Creative Prep

The dilemma: My cream cheese needs to be at room temperature. Not only is my cream cheese not at room temp, but I don't even have cream cheese. And its 6:30 Friday evening, and we are hungry and craving Indian food, and I don't want to be up until midnight making cheesecake.

The solution: Stand back, I'm packing cheese.

I decided to warm my 24 ounces of cream cheese in my purse while I ate Chicken Tikka Masala. It was the only time I've ever remotely wished for an encounter with purse snatcher. It would have been worth the loss of my brick shaped cheese product.

If you ever need to do this, it works quite well. By the time we finished dinner, got home and lined up and measured out the rest of the ingredients for Cannoli Cheesecake, the cream cheese was ready for mixing.

I've linked to the recipe above, from Fine Cooking magazine. Cheesecake is easier than you think, really not difficult, as long as you are mindful of cooking time. I think it's one of the more dependable types of desserts you can make, and provides a great wow factor. As you'll see if you click through, there is no end to the variations possible. For this particular cheesecake, I think I would put more mini chocolate chips in. Another option - sprinkle the top with confectioner sugar and chips, which worked out just fine.

I'll  leave the finished product picture today to Fine Cooking, but I'll include my own "before" shot:

Having now noticed that this is a bull, it is a before, before shot I guess.