Cheesecake

Ah, cheesecake.  Other than Oreo truffles, this is probably the recipe I get asked to make the most often.  It's also another recipe that's easier to make than you might think.  What you'll need are: 1 1/4 cups graham cracker crumbs, 1/4 cup sugar, 1/3 cup butter (melted), 2 8-oz. packages of cream cheese, 1 14-oz. can sweetened condensed milk, 3 eggs, 1/4 cup lemon juice, 1 8-oz. container sour cream.

 

I recommend leaving your cream cheese on the counter for at least a couple of hours to soften it up; it makes it easier to work with.  Now, before you do anything else, put a sheet or two of aluminum foil in the bottom of your oven.  Trust me, you'll thank me later.

Preheat your oven to 300 degrees and grease the bejeebus out of a 9-inch springform pan (unless you like having the cheesecake stick horribly to the pan).  In a medium bowl, combine your crumbs, sugar, and butter.  Press this mixture into the bottom of the nicely greased pan and set it aside.

Having a giant dent in your pan is entirely optional

In a large mixer bowl, beat the cream cheese until it's rather fluffy, then beat in the sweetened condensed milk until smooth.  Now beat in the eggs and lemon juice and pour it all into your prepared pan.

There may be a few lumps--that's ok!

Now bake it for 50 minutes, or until the center is set (it's not all goopy).  I'd recommend getting your sour cream out of the fridge about now too, since at the end of 50 minutes, top your cheesecake with the sour cream and bake it for another 5 minutes.  This is why I had you put that foil down way back at the beginning.  As the sour cream cooks, some of it will evaporate, and when your oven cools, it'll all fall right back down to the bottom of your oven.  Then the next time you turn on the oven, guess what fills your kitchen with an incredibly stinky smoke?  Just remember to remove the foil once your oven has cooled off again.

Anyway, now just cool your cheesecake and you're all done!  Now that wasn't so bad, was it?

So delicious.

My Medical Fun

This post is a bit of a departure from tasty recipes, fun vacation pictures, or reviews and delves into the scary world of personal issues, specifically medical ones.  Don't worry; later on this week I'll try to get around to posting something delicious to make up for it.  Maybe a cheesecake recipe.

So it seems over the last couple of years (most likely that long, anyway), one of my ovaries has gotten delusions of grandeur and has waged a campaign to slowly take over my insides by way of a cyst.  Minus any pain, lacking changes in the way certain body functions have always operated, and increases in my gym activity coinciding with it starting to grow, this insidious plot was able to continue unabated until my wily doctor (not to be confused with Dr. Wily) detected something amiss during my yearly physical and sent me off to have an ultrasound. 

Sure enough, a mass that looked suspiciously like a cyst was discovered and I was next sent off to have an MRI (well, actually two MRIs).  I'm really really glad I'm not claustrophobic.  I was about ready to claw my way out of the MRI machine by the end, though, but that's only because I hadn't been allowed to move or breathe very deeply for about an hour and fifteen minutes by the time I was done.  Plus, it was super loud in there.  I'd been warned beforehand about that, but no amount of warning could have prepared me for the reality!  Anyway, a few days later I got a call from the doctor's office telling me that, yup, there's a big ol' cyst there, it needs to go, and I'm being referred to a surgical oncologist for a consult.  At this point I didn't really ask any questions, mostly because I happened to be in the work van with my boss when I got called.  Not really a conversation I felt like having in front of the old man.

 It was at this appointment that I finally thought to ask just how big this thing actually was.  I knew that it was supposedly "very large", but really, how large could that possibly be?  There's only so much room in one's insides, what with all those organs in there, right?  So, maybe like the size of my fist?  Ah, no.  Bigger than that.  Think comically large.  Think football-sized.  Yeaaaahhhhhh.  I was also going to be further referred to a gynecological oncologist.  I had that appointment today.

I'll be having surgery to get the monstrosity removed on March 1 and there's good news and possibly bad news.  Bad news first: there's a possibility that the offending ovary and tube will have to be removed.  This is the only part of this medical saga that's gotten me upset (other than some now-resolved snafus involving insurance).  I do want to have kids someday and that won't help.  But, it's still only a possibility, I'll cross that bridge when I come to it, and in the meantime I'll try not to think about it too much.  Now, good news!  I will most likely lose at least ten pounds just from having the surgery!  Plus, this godforsaken beastie has been causing me to retain fluid in my legs, so that'll clear up.  And!  I'll most likely have more energy after this is all over with!  I see some new-pants-shopping in my future.  The amount of time I'll have to be out of work should be less than I'd feared as well; probably only two or three weeks as opposed to the six I was expecting. 

My parents will be coming to take care of me, their favoritest child, the day before the surgery and plan on staying for about a week.  My sister (the least favorite daughter) is coming too, and will stay for a few days.  Plus, a friend will be taking the day off to assist with family-wrangling (specifically mother-wrangling) duties.  Though I think my mother has finally calmed down with regards to all this, thanks at least in part to my own general nonchalance about the whole thing.  We'll see.

So that's what's going on with me.  How've you been?

Galaxy Cookies

Today's recipe is brought to you by my mom's old and falling apart Betty Crocker cookbook.  I remember her making these when my brother, sister, and I were really young and I still think they're just great.  If you've got kids (or steal someone else's kids), this can be a fun recipe to make with them. 

So, get out 1/2 cup butter (softened), 3/4 cup confectioners' sugar, 1 tablespoon vanilla, food coloring, 1 1/2 cups flour, 1/8 teaspoon salt, and a bunch of cherries, chocolate pieces, nuts, of whatever you feel like putting in these cookies.  And while you're at it, preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

Mix together your butter, sugar and vanilla.  You can do this with a wooden spoon, but I personally recommend using an electric mixer (or your stand mixer for you fancy-shmancy people).  Add in a few drops of your food coloring, too, to make your dough pretty.  Or you can leave it all dull.

Booooring beige

Beautiful blue!

Pretty pink!

Now gradually work in your flour and salt until your dough looks rather like the above pictures.  If the dough is too dry (and mine always is), add in some milk, a tablespoon at a time, until it comes together.  Mold the dough around whatever it is you've decided to put in the middle and roll it into balls.  You're going to have a different number of cookies depending on what you decide to put in them.  I made two batches; one with peanut butter cups inside (blue), the other with maraschino cherries (pink). 

As you can see, I ended up with quite a few more cherry-filled cookies than peanut butter cup ones.  Anyway, put your cookies about an inch or so apart on your cookie sheets and bake them for 12-15 minutes, until they are set but NOT browned.  Really, what would have been the point of making them pretty colors if you turned them brown in the oven?

Once they're cooked, cool them completely and make your icing.  You'll need 1 cup confectioners' sugar, 1 1/2 tablespoons milk, 1 teaspoon vanilla, and food coloring.

And all the sprinkles the grocery store had in stock

Just mix your ingredients until smooth.  Now just slap some icing on your cookies and you're done!  Of course, you can get really fancy here, using all kinds of different colors and piping designs on the cookies.  Or, you can be lazy like me, make one color of icing, and dump all kinds of different sprinkles on the icing before it hardens.  It's your call.  And this is probably the part of the process that those kids you came into possession of at the beginning of this post can really have fun with.  Just put your cookies on a rack over a cookie sheet and let them go nuts!

You, too, can have delicious blurry cookies!!