New York-Style Cheesecake

It was my father's birthday so I decided to bake a cake! I didn't have much time since I had school at night . Cake mix is definitely a last resort for me..but I realized there was no cake mix in the house. There was also no milk!!

I made a quick decision on what to make, just a simple New York Style Cheesecake. I haven't made cheesecake since Douglas and I's one year anniversary so I decided to take a shot at it again. I tried looking for that same recipe we used but was without luck.

New York-Style Cheesecake
1 cup Graham Crumbs
3 Tbsp. sugar
3 Tbsp. butter, melted (I used margarine)
4 pkg. (250 g each) Brick Cream Cheese, softened
1 cup sugar
3 Tbsp. flour
1 Tbsp. vanilla
1 cup sour cream
4 eggs
1/3 cup Strawberry Jam

1. Mix graham crumbs, 3tbsp sugar and 3tbsp of melted butter (I used margarine). Once well mixed with no dry crumbs, spread to the bottom of a springform pan. Flatten out and press the crust evenly. Remember to grease the sides of the pan with a tiny amount of butter/margarine/pam.
2. Preheat and bake the crust for 10 minutes at 325F.
3. Soften the cream cheese by letting it sit at room temperature or microwave it for a few seconds. Mix together the cream cheese, sugar, flour and vanilla. Beat well with an electric mixer until mixed well.
4. Add sour cream, mix well. Add eggs one at a time, mixing well on low speed after each addition.
5. Pour cream cheese mixture over crust.
(Now this is when I realize my jam has gone bad?! Panic.. but not really. I could've let it just a regular cheese cake but I was adventurous and decided to swirl in some mango nectar/juice)
6. Microwave jam and drop spoonfuls on top of the mixture. Swirl gently with a knife or toothpick, careful not to touch the bottom crust!
7. Bake 40-45 minutes or until the centre is almost set. Cheesecake continues to cook outside the oven so the center (2-3inches or so) may still be a little jiggly! It should set upon cooling.
8. Once all cool, refrigerate for at least 4 hours.

I was in a total rush while making the cake, my impatience has led to disappointing blurry photos.






*Forgot to mention, I did end up dividing the recipe portions in half. I originally wanted to use my smaller springform pan but I never realized it was so small! So this was the next size I had. There wasn't enough crust so I basically eyeballed it and made enough crust to fill the bottom of the pan but didn't bother adjusting the portions to fill the cheesecake more. The result: a very thin new york style cheesecake.

It was super yummy! The mango taste hadn't come out as much as I wanted it to but what did I expect right? I was basically using mango juice... if I had real mangoes or at least mango puree, it would have been much better. Or better yet, if I had some non-rotting jam in the house!
Cheesecake is definitely very filling.. a small slice goes such a long way.

what if we do the unthinkable

doors open

I’m way behind on blog posts, probably going to miss documenting about some things that’ve happened but this one was hard to pass! May 29-30(?) was Doors Open Toronto.. different historic and architectual buildings were open to the public for free. I was able to visit Le Royal Meridian King Edward, Toronto’s First Post Office and the Toronto Railway Heritage Centre.

Ah, it’s been so long but I had to find the time to edit photos and stuff. First stop was the King Edward hotel, we were bought up to the Crystal Ballroom which was apparently really famous up until 1950s. Now its just a very nice open room, they should really renovate it and reuse it, it would make such a nice ballroom. I swear I could have my wedding there!! The windows surrounding the whole ballroom was just amazing,





The view from one of the windows..



The hotel was so pretty, there were other ballrooms that we toured.



The Beatles stayed here for their visit in Toronto in 1964. :D

Next stop, we went to Toronto’s First Post Office. I came here when I was young for Doors Open and so I wanted to come again to see if I remembered anything. Obivously everything seemed so much smaller. But they still had a chance for visitors to write letters with a real quill and seal their letters with wax just like how they did it, back in the day.



The last place we had time to go to was the Toronto Railway Heritage Centre..

We climbed into this train to check out the engine part of it. It was so crowded but the guy explained how it would get extremely hot in there too cause it was a steam engine (which they obviously don’t use anymore..).





Look a GO train!

A little stop motion I made of the whole area. This semi circle thing was the train station, and the thing in the middle swivles and turns so that it can be matched up to one of the entrances into the station. Pretty impressive for taking the pictures handheld :D I was so stuck pivoting my feet though.

The place was right next to the Steam Whistle Brewery. We got free beer! I didn’t like it :(

That day I also had the chance to try macarons for the first time:



For dinner, O’Noir experience was alright. I mean I quite enjoyed eating in the dark. I don’t know why but to me, darkness always kinda relates to silence. I like how silence didn’t have to be awkward at all! I felt really quite at peace eating in the dark, although I did freak out over slippery butter. My shrimp was a bit burnt but the tomato risotto was really good! Somehow, argula always finds its way into my dishes though (it was in my appetizer)…

you found me when i got lost

Harajuku, Tokyo.



Busy with midterm, I know I'm behind on some posts.. hehe.

Spring Rolls + Dessert

Annie dear, I think you can work on your photographing skills. Just joking, <3 hah. Dinner at Springrolls, the service sucked. The food.. was alright. Spring Rolls has never really stuck out to me as good food. It's like overpriced Asian food that I can find at actual asian places for cheaper and better tasting.. Oh well! Love you Aney!!


Mango Sago

Mango sago with grapefruit + mango pieces

Durian Sago

First time trying chinese dessert at this place: Hung Fok Tong? (Silver Star Blvd) I don't even know the actual name. I was really excited but the desserts turned out not too good.. maybe it's cause I was used to eating the dessert I had back when I was vacationing in Asia. The mangoes were too sour and.. the mango sago was really bland - as if they forgot to sweeten it... Sad :(

victoria day

So as you've probably realized, I have a tendency to blog like a week after events happen.. I don't know why but here goes, my Victoria's Day weekend

First time trying Hachitarou Sushi lunch buffet.. I got to say - I was really unimpressed. There was nothing memorable, I was craving sushi the next day! (Still am :() The service was bad.. I mean the first order of things were even all completed, we were pretty sure that our plate of sushi was delivered to the table next to us but oh well.. On top of that, we received some questionable things.. like fried shrimp (not the tempera shrimp), which we didn't even order. The sushi rolls were small and not very good in general. The tempuras had too much batter. The drinks were like water! The service was lacking as well, I swear there was some sort of communication problem and it was always hard to track a server down. Because we went on a holiday, the lunch price was jacked up to like.. $14 (I think the regular was 11.99) and we couldn't use the discount card! Overall, not a good experience at all.

Went to the driving range and well, obviously I was not dressed appropriately for it. We were going to a family dinner afterwards, I was dressed for that, not golf :P. Ended up just taking a bunch of pictures! Well, not the most flattering pictures but...






Porshe Boxster..He promised he would buy me when we grow up. YEAAH no, just joking :(. I wish!

Dinner was super good as expected, even though it was just burgers! I had a chicken burger and topped it with so many things! There were mushrooms, caramelized onions, etc. yummm. The plate was so cute too, they were paper plates but looked so real.. I had been craving burgers for so long, this definitely did it :)





Last year, we were apart for Victoria's Day - he emailed me a picture of him making a heart with sparkler, this year we were able to make one together! Yay

with her forever

In Taiwan, they had these little wooden tubes(?) where people would write wishes and such on them. They were hung everywhere in certain places of town. I guess these are the equivalent of the little wooden plaques in Japan.

I hope this person's wish comes true. So cute..

terroni

I was really craving Italian food after that past week of all japanese food (sushi like 3-4 times that week?!). I've been to Terroni before however, knowing that their menu was fairly large.. I decided I should go again to try something else!


Terroni on Adelaide St. is the only location I've been to so far, however there are 3 locations in total in Toronto. This location is actually kind of unique. The restaurant is located inside a former York County Courthouse so the inside is unlike any restaurant.

Last time I came here I was with a large crowd but this time I only went with the two of us.. and boy was it crowded! We were seated in between a large group and another pair but... honestly, our tables were so close together that all I could listen to all night was the conversations next to me. The tables were so crowded that the waiters/waitresses had to squeeze in between the tables...

Anyway.. on to the food..
They had so much to choose from in their menu. All the dishes are in Italian though; there is a little english caption right under it however, the food vocabulary used is probably not very common to most people. We had to google a few words but there is always the waitress/waiter you can ask! With so much on the menu, I had such a hard time choosing what to get but what I realized was.. there wasn't a lot of chicken choices on the menu, if any at all - which I found was very strange...

For appetizer..


Fried Calamari - strange I can't find it on the online menu.. they had a grilled calamari also but after a bad experience with grilled calamari at Oliver & Bonnaci.. we've learned to stay away from the grilled.

When this arrived at our table, we were a little confused. There was only the calamari and lemon slices. No sauce in sight.. At first we thought maybe the waitress forgot to give it to us but .. we came to a conclusion that the dish probably doesn't come with the sauces (other tables didn't seem to have them either!). So the calamari was .. a little weird but not as bad as the one we tried at.. Joe Badali. That was the worst calamari yet :( This dish probably would have been really good if there had been a really good sauce too!

This time I ordered a pizza:


Li Pecuri: Tomato, Mozzarella, Goat Cheese, Sundried
Tomatoes, Arugola, Parmigiano

To be honest, I really didn't like this at all.. I realized I really hate Arugola. It's all that green herb that you see in the picture. To me, it has such a bitter taste and.. it's just really strange overall. I couldn't stomach much of the greens but together with the pizza, the strong taste was definitely toned down. The Arugola really just ruined the pizza for me. I was sad!!

He ordered a pasta:


Tagliolini in Canna a Mare: Homemade Tagliolini with Fresh Clams, Fresh Mussels, Calamari,
Scallops and Tiger Shrimp in a Light Tomato Sauce ( This pasta
is not served with Parmigiano to highlight the delicate flavours
of the shellfish; following ancient Italian tradition )

His pasta was okay.. I think he liked it. All the pasta at Terroni are freshly handmade so it was nice to have a taste. It was a nice al dente texture. Not a favourite of mine as cheese is a definite must have... and I prefer white sauces over tomato sauces!

I couldn't finish the pizza so didn't order dessert.. I much prefer the first visit I had to this location:


Al Salmone: White Pizza with Smoked Salmon, Italian Cream,
Mozzarella, Capers, Red Onions, Fresh Tomatoes

Smoked salmon is always really good!! Italian cream and mozzarella really went well with each other. This is definitely something I would order again.. too bad I was daring this visit and decided to go with something else!


Panna Cotta:

This was the first time I tried Panna Cotta. I liked the actual cream part itself however, they drizzled some kind of vinaigrette on it, which ruined it for me, but otherwise it was very tasty!

P.S. As I mentioned earlier, the interior design of the restaurant is very unique! The washrooms are in the basement and it's kinda really creepy actually! There are jail cells down there that are used as wine cellars now..
The washroom sinks!

Terroni
57 Adelaide Street East, Toronto.