'Tis the Season for Dessert

This weekend brought a deluge of snow, slamming the city with blizzard after blizzard. As a new home-owner, I got a crash course in snow shoveling. After such a Sisyphean chore, the idea of baking in a warm kitchen was highly appealing.

In preparation for my annual Christmas party, I decided to make a Maple Pecan Cheesecake. (The dinner theme was a Quebecois Christmas: Beet & Blue Cheese Salad served with Tourtiere. I'll post about those dishes another time.) The recipe for the cake came from Lynn's cookbook collection. If I recall correctly, it was in the Australian Women's Weekly cookbook on cheesecakes.

The delightful thing about cheesecake is that it doesn't have to involve the oven at all. It looks and tastes sinfully decadent, and yet it can be ridiculously easy to make. That was certainly the case with this cake.

The base was made from ground ginger snaps and melted butter. I took a chance and substituted light cream cheese in place of regular. A modest amount of maple syrup was added to the filling mixture. Coarsely chopped pecans were tossed with maple syrup before being roasted in the oven for about 10 minutes. The result was a kind of pecan brittle which was broken up and sprinkled on top of the cake for some crunch. The dinner guests happily plucked at the candied pecans even after finishing their cake -- it is quite addictive and gives me ideas for other recipes.

I felt compelled to finish off the bottle of organic maple syrup I had bought for the cheesecake. So I baked a maple cake for my co-workers. It's a very simple sponge cake with maple syrup mixed into the batter. After it cooled, I sliced it horizontally in half then slathered maple cream (maple syrup and whipping cream beaten until thickened) between the layers. A light dusting of icing sugar gave it a wintery look. I'll be bringing it to the office tomorrow. Hope my colleagues like it!