SUGAR HIGH FRIDAY

After much deliberation I finally decided to take part in my first sugar high Friday last week. It is being run by Jasmine at Confessions of a Cardamom Addict and the Valentines inspired theme was sweet seduction.

Being in a relationship with someone not terribly sweet toothed means that any dessert has to be carefully judged but a cheesecake always seems to hit the nail on the head. I have made the New York Baked Cheesecake from 'How to be a Domestic Goddess' a couple of times and, as the recipe feeds 12 people, I felt confident enough to try an adjustment in scale. Dishes made with seduction in mind are usually (well in my house at least) for two so a few individually portioned cheesecakes seemed ideal.

I am not a pro at recipe fiddling and twiddling so I latched onto the hardest ingredient to divide, eggs, and went from there. Six eggs in a dish to feed 12 meant that, in theory, going down to one egg would be perfect for two (I should know by now that my theories never quite work out) so dividing the recipe into sixths was the way to go. My lack of digital scales meant that this was largely approximation as it is pretty hard to weigh 37.5g of anything.

So to get started I made a sixth of the biscuit base and used it to fill the base of four cupcake cases (already a little off the perfect two portions that I had envisaged). On Friday I made a sixth of the cheesecake mix and filled the four cases with quite a bit left over so I decided to just fill two extra cases and have baseless cheesecakes that could be eaten with a spoon from the paper. The recommended cooking time was around an hour so, religiously sticking to my sixths, I set the timer for 10 minutes and checked, another 5 and checked again, another couple of minutes and finally the top was golden. The key to the original recipe lies in not opening the oven door during cooking or for a while afterwards and even though I know this I was stressing and so opened it, repeatedly. My cheesecakes rose spectacularly before sinking and cracking - oh well I suppose we live and learn.

Anyway, they don't look bad (although strangely like those little portuguese custard tarts) and they tasted as they should, creamy and a little lemony and definitely delicious. I will be revisiting this experiment and hopefully one day will report back with a perfected and more exactly proportioned recipe.