A rainbow of curd cheese

Now that is one wicked cake.

Not in a bad way, but in the best of ways.

I discovered the idea of a rainbow-coloured cheesecake at Slashfood, where there's a recipe for Tie-dyed red velvet cheesecake, a huge hit at Walt Disney's Pop Century Resort in Florida. That's some serious Disney dream food porn, I tell you.

So I took the idea and altered one of my favourite curd cheese cakes for my nephew's second birthday. It's really really fun for children to take part in making this cake - my three-year-old niece absolutely loved splashing mixtures of different colour onto the crust and basically never stopped saying 'that cake is so lovely', adding 'we never make this cake at home' from time to time...

Rainbow-coloured curd cheese cake

(moderated from Pirukaraamat, serves 8)

Crust:
3 1/2 dl flour
4 tbsp melted butter
1 tsp baking powder
2 eggyolks
2 tbsp lemon juice
2-3 tbsp water
1 tbsp sugar
pinch of salt

Filling:
3 dl curd cheese
2 tbsp flour
2 tbsp light cream
3 eggyolks
2 dl sugar
2 1/2 dl sour cream
1 tbsp melted butter
1/2 tsp vanilla sugar
food colouring (5 different colours is good. So is less. So is more. You can also use one color in different amounts for different tones. Unsweetened cocoa powder serves as brown food colouring.)
(Chocolate streussels)

1. Mix flour with baking powder.
2. Add butter, yolks, sugar, salt and the mixture of lemon juice and water.
3. Press the dough onto the bottom and edges of a greased 24 cm pie mold / springform pan.
4. Mix together curd cheese, vanilla sugar, flour and light cream.
5. Beat yolks with sugar using an electric mixer, add butter and then add the mixture of them to curd cheese.
6. Divide the mixture between different bowls and add a different food colouring to each bowl.
7. Now start adding colourful splashes or stripes or drops or patches of whatever shape and size you like onto the crust. Try not to mix up the colours - you don't want a weird brownish cake, really. You can make interesting shapes as the last layer, write something or even draw a picture if you happen to be a professional artist. If you want, sprinkle with some chocolate streussels.
   
8. Bake at 175C for about 45 minutes
9. Let the cake cool completely before serving and cut it with a sharp knife. If the sides of the slices don't retain clear colours, try holding the knife in hot water before cutting a slice.

The cake is very creamy from the yolks and sour cream. It's sweet, it's good. Unfortunately I didn't have very interesting colours, but the splashing game is worth playing even when there are only two colours - kids love making it and kids for sure point their fingers towards the 'colourful cake' when they're asked if they're still hungry.

There are - of course - certain aspects...

When I made the cake together with my niece, it definitely took more time and the colour spots kind of flattened - resulting in a not that wonderful cross section of a slice. I tried making a small cake with batter of about the same thickness a week before and got this - looks better?

And another thing - could this amount of food colouring be a problem? I'm not a chemistry expert, but this stuff is not natural... This scared me a little - red spots on the kids' faces caused by me - not good! Luckily no red spots have been discovered so far and no moms have yelled at me.
But that's the only problem I can think of.

A pie for the love of cheese

Now, everybody who loves cheese, raise your hands!

Just as I had thought - these hands are impossible to count. My hands were up high as well - and although I don't eat awfully lot of cheese, I sometimes have cravings for it. Today was one of thesa days. I knew what I was going to make - a perfect cheese pie, but unfortunately I didn't know how. After reading some instructions for cheese pies I understood I couldn't go to the store. That didn't sound as desperate as you might think! After opening my fridge I came up with my own pie. 'Is it that perfect one then?' you might ask. Quite. Quite-quite.

At least it's got the perfect pile of cheese in it.

The taste of the pie is quite strong so it's important to choose cheese that is very much to your liking (choose cheese - now say that for fifty times and fast!:)). You may also reduce the amount of salt - I have, after all, caught the flu and eat saltier food that I would normally...mom was a bit whiny about the salt. Dill can be replaced with any other herb you like - this is just what I had at home and what I felt like.


Cheese pie with dill

3 eggs
250 g sour cream
150g + 100 g grated cheese
1/4 tsp salt
up to 1/2 dl dill

1. Mix the eggs with sour cream, add flour, salt, dill and 150 g grated cheese.
2. Take a springform pan (I used 24 cm) and grease it with butter or line with baking paper.
3. Pour the mixture into the pan and cover with remaining cheese.
4. Bake at 200C for about half an hour.



I ate a slice of pie warm with some simple green salad (green leaf lettuce + yoghurt + sugar). It was just the right thing to accompany it, as the pie is rich enough already. Soft on the inside, with a pleasant crust on top. Very cheesy and with a quite strong taste of dill.
It could make a perfect snack, if cooled and cut into small squares. I imagine serving them with a coctail stick and with pieces of sweet red pepper.

I think that the next time I crave for cheese, I'll try adding something else to the pie. For example little pieces of ham and basil instead of dill. Or maybe smoked sausage and oregano. Or maybe, who knows - I might just as well add carrot.