So I’d say a good 98% of my cookings are successful, but of course now and again they are not. I cite as evidence: Pesto Cheesecake.
Yes, I know it doesn’t sound all that great to begin with, but it was in the JOY and was a little unusual and I figured out how to work it into the context of my diet and I had a huge bunch of basil seeking its purpose in life. And I could make it largely fat free. The idea grew on me. I gathered ingredients.
Then a bunch of boring stuff happened, involving making pesto in my new mortar and pestle and also regular “making a cheesecake” type things.
One of these pictures came out amazingly well—a little mound of pesto, floating on a magical cloud of ricotta.
See? I came to put it in the oven, noticed the water seeping in, and had a serious Oh Shit moment. The worst part is that even though I gleaned my instructions from JOY, I somehow missed this very pivotal illustration.
So my cake cracked. After it got a little bit of water in it. But I don’t think these were the culprit in the whelmingness of this cake. Nor was it the fat free sour cream nor the fat free ricotta cheese. It just plain wasn’t a very good recipe. It’s weird, which usually earns recipes big fat bonus points in my book, but this time the weirdness was not in a good way. As an attempt to salvage a whole bunch of time and ingredients, I finished the recipe, which involved frosting with sour cream and making some sundried tomatoes as a garnish. (I refuse to pay for them when I can make them in my own oven)
So I took all my tomatoes from the farm down the street and lined them up for their last few moments in the sunshine.
Then I sliced ’em up good.
Laid them out on a cookie sheet with the remaining pinch of oregano I had on hand.
And baked them at 225 for five hours.
Turns out I, like Master Shake, do not like sundried tomatoes. Even though this was a painful lesson, it was still a rather lovely one, wouldn’t you say?
Your pictures are absolutely beautiful!!! What kind of camera do you use?
It’s a Nikon D80, but it’s not mine. I’m looking into a D40, but we’ll see when I have the dough saved up!
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