Sunday-morning gougeres

Great big hot cheesy gougeres for breakfast.*

Dead easy, even easier than the chouquettes to whom they are closely related with merely the addition of cheese, because mounds of dough are spooned onto trays instead of piped.

These were from Dorie Greenspan's Around My Kitchen Table, but there are versions all over the internet. Dorie gave the two options of baking immediately or putting the laden trays in the freezer for later reference. Neither suited me, as I wanted to bake mine the next morning and possess very little freezer room, so I spooned the dough-mounds onto three sheets of baking paper which I laid on my triple-tier cooling rack and refrigerated overnight. It didn't seem to hurt them.

In other variations, I didn't have the required amount of sharp cheddar, or any of the suggested alternatives such as gruyere, so I topped it up with pecorino, which gave it a good old-sock tang. I also added thyme leaves to the mix, because I like thyme with almost anything.

I love quick-and-easy leftover-cheese-userupperers like these. And their hollow bits could be filled with all manner of extra calorificness, such as avocado, or dill and salmon cream, or more cheese in a white sauce. The possibilities are endless.

*Lest people such as Alida Irwin get the idea that I eat like this every Sunday morning, I admit that this was last Sunday morning, not this one. And that this was the last thing I cooked before deadlines crowded my horizon every which way. It's been a week of toast and two-minute noodles, and isn't over yet, but normal services will resume shortly.

Polka-dot cheesecake

I finally got to make this recipe! It took two lots of the yoghurt cheesecake I made earlier, plus a real block of Philly I threw in as some sort of compromise. 

I deviated from Maida’s recipe just long enough to make a normal biscuit base with half a packet of crushed Arnott’s Milk Coffees, 60g melted butter and a tablespoonful of Droste cocoa, mixed and pressed on the base of a 20cm springform tin, and put in the fridge while I got the rest together. I found odd the concept of inverting the cooked cheesecake in order to sprinkle biscuit crumbs on the bottom and then turn back again. I’ll give it a go some other time out of interest.

It’s very cool how it goes together – I expected it to be much more involved. But two cups' worth was simply taken out of the cheesecake mixture and had melted chocolate mixed into it, then the bulk of it went into the springform tin to fill it about halfway.

 That done, the chocolatey portion was poured into a piping bag with the largest nozzle I could find (about 5mm, although Maida suggests a half-inch one), the nozzle inserted just below the surface of the main cheesecake dead centre, and enough squelched in so that a large circle forms on the surface.

Then smaller circles are piped in the same way around the rim – I took heed of Maida’s advice to start out placing them at opposite points to ensure evenness, although I think I’d go closer to the edge next time. It would have been nice to also see the chocolate circles on the sides.

 The surface ends up bulging with the circles, but it evens up during the cooking.

But the keenly anticipated moment was cutting the thing open, not least as it was in the service of The Guitar Teacher's birthday. After the hours of cooling and refrigerating, it still was wobbly enough to make me doubt the neatness of passing a knife through it. I tried some sewing cotton that was handy, which worked a treat, and lifted out the first piece. It didn’t come out without a fuss, leaving a chunk of base behind, but the second slice fared better. I had a hunch it was best left on the springform base.

It came out better than I’d hoped (I wouldn’t have been surprised if the chocolate had melted into the surrounding mixture completely, in which case I would have passed it off as chocolate marble cheesecake or the like) although the polka dots aren’t round enough compared to Maida’s perfection. I have some thoughts about how to get around this next time. Perhaps refrigerating the main bit for a while to firm up might help it keep its integrity better – although equally it could make the chocolate bit have to force its way in and be even more misshapen.

And it tasted pretty good – possibly a little more tart than normal, though I’d have to make a version with all Philly to be sure of that – and the texture was light. All round, I think the use of homemade cream cheese was a winner.

Yoghurt to cream cheese

I’ve been dying to have a crack at Maida Heatter’s Polka Dot Cheesecake, but can’t come at shelling out for a kilo of Philly. That’d be twelve hard-earned dollars hanging on a creation that I could stuff up, very easily. 

To turn to Google with "how to make your own cream cheese" reveals that, for some people, to make what I would call labneh is also to make cream cheese. I’ve made labneh before and know it to have a tarter taste than Philly, but maybe that’s not such a bad thing.

First, I make yoghurt, about which much DIY opinion and technique is out there thanks to people who have done a lot more research than I have, but I’m with Madhur Jaffrey. Suffice to say that I bring whole milk (usually bog-standard Pura, though organic, sheep’s or goat’s milk works too if feeling artisanal or prosperous) to a scalding point where it forms a skin that starts to rise with tiny bubbles, then I turn off the heat and go away and do something else and let it cool down to about 40 C, trying not to forget completely about it.

Then it goes into a jug along with a couple of dollops of the previous batch of yoghurt as a starter, plus a good half-cup or more of whole milk powder to help thicken it (saw this tip online – it never ends up as neatly scoopable as Jalna pot-set-type yoghurt, but it definitely helps), is briefly stirred up, and poured into a prewarmed wide-mouthed thermos, and left to form good bacteria or some such for at least eight hours, though I’ve let it go up to 24 hours without serious known consequences. I think it just gets sourer the longer left to its own devices after eight hours, without getting any thicker.

Or yoghurt could be bought, though since I’ve started making it myself it’s pained me sore to have to buy six dollars’ worth of Jalna from the shop if it so happens we run out – it took some time before the consequences of completely using up the current batch penetrated the household consciousness. Words were had.

Anyway, so to make labneh/cream cheese, the yoghurt is scraped from the thermos into a bowl lined with a length of muslin (or Chux). The ends are scooped up, knotted loosely and hung from something over a bowl. A wooden spoon through cupboard handles works for me. The bundle drips gently for at least four hours, or overnight, or all day while at work.* And that is it.

Lo and behold, it forms a lovely solid-ish mound with the weave of the muslin imprinted in it.

 *The cup or two of whey that collects in the bowl below can be used in place of water in  breadmaking, or as a stock in cooking rice. It’s meant to be highly nutritious, and once you’re past the first sourness, is actually not that bad to gulp down as is and imagine it doing you good. Plus there’s the smugness of using up everything. It can at least go in the cats’ bowls before ditching, or be stuck in the fridge for later reference, where it can last a few weeks – even months, some do say.

 

Draining 750mL yoghurt yields 250–300g cream cheese/labneh. So this cheesecake needs a series of batches over a few days, as I’m limited by thermos size. On the one high-thirties day we’ve had this so-called summer, I made up yoghurt with two litres of milk that I poured into litre glass jars rather than the thermos, and stuck outside wrapped in a towel. It worked well, though if the temperature had suddenly dropped partway through – another feature of this so-called summer – they would have been a goner.