Cheesy Rice and Whatever-Veggers-You-Have Casserole

This strategy is great for whatever vegetables you have lying around that are about to go bad or maybe you don't know what to do with. Individual vegetables can be sooooo boring sometimes, but when put together ... what a creamy delight!

There are basically three ingredients to this simple meal: (1) vegetables, (2) grain: rice, quinoa, pearled barley, wheat berries, or some other whole grain of your choice, and (3) a creamy sauce. The key is portioning. When you're assembling the vegetables, just think about how many people you're cooking for (1 or 2), a handful of cauli, a couple of mushrooms, a few slices of onion will do it. You'll want to pre-cook your veggies. Here's what I did:

Veggies: 8 mushrooms, 1 cup cauliflower florets, 1 small leek, and a large wad of fresh spinach which wilted considerably.

Grain: 1/2 cup cooked wild grain rice

Creamy sauce: 1/4c sour cream, 1/4c milk, 1/2c grated cheddar

[extra--salt, pepper, and thyme]

First, cook the vegetables. Saute things like mushrooms, onions, leeks, garlic, summer squashes, peppers, spinach, and other quick-cookers. Steam or roast winter squash, potatoes, broccoli, cauliflower, turnips, celery root, carrots, and other dense, starchy veggies. Frozen vegetables, defrosted, will work wonders here. So will a trip through the supermarket salad bar. Add the spices of your choice to the vegetables while they're cooking.

Second, stir together the components of your sauce. Basically what we're doing is avoiding the introduction of Campbell's can-of-chemically-preserved-shelf-life. Ooh, you know what would be good? Cottage cheese or ricotta!

Third, throw it all together 1+2+3, slop it into a mini baking dish, and for a little crunch, top it with bread crumbs and a little more grated cheese (if you like).

Bake it at 350º for about 30 minutes, or until warmed through and a little bubbly. We sliced up an apple for a sweet, cool crunch, and called it dinner.

King Cake!

Full disclosure: nothing about the following recipe is divided, downsized, or in any way related to something you might consider "small." But oh my word, the cake! Or, to be more accurate, the French sweet bread stuffed with cream cheese goo and covered in colored sugar! It takes patience and plenty of Mardi Gras spirit, and if you have a tiny plastic baby, it takes that too. But if you want to make brioche, here's what Peter Reinhart of the James Beard Award winning book, 'The Bread Baker's Apprentice' has to say. If I were to do this all over again, I would most definitely half this recipe:

---

Middle Class Brioche

('Middle class' as opposed to 'Rich Man's Brioche', also in the book, which calls for twice as much butter)

SPONGE:

1/2 cup bread flour

2 tsp instant yeast

1/2 cup whole milk, lukewarm (90º–100º)

DOUGH:

5 large eggs, beaten slightly

3 cups bread flour

2 Tbsp sugar

1 1/4 tsp salt

1 cup (2 sticks) room temperature butter

My additions to make it King-Cakey:

FILLING:

2 8-oz packages cream cheese, room temp

2 cups powdered sugar

2 tsp vanilla

ICING:

2 oz cream cheese, soft

3-4 Tbsp milk

1 1/2 c powdered sugar

Colored sugars of yellow, green, and purple

1. First, make the sponge. Stir together flour and yeast, then add the milk, mixing till all is hydrated. Cover with plastic and let sit for about 20 minutes, till it looks bubbly and risen a little.

2. Once sponged, add the eggs and mix on medium speed (you'll need electric mixing of some kind for this beast) until smooth. Add flour, sugar, and salt, and mix on low speed until combined. What you now have is a giant lump of unmanageable muck. It gets worse, but then it gets better. Let it rest for 5 minutes to let the gluten develop. Then, cut the butter into 5 or 6 pieces, and add the pieces one at a time, beating well after each addition. Stop and scrape the sides down periodically. The dough will act like it is magnetically attracted to the paddle refuse to stay in the bowl at all (see right). Persevere. Keep mixing 5-6 minutes until the dough is well mixed and eerily soft. Seriously, touch it. It's weird.

3. Line a baking sheet with parchment or wax paper and spray it down with oil. Turn the dough out and pat into an 8x6in rectangle. Cover in plastic and let it hang out in the refrigerator for 4 hours or overnight.

4. Remove from fridge and, working while it's cold, turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface. Roll dough into a super long and skinny rectangle, let's say 6 inches wide and about 30 inches long (yes, that's almost three feet). Mix the ingredients of the filling together and spread evenly along the rectangle. Roll one long 30-inch side over to meet the other 30-inch side and pinch it tight, so you have a long, skinny cylinder. Pull the two ends around to meet each other and pinch those shut. Place the ring on a greased baking sheet, seam side down. Cover it in lightly oiled plastic.

5. Now, in your oven where it is quiet and dark, put this baking sheet for 1-2 hours, and leave it alone to rise until at least doubled in size. Then, take it out, preheat the oven to 350º and stick that sucker back in. Bake it for about 25 minutes.

6 Remove from oven and cool on a rack AT LEAST one hour (if you can restrain yourself). Now comes the fun part. Mix up the icing to a pourable consistency and drizzle all over the cake. Cover with so much sprinkles you can barely see the cake underneath. Then eat it by golly, EAT IT!