Little known fact about me: I'm pretty good at making cheesecakes. It sort of started because...well... I love cheesecake! And I have a huge family. And every holiday we always have to make something to contribute, and undoubtedly at least one holiday a year for one of the sides of our family we get dessert. So... I started making cheesecakes! They aren't really that hard honestly, just takes a little bit of confidence that you know what you're doing.
So my flatmate Paul's birthday was this past Wednesday. Funny enough, he apparently "forgot" this, made other plans with someone who didn't realize it was his birthday so he wasn't around that day and decided we'd postpone the celebration until May. Whatever. If you could do that, I'd postpone mine every year so I don't have to celebrate it the day after Valentine's Day. Either way, I felt we needed to do something to celebrate so I told him I'd make him a cake. Sharon (my other flatmate) quickly chimed in that I should make cheesecake. Funny. It wasn't her birthday! ;-) That's ok. I said I'd make a cheesecake. I do have to say however, this was the most expensive and time-consuming cheesecake I've ever made.
Here's how things went:
I read a few recipes. Decide which ones to merge together, and land on a Chocolate Espresso Cheesecake. Easy peasy.
Then I go to the grocery store to buy ingredients. I quickly learn however that in Britain, they don't carry a good half of the ingredients I need. Nothing major. Just a few things, such as: unsweetened cocoa powder, chocolate chips (apparently some places have these but they are pretty uncommon!?), oreo cookies, graham crackers, pretty much any kind of cookie that I can use to make a crust.
So, I buy something called Digestives instead of graham crackers. (Don't be fooled. They are cookies, despite the fact that they sound somewhat healthy). This is about as good as I'm going to get for a crust, so I go for it.
Here's the rest of my random ingredients. Yes, that's old school instant coffee. The only thing I could find. Oh, and that little satchel of powdered chocolate for chocolate milk?? Yea, that's as close as I could come to cocoa powder. The rest of the chocolate came about from me chopping up a combo of those milk and dark chocolate bars you see there. Sure, ok. Just call me Martha. ;-)
So here's the bubbly mix of chopped up chocolate before baking it. It's safe to say that this endeavor seriously took about 2 hours. Between trying to constantly convert things from cups or ounces to mL or grams, and then trying to find appropriate measuring cups around our house I finally just gave up and started eyeballing things and praying I didn't over-chocolate poison anyone. Ha!
After all that though, here is the finished cake. I iced the cheesecake the next morning to give it time to chill and stupidly forgot to take another totally "finished" picture. Oh well.
While we weren't all around to be able to celebrate with Paul, I've been told it's pretty good. :) I guess this means I can retain my title of master cheesecake maker despite random ingredients!
What else have I been doing you ask? Ohhh, a lot of studying. And more studying. And finance. And paper-writing. And more studying. Yes, I may have had a couple of breakdowns in the past week. In the midst of these exams I also have to find a new place to live with my flatmates, and plan a trip to Italy that's coming up immediately after exams end with Kyle. Not that I'm complaining about that.... but it's just a lot at once.
My friend Whitney and her British boyfriend Mark (who I've been told are my loyal blog-readers) were also in town last week for Mark's best mate's wedding. Somehow I got lucky enough for them to seriously SKIP the rehearsal dinner and come into the city to meet up with me! It was a gorgeous day outside, and we sat on a patio at a pub in Angel (one of my favorite areas of town), drinking beer and catching up. It was pretty fun to see friends from home! Haven't had a lot of those! Whitney and Mark are also hilarious so it was a good time. (Sorry Whit, I had to post one of the funny pics I took! ;) I do have to say these days turn dangerous around here.
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| Please note that HUGE glass in my hand. I just ordered a cider!!! And that's the size of that sucker! |
Dan came and met up with us, and then Whitney and Mark had to head back to the countryside, so what did we do instead of going home like one should do after drinking for hours on a patio? Oh, we went and met up with Matt and Jenny Lewandowski - another set of Angel-loving friends. Sigh... summer could be dangerous!
Ok, well I've successfully procrastinated my day-long plan to study NPV, ARR, Break-even and cash budgets long enough. Time to study!
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