Bets to win

It has been a long week.  I've run a two day conference, missed two nights sleep, drunk far too much and finished it up with a day working in London yesterday.  I hate London quite a lot by the way.  I get lost, I get in people's way, I feel kind of helpless and out of my depth ALL the time I'm there.  I can make my way round Paris, Delhi and NY with no problems at all, but stick me in the middle of my own capital city and I become a gibbering wreck.

Anyway - I'm home for the afternoon and my trip back from London yesterday gave me some time to reflect on a bet I made a couple of weeks back.  Specifically that I could knock together a better salted caramel cheesecake than Somerfield.  Not such a terrifying prospect, but then the one from the supermarket was pretty damn good.

I started on this when I got home last night.  I used my usual cheesecake recipe as a starting point.  It's another good food one, and I've adapted it plenty of times in the past.  so I figure this should work out ok.

I made up the biscuit base as usual and once I had taken it out of the oven to cool, I mixed up some caramel dulce de leche with a teaspoon of rock sea salt.  I used pre-made dulche de leche;  an 18 hour day convinced me that cutting some corners would be ok on a trial run.  I spread the salted caramel onto the base, leaving an inch gap round the outside.  In my mind I envisage cutting into this cheesecake and the layer of caramel being a lovely gooey surprise at the bottom.  I suspect I am deluded.

I made up the cheesecake batter as per the recipe link, but used vanilla paste rather than vanilla essence.  This gives the cheesecake a wonderful speckled look as well as a richer taste. I spooned the cheesecake mix carefully into the gap between the caramel and the edge of the tin.  Once this was filled I then spooned the rest on top of the caramel, again carefully, in an effort to stop the caramel and cheesecake mixing in together.  I have no idea whether of not this will work or not.  Finally I swirled some dulche de leche over the uncooked cheesecake using my usual caramel-in-a-plastic-bag trick, as I still can't find my piping bags.

You can tell it was late at night as I haven't bothered clearing the work surfaces for the pictures.  I'd be ashamed of myself if I could be bothered.

I baked the cheesecake for 40 minutes at 180 and then a further 5 minutes as it still seemed a bit wobbly.  Then I gave up and went to bed.

This morning I am convinced that my artistic addition of the dulche de leche swirl was a bad idea.  The cheesecake has split slightly around the swirl.  I may leave this out of the next version of the cake.

I want to make up salted caramel shards to scatter across the top of the cake.  I have absolutely no idea how to do this, but a quick google tells me it shouldn't be that hard.

But of course, I'm totally wrong about this.  I take my eyes off the caramel for a few minutes to grab some coffee and promptly burn it.  And wreck a pan.  And am forced to start over again.  Even so the caramel doesn't really turn out as I had imagined.  I decide to scatter it on the cheesecake anyway and smear some more dulche de leche over the top and hope that it tastes good enough to ignore my presentation.

I guess that I'll find out this evening, as it's going over to the boyfriend's for dessert after his Sunday roast.  If I'm going to win this bet however I really need to figure out the presentation issues.