Adventures in Red Velvet Cheesecake Layer Cake, Part 1

I begin this journey by saying, the cake is NOT a lie.

For Christmas, I have decided to try and recreate the Red Velvet Cheesecake Layer Cake from the Cheesecake factory.  I started with Alton Brown's recipe for both the Red Velvet Cake on the Food Network and Cheesecake Layers.  Red Velvet recipe is at the preceding link, but I made it in one 8x3 round cake pan instead of two 9 inch pans.  I then cut the cake in half.

The Cheesecake recipe came from Alton Brown's book, I'm Just Here for More Food:

24 oz creme cheese (three packages)
1/2 c sugar
2 large eggs plus 3 egg yolks
1 tbsp vanilla extract
5 oz sweetened condensed milk (by weight)
1 c sour creme

I also make a crust for the cheesecake using:

4 oz Nilla Wafers (by weight)
1/4 cup butter, melted 

The instructions for the cheesecake are the same as that for the slightly different version of this cheesecake found on the Food TV website.

I then used my standard creme cheese frosting recipe

16 oz creme cheese
1/4 cup butter
12 oz powdered sugar (by weight)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp almond extract 

Beat together creme cheese and butter in the bowl of a stand mixer until light an fluffy (let it go a few minutes).  Then slowly add the powdered sugar while beating on low speed.  When all sugar has been added, turn the speed to high and let it get nice and fluffy.  Add extracts and then pop in the fridge to set.

With trips to the store and cooling time, it took about 24 hours from start to finish.  And this was the product:

Success, right?  Not so much on this first round.  The big problem is the cheesecake.  It is very, very loose.  So loose that there was no way to frost between the layers once I sliced the cheesecake in half (and separating those layers was its own challenge).  So loose that I question the structural integrity of slices.  And just two loose for my tastes.  Additionally, I'm not completely sold on cheesecakes that use sour creme instead of lemon.  I like my cheesecake sweet and firm, and this was not those things.  I'm not sure if the recipe just won't be usable for this application, or whether I need to up the cooking time to get it nice and firm.  For Christmas i'll probably just go with another recipe and leave AB's recipe for further tinkering in the future. I think I will also cut down on the amount of melted butter that goes into the cookie crust.

Additionally, I think I need to reverse the order that I make the cakes.  This time I make the red velvet cake first, so it had 18 hours more or less in the fridge before assembly, which I think made it a bit too dense.  Next time around I will prep the cheesecake the night before and the red velvet cake the day of assembly.  But it is a tasty cake.

Building Off A Childhood Favorite - A Great Use for Ground Turkey

I've traditionally not been a big fan of ground turkey, especially as a substitute for ground beef.  Primarily, that's due to the fact that in many cases, the supermarket butcher or agri-corporation preparing the ground beef will cut the very lean turkey breast with added animal fat.  Thus you can end up with a product that has just as much fat as ground beef but that doesn't taste as good.

However, when I was growing up, Nana would regularly make turkey balls and tortellini whenever I stayed with her and Papa for a night or a weekend.  A few weeks ago, I decided to try and recreate it for Colleen.  While I don't think I capture the magic of Nana's creation, I was able to develop a really tasty turkey ball that will enter heavy rotation at Casa de Griffin (just probably in different applications).

Turkey and Blue Cheese Balls 

16-20 oz. ground turkey breast (so far I have used 93/7 ground turkey, anything leaner might make the balls too dry) *See update below.
1/2 c blue cheese crumbled
1/2 c plain bread crumbs
1 egg
2 tsp chopped garlic
1 tsp salt
1 tsp black pepper
1 tsp basil
1 tsp oregano
1 tsp sage

1. Preheat oven to 450°F.
2. Mix together all ingredients, making sure to incorporate the blue cheese well without overworking the mixture.
3. Shape into 1 oz balls.
4. Bake for 5 minutes at 450°F.  Then reduce heat to 350°F and bake 20 minutes more.
5. Serve immediate.

Yield: 2 dozen turkey balls.

The second time I made this, I served them on a bed of couscous with green beans sauteed in garlic, butter and lemon juice.

This will most likely be served as an appetizer on Christmas Eve this year.

UPDATE (10-28-2011): As suspected, I tried this recipe tonight with 99/1 ground turkey and it came out pretty poorly.  The turkey balls were extremely dry and did not brown at all except for where they rested on the cookie sheet.  Stick with the lean ground turkey rather than an extra lean ground turkey.

And we're back

After letting this blog fall to the wayside for well over two years, I've decided to start it back up again.  Hopefully with a more food-centric focus as I've recently tried to take my culinary skills to the next level.

A few quick and dirty updates for the last two years - really just to inform Mr. Blogger.

• Got married, which means that I also got a full set of super-awesome pans and beyond awesome knives (as well as a wife).
• Graduated law school (waiting on bar results).
• Moved back to Jersey.  Have huge apartment with a ginormous kitchen and backyard for a grill.
• Won two ribbons (a blue and a red) for my Caramel Apple Pie.