The Cakie!

I had a birthday  and I turned an age that seems strange to me because I can't quite figure out how I've gotten this old (and yes, I realize that I am not old, but I'm older than I was and the way I change with aging just seems so strange to me, not all bad, just strange).  Being a control freak (sort of) and often disappointed on my birthday (horrible timing), I opted to make my own cake.  I'm not so into the icing and fluffiness of a basic cake.  I'm also not that interested in chocolate cake.  I like cheesecake and exotic flavors and experimentation while baking.  Mostly though, I made a cake stand a couple of months ago and finally had the glass dome to go with it; I had to see a cake on it.

I had some lemon I had never used and some lemon extract.  I decided lemon sounded good.  I was going to use the canned pie filling to fill the top of the cake, but I was told, "Nobody likes that stuff."  So, I still have a can of lemon filling I haven't used.  The same person who believes that nobody likes that stuff is also dieting.  I decided to make an almost no fat cheesecake.  This worked, but it took longer to set up, kind of a lot longer (or maybe I was just impatient?).  I suppose I might have over-cooked it too trying to get it to set up, but it tasted fine.

The crust was made of organic ginger snap cookies that I mashed.  This was messy and hard to accomplish.  I got compliments on the crust, but it was chewier than I would have liked.  I suppose the texture was that of a ginger snap, but it was hard to cut through the crust and all.  It was my first crust and overall it was fine.  I will shoot for improvement on the next one.

If you look closely, you can see that the edges browned slightly.  I've read that this isn't supposed to happen, but I don't really mind it.  It looked very pretty when it was decorated, BUT  I discovered that you just can't rush a candied lemon slice.  There's no doing it.  It will bite back.  So this was pretty, but not edible.

  I read through < href =http://userealbutter.com/2009/09/10/candied-lemon-slices-recipe/ > this  and then I consulted various other pages.  They mostly involved the same things just different ideas on how many times you should blanche and how much sugar you should use.  So I went with it  and tried to hurry mine because I only had an hour between getting home and potential company arriving.  You absolutely CANNOT hurry a candied lemon.  They fall apart and they bite you back.  My slices weren't very precise either.  So, I'm going to try just the peel next time.  I hope to have edible success.

So this is what we ate, not my nasty bitter lemons.  These rasberries were super fresh.  Yum.