No-bake Mango Cheesecake

Tonight’s dessert is a delicious no-bake mango cheesecake. We originally got this recipe from the label of a Nestle condensed milk tin, and have been making it for decades. It is a no- bake cheesecake, which is simple to make and creamy to eat.

To make this cheesecake, you will need:

1/2 of a 250g packet Arnotts Chocolate Ripple Biscuits

50g melted butter

500g cream cheese

395g can condensed milk

425g can mango slices in syrup, drained

Juice of 1 lemon

2 tablespoons gelatine

Hot water

 Line the base and sides of a 9” springform pan with baking paper. Leave the cream cheese out of the fridge to soften. 

Crush the biscuits until fine either in a food processor or using the end of a rolling pin.

Melt the butter, then pour it over the biscuit crumbs and mix well. Press the biscuit crumb mixture over the base of the springform pan and refrigerate while you make the filling. 

Cut the cream cheese into small cubes. Put the cubed cream cheese into a bowl and, using a hand mixer or stand mixer, mix the cream cheese until smooth. 

Pour the condensed milk into the cream cheese and mix until well combined. Puree the mango slices in a blender or food processor, and mix the puree through the cream cheese mixture. Mix the gelatine with just enough hot water to liquify it, then mix it and the lemon juice through the cream cheese mixture. 

Pour the cream cheese mixture over the chilled biscuit base, then return the cheesecake to the fridge to set (4 hours or overnight).

Unclip the springform tin and slice the cheesecake to serve. You can serve the cheesecake with cream or icecream, and you can decorate it with extra fruit.

TWD - Brioche Sticky Buns

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie (Baking with Dorie) recipe is Brioche Sticky Buns.

It starts with making a half recipe of Dorie’s brioche dough. It is then proofed, chilled, rolled, filled, put into a caramel sauce and baked.

And this is the end result:

It is definitely a labour of love requiring a fair amount of time, but the end result is delicious:

 To see what everyone else made this week and what they thought of it, visit the LYL section of the TWD website.

TWD - Banana Cappuccino Cake

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie (Dorie’s Everyday Cakes) recipe is Banana Cappuccino Cake. Dorie created those cake as a riff on banana bread, combining the flavours of things that grow together -  bananas, coffee and coconut.

When I read the recipe, my initial thoughts were that these ingredients are pretty wild together. Bananas and coconut I could understand, but with coffee? 

My fears were unfounded - this is a beautiful cake. Bananas and coffee is not something I’d be drawn to normally, but it just works in this cake.

To flavour the cream cheese icing, I used coffee essence, as I only had instant coffee rather than espresso powder, and I knew it would not dissolve.

This cake is delicious - if you are not a fan of banana cakes, the other flavours in this one really balance out the banana flavour.

To see what everyone else made this week, visit the LYL section of the TWD website. 

TWD - Classic Chocolate Chip Cookies

 This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe is Classic Chocolate Chip Cookies. For me, they were not classic as they contain walnuts as well as chocolate, but you know, tomayto, tomarto.

These cookies didn’t turn out great for me. I made them at my mother’s house using spreadable butter out of a tub (which is all I had), which may have contributed to them spreading like mad in the oven and coming out as flat as pancakes. The round cookies in the photo were cut out of the joined up blobby mess on the baking trays. 

My cookies also did not crisp up - they were quite soft.

Onwards and upwards I say!

To see what everyone else made this week and whether they had better luck than me, visit the LYL section of the TWD website.

TWD - Clam Chowder Pie

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie (Baking with Dorie) recipe is Clam Chowder Pie. Dorie describes this dish as clam chowder soup in pie form.

The recipe contains canned clams, an ingredient that is not readily available in Australia, and oysterette crackers,  which are not a thing here at all. I subbed in frozen cooked clams from an Asian supermarket and Ritz crackers.

I only made a half recipe of pie, which was still sufficient to fill a 9” enamel pie tin.

 Unfortunately this pie was not my thing. I didn’t enjoy the strong sea taste of the clams, and I didn’t love the combination of flavours, including celery, capsicum, worcestershire sauce, tabasco sauce, Old Bay seasoning (also not an Aussie thing - I used paprika) and bacon.

It is definitely an interesting idea to create a pie based on a soup, but this one was just not for me.

To see what everyone else made this week and what they thought of it, visit the LYL section of the TWD website.

TWD - Mix-It-Up Citrus Loaf Cake

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie (Dorie’s Anytime Cakes) recipe is Mix-It-Up Citrus Loaf Cake. It is do called because you can use any combination of citrus fruits that takes your fancy.

I used grapefruit and orange, as that is what I had to hand. Both juice and zest are used in this cake. The cake contains olive oil as the fat component, but you can also use a mix of oil and butter. 

The cake can be optionally glazed with marmalade, which I of course did - I love a sticky, shiny cake.

 This cake may not be a looker, but I absolutely loved it. The outside is crisp and caramelised, the inside is soft and moist and citrussy - count me in. Definitely a make again cake.

To see all the other citrus cakes made by this group, visit the LYL section of the TWD website. 

Red Velvet Roll-Out Sugar Cookies

 Recently, I decided to make red velvet roll out sugar cookies to decorate for Valentine’s Day - you know, red for hearts.

A quick online search led me to this recipe for the cookie dough.

The cookies baked up with a nice flat surface and held their shape well with no spreading.

I then decorated the cookies with ready to roll fondant, using a number of different techniques to add the finishing touches:  

These used a cookie stamp highlighted with cachous:

I cut out different colours of fondant and added details with a knife and sprinkles for the icecream cones.

I think they turned out great! And it’s so much easier than decorating with royal icing.