Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Sweet Experiments~ Ricotta Cheesecake and Butterscotch Pot de Creme

The other week, I bought a 3 lb tub of ricotta cheese and made lasagna. Initially, I was planning on just using cottage cheese in my lasagna, but Mike said, "What?  Lasagna with ricotta cheese tastes so much better than lasagna with cottage cheese."
I had a lot of ricotta cheese left, so I decided to attempt to make a cheesecake.  My mom had bought me a set of spring form pans a while back, and this was the first time I put them to use.  I decided to try Giada DeLaurentis' ricotta cheesecake recipe.
The flavor of the cheesecake was delicious. There was a hint of honey in the smooth creamy cheesecake. Unfortunately, that's what my final product ended up looking like (and I served it anyways).  I was taking a nap at home and I instructed a friend to take the cheesecake out of the oven when the timer buzzed.  Well the pan and the waterbath was too hot for my friend to handle, and she ended up dropping the pan into the sink.  We were able to salvage some of the cheesecake.  Oh well, I guess that means that I just have to try to make it again 


Pot de Crème

I’ve been obsessed with pot de crème after I had a butterscotch pot de crème at Neighborhood Services earlier this year. It was served in a cute little glass jar, which I now refer to as “the pot of goodness.” The serving size was too rich and large to be a single portion, but perfect for sharing.
Pot de crème is basically a heavy cream custard consisting of egg yolks, heavy cream, milk, and sugar. Man, rattling off all the ingredients just made me gain a couple of pounds.
So I decided to test out a pot de crème recipe. I surfed the Internet and found a butterscotch pot de crème recipe.

The final result was a really sweet slight burnt caramel flavored pot de crème. It made me start thinking, “What is butterscotch flavor?” Can you actually make a butterscotch flavor? I feel that butterscotch falls into the “caramel” flavor camp. What do you think?
At the moment, pot de crèmes are one of my favorite desserts. If I owned a small cute-sy dessert shop, I would serve small portions of pot de crème so people could have a small indulgence.

3 comments:

K and S said...

experiments! looks delicious!

Erika said...

IMO, butterscotch is distinct from caramel in that is contains...*drumroll*...scotch. :) I think that gives it a boozy character that makes it different.

I like pot de creme too, its like a lazy creme brulee with the same creamy silky texture without dealing with a torch. One thanksgiving, my friend's dad made too much pumpkin pie filling and ended up just pouring the excess into ramekins and baking in a water bath. The result: makeshift pumpkin pot de creme. It was pretty successful!

genkitummy said...

Erika-Thanks for the information on butterscotch. I haven't had enough butterscotch in my life to pick up the boozy note. Pumpkin pot de creme sounds wonderful! Pumpkin will always be dear to my heart!