White Chocolate Cheesecake

Please note: The first 20 or so posts are transferred over from another blog that I started at the begining of this year - this explains why I am being a total weirdo and talking about Christmas in July.... :)

Hiya!

I feel a bit strange writing my first Butter For Thought post all about White Chocolate Cheesecake. Is this really going to be a health blog?

The point is that yes it is! We just got back from the most amazing Christmas holiday and although an indulgent dessert was served after every meal, I feel glowing with good health and happiness. At home I eat something sweet every day, but I normally stick with things that are low in refined sugar and get more of their calories from fat – think dried fruit and nut bars, or baked fruit and cream. However, the holidays are meant for indulgence and I hate any claims we should do otherwise. In my opinion the only thing you can really do wrong over the holidays is to eat far too much. It sounds a bit pious but provided you eat a decent amount of protein at your dinner – Christmas Turkey! – you are unlikely to actually feel like doing this. I’m sure I ate way above my expended calories just because the foods were so rich, but I was normal with my portion sizes and as a result I just felt perfectly satisfied all the time.

(Apart from once when I had three portions of trifle, but that was just a small hiccup. Plus I had helped make the trifle and I knew I was getting too overexcited about eating it…)

The really weird thing was I came back from these four days of fantastic deserts, endless drinking and small amounts of vegetables liberally coated in butter, a pound lighter than when I went. Crazy! I wasn’t intending to diet (obviously) but I was carrying an extra pound of Christmas drinking that I was thinking I might try to shift some time. What a strange time to shift it! The one thing I can think is that we were eating one big meal a day, and then a plate of leftovers at night. There was no snacking and I’ve read some stuff in my Bauman College studies that suggests if you are looking to lose small amounts of weight eat the same amount but eat in larger meals without snacking. This helps your body to go into fat burning mode (which it should do 4-6 hours after eating). This flies in the face of all the information suggesting we need to snack ten times a day, but it does fit in with what I’ve always found to work for me. It also makes meal times a lot more special. Nerdy!

On the subject of dessert, I also love some work Kimi at the Nourishing Gourmet has been doing aroundkeeping dessert special. Although I have something sweet every day, I love the idea of saving your indulgent dessert for the weekend and going all out. None of this ‘99% Fat Free Chocolate Mousse’ malarkey! I also love an article the wonderful Darya Pino at Summer Tomato wrote about making dessert worth it.

Anyways back to the cheesecake.

The fiancee's amazing aunt cooked us a menagerie of delicious dishes but for me the star will always be the white chocolate cheesecake. It is probably my favorite desert of all time  – seriously. Here’s the photo!

Ahhh! It was basically just too darn good. We also had a salted caramel flour-less chocolate cake and the afore mentioned humungous trifle on Boxing day.

But the cheesecake was always going to steal the show – drool drool drool!!! It is one of those foods that was kind of more like sex than eating – all about pleasure and gratification, and it also left me thinking about it for days afterwards. If you like white chocolate or rich desserts, or creamy deserts or yummy things with chocolate on top, or – heck if you’re HUMAN – this dessert is SO for you. Luckily because I’m such a kind person, and because I’m always keen to spread the love of amazing desserts and expanding waistlines, I delved deep into the world of Google to see if I could find a quick link to the recipe. Here it is!

This makes one cheesecake, but it’s seriously gigantic and you could easily serve about 20 with it. I wish I had a to-scale photo, that’s all! Here is it is beside the flourless chocolate cake which we had at the same time. The more I think about it the less sure I am about the reasonable portion sizes  – at least we sat down to eat everything!

Tonight the fiancee and I are having a New Years dinner party. We are making lots of tarts out of Ottolenghis cookbook – short-crust pastry being the one dish Sally Fallon advocates using white flour for. Thank goodness because I don’t think anyone who is coming would have appreciated a whole-wheat option. We are also making high butter, kind-of-lower-sugar Russian Tea Cookies and homemade coffee ice cream. Hopefully, this will all be okay!

Have an amazing New Year!