Wine & Cheese Party

I decided to host a little wine and cheese party before attending a wedding reception last Sunday. Any excuse to consume abundant amounts of cheese will do for me.

Selecting cheeses for a wine and cheese party should be carefully thought out, but I failed to do this. I just went with my gut in selecting a few and allowed Ellie to bring a couple more. Overall, we were quite happy with the selection, although now that I think about it, having a nice parmigiano-reggiano would have been nice — love that salty stuff.

Here we have (from the left) Jalapeno Gouda, French Wensleydale with Cranberries, & some cheese Ellie couldn’t remember the name of.

I guess it was sort of fun having a mystery cheese. It didn’t look too appetizing, as you can see, but it was by far one of my favourite because of its soft, creamy texture.

The next two cheeses are a Rosenborg Blue Cheese from Denmark and an Oka cheese from Quebec.

I think Ellie purchased a Providence Oka — it was semi-soft and tasted marvelous with a hint of honey on a baguette.

So of course there was baguette…

And a fine selection of crackers.

On the left are fig and olive crackers and on the right are apricot and rosemary slightly smashed-up crackers.

For me, I think the winning cheese was blue…

Okay, I’ll admit, the blue actually wasn’t my favourite. I think the Quebec, ugly, mystery cheese was my favourite, but I just wasn’t able to take a nice photograph of it!

Darn you ugly cheese.

Oh by the way, I didn’t take any pics of the wine. It just completed slipped  my mind. Everyone but me enjoyed white wine, I remember seeing a Chardonnay and Pinot Grigio. I, on the other hand, sipped on Shiraz, which paired well with the blue cheese, but little else.

Enjoy!

Yours edibly,

Elana

Oreo Cheesecake

I made this cake special for the birthday girl Lynn. Lynn claimed to be allergic to oreos for quite some time in her youth — yet it was always obvious that her ‘allergy’ was non-existent and that she in fact LOVED oreos and ate them regularly.

So oreo cheesecake it was — plus I wanted to try making something new and making cheesecake seemed like it would be a fun challenge.

The toughest part to make was the crust…of course.

Making the crust even and smooth took me…I’m slightly embarrassed to say… an hour or so, I just couldn’t tear myself away.

The filling was easy peezy, mainly composed of cream cheese and sour cream among a few other items.

I arranged some extra oreos in the filling and it was ready to bake.

All was going smoothly until I removed the cake from the oven and noticed this…

What a crack! And I’m not talking about the good craic that you can find in Dublin…this was a nightmare.

But I went from being the saddest person in the kitchen to the happiest pretty fast once I learned that it is easy to repair a crack in a cheesecake.

All I needed was a palette knife and some hot water and I was able to smooth over the crack — no problem and then I could decorate.

I managed to snap a shot of the center of the cheesecake before it was quickly devoured.

Not bad, not bad, I’d say.

You can find the apparent Cheesecake Factory recipe here.

Please try this at home, it was pretty easy to make and the crowd will love it!

Oh and make sure to let me know how it goes if you do find the time to bake it.

Yours edibly,

Elana