Caramel Creations

A regular reader complained that I hadn't posted in a while so I've unearthed something from my drafts folder to make her happy.



When I’m at the gym with my personal trainer one of the frequent topics of conversation is food since diet and exercise go hand in hand. A while back I was talking about the HHDD Cheesecake Challenge (it was HHDD #10) and mentioned how proud I was that I didn’t yield to temptation. My trainer commented that one of his colleagues really loved cheesecake and because I like nothing more than to bake for other people I saw this as an opportunity to try out Lisa’s cheesecake with the longest name in the world aka Lisa's Decadent and Ohhh So Evil Peanut Butter Dark Chocolate Caramel Ripple Cheesecake - or LDOSEPBDCCRC.

Lisa said her recipe made a huge cheesecake so I opted to cut the recipe in half - I mean really - two POUNDS of cream cheese. Did you read that? TWO POUNDS!! I used oreo cookies for the crust since the recipient of my cheesecake is American and I figured he might like a bit of a taste of home. Interestingly I noted that the oreo cookies we can buy in New Zealand are manufactured in China. I don’t really care for them and find their black colour offputting as a food item. The mixture seemed very buttery so I baked my crust for 10 minutes and then cooled it before adding the filling. When it came to dividing the filling I didn’t get my split 50/50 so the chocolate layer was much smaller than the peanut butter layer. The chocolate layer was a little runny while the peanut butter layer was very thick. I use an unsweetened chunky peanut butter which I think is more like what’s known in the USA as natural peanut butter. It’ll be interesting to see how it works out when I try the various recipes in Dorie Greenspan’s book that say "do not use natural peanut butter". Lisa used crushed candy in her cheesecake mix but I felt there was enough going on in the mix so didn't bother and you can't get that kind of candy in New Zealand anyway. Instead of using caramel sauce I thought I'd be clever and use pre-caramelised sweetened condensed milk which you can buy in the supermarket. It wasn't as great a success as I'd hoped and despite warming the caramel in the microwave and stirring it furiously it didn’t thin out or get very smooth. I ended up just blobbing it in a very unartistic manner on top of the cheesecake and then swirled it around with a skewer.

The recipient of the cheesecake pronounced it delicious and said that it reminded him of one from The Cheesecake Factory. That was Lisa's idea when she created her recipe so I guess she did good. Thank you Lisa for a great recipe.

I had a lot of leftover caramel from my cheesecake baking session and wondered what to do with it. I'm not one to waste things even if it means adding a whole lot of other ingredients to get there. A quick look at the Nestle website provided the perfect recipe – chocolate muffins with a caramel filling. Fortunately for my diet I’ve decided that caramel isn’t really my thing. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I don’t like it but if I was offered free choice from a box of chocolates the caramel filled ones would be the last on my list. However, I really should quantify that because it’s flowing or soft caramels I don’t like. Hard caramels are completely different story - give me a nice turtle or a Russell Stover Pecan Delight and I’m very happy camper. Especially if they’ve been in the freezer and the caramel has chilled to an almost toothbreaking hardness.


Mmmmm - don't these look ooey gooey?