Wednesday I got a shipment of mini-cheesecakes from The Confectional – a cheesecake bakery in Seattle that does mail order. They wrote to me a few weeks ago asking me if I’d like to review their cheesecakes – and after thinking about the ethics of such things – I decided to do it. I knew I’d feel bad if I had to give them a bad review, but really, how likely was that when we are talking about cheesecake?
As it turned out, the cheesecakes were great – in particular their plain cheesecake. I got 8 different kinds, and I’ll review each one below. The cheesecakes are small and round, each one the size of a generous personal portion, and come in a variety of flavors.
The first cheesecake I tried was the Seattle’s New York-Style cheesecake, and it was probably the best cheesecake that I’ve ever had. It was rich, creamy, sensual – plainly delicious. I think one of the things that made it so great was the crust. In my experience, cheesecake crusts often taste stale and are usually not very tasty. These ones would be good enough to eat by themselves – they are sweeter than your general crust and taste fresh with a vibrant, crystal flavor. Yummm.
The kids and I shared the Peanut Butter & Chocolate cheesecake – and this one wasn’t as successful (but how could it be?). The main problem was the dark chocolate – I’m sure it will fully satisfy you if you like dark chocolate, but I thought it was a bit bitter and Mika (my 6 year old) found it too bitter to eat at all. I liked the peanut butter part, but more when eaten by itself rather than in combination with the dark chocolate. That said, Camila (my 4 year old) really liked it.
Later on, we had the Caramel cheesecake. We all loved it. According to Mika “It is yummy! I love it so much. You make good cheesecakes.” Camila, meanwhile, says: “I like all the cheesecakes. I like them a lot and a lot.” This cheesecake was sweet, though not overly so, with a definite but not overwhelming touch of caramel.
By my fourth cheesecake, the Raspberry white chocolate. I liked this cheesecake quite a bit, it was refreshing and just as creamy as the other ones – and the (chocolate?) crust was delicious as well. But I still liked the Seattle NY cheesecake better.
After that, I decided that I couldn’t really wait to taste all the cheesecakes, so I took bites of all of them – sharing some with my kids.
I did not like the Coconut Cherry Chocolate cheesecake – made with lighter chocolate than the peanut butter & chocolate cheesecake. But then again, I do not like cherries. I didn’t realize it was cherry when I tried it, but was unhappy when I encountered the fruit – both because of its taste and its consistency. Camila didn’t like it either, which I found surprising. Mika, on the other hand, loved it and had it all for herself.
I shared the Cookies & Mint Chocolate cheesecake with everybody. Mike, a mint fan, specially liked it – though he didn’t think it tasted much like a cheesecake. Camila thought it was very yummy, and I thought the mint flavor had been well incorporated into the chocolate. Mika, on the other hand, wasn’t impressed – no reason why.
I’m not the biggest fan of cinnamon either, so the Pumpkin cheesecake was not my favorite. If you like pumpkin pie with a lot of spice you’ll probably like it – but then again, why not eat pumpkin pie then?
And finally, if you want a real kick, you have to try the Mexican Chocolate cheesecake, sprinkled with cayenne and cinnamon. I hadn’t checked which one it was before I tasted it, so the spiciness (and it is very spicy) really surprised me. I can’t imagine I could eat a whole one at once, but I’ve gone back for other bites here and there.
And that was it. My general feelings are that these are very high quality cheesecakes, with great cookie crust, well balanced flavors and a great consistency, creamy, yet firm. I also think that they are very well priced at $32 for 9 cakes – that’s less than $4 a serving – and you probably can’t make a cheesecake for that price. They get even cheaper – per cheesecake – if you order more (however, I don’t know how much the shipping costs are – they may make the cheesecakes significantly more expensive).
The cheesecakes look very elegant, so I think they would be a great end to a dinner party. While I personally would order a box just with plain cheesecakes (though I would like to try the quadruple chocolate and the kahlua white chocolate cheesecakes), I think for a dinner party you should order a variety (though of course, you then risk people fighting over their favorite one).
This cheesecake experience actually made me change my plans for Xmas dessert. I was going to make Frozen Grand Marnier Torte with Dark Chocolate Crust and Spiced Cranberries, but now I think I’m going to make individual cheesecakes. I’ll definitely use the Maria cookies from Spain (what they use), if I can find them. I was thinking of making plain or white chocolate cheesecakes and adorning each one with a strawberry and a couple of mint leaves 🙂 I’ll let you know how they come out.
Finally, the cheesecakes came very well packaged, with four cooling packages that were still semi-frozen when they got here. The cheesecake arrived at a perfect temperature – not too cold, but still not room temperature and had the perfect consistency right off the box.
Once again, you can find these cheesecakes at The Confectional in Seattle.
Category: Food Items (Page 22 of 27)
Yesterday I went to Messob for dinner, on Piedmont Ave. in Oakland, and we happened to park just in from of Euromix Deli, a small, tidy store carrying products from all over Europe, but specializing in Eastern Europe. I’ve been here several times before, ever since my friends Victoria and Penelope bought me a huge assortment of food items from there, but I don’t think I’ve blogged about the place yet. I won’t now either, :-), but I promise to go back to the place and tell you more about what they carry.
One thing they do carry, and that Victoria & Penelope had included in their gift, are Russian spice mixes. They come in little green envelopes good for one meal and they have them for rice, kebabs, roasts, fish and other things I couldn’t really tell what they were. I’ve tried the ones for the rice, the kebabs and the roasts and they are excellent.
I made a tri-tip roast in the rotisserie with the roast spice mixture for election night, and the results were great. The meat was super tender and very flavorful. I let it sit at room temperature with the rub for almost an hour before cooking, and I’d recommend you do the same. I’ve made the kebabs before, and they also rock. You marinate the chunks of beef or lamb in some red wine mixed with the spices and then grill. Yumm.
But I think my favorite mix is the one for the rice (pilau). I’ve made it a few times last year and the results are great – very satisfying.
Alas, the packages of these mixtures are in Russian, so I can’t tell you even what they’re call. They are distributed by West Coast Trade in Newark, and, as I said, available for sale at Euromix.
This time they didn’t have the roast spice mixture, so I bought several packages of the ones for kebabs ($1.40) and rice ($1). The former consists of: sweet paprika, salt, coriander seeds, onion, MSG, garlic, red hot pepper, sugar, basil leaves, black pepper, mustard, turmeric, cumin and nutmeg. The latter includes: salt, sweet paprika, turmeric, barberry,curry,coriander seeds, cumin and ground marjoram. Of course, they smell divine.
Yesterday was my birthday and my mom got me (by proxy) an ice cream cake from Safeway. It was a simple affair, a matter of vanilla ice cream sandwiched by white cake, and it wasn’t the most delicious thing ever, but pretty satisfying. I do think that I like their regular cakes better. They cost about the same, I think.
As I mentioned in my last post, yesterday was Mika’s 6th birthday party and as usual I got her a Safeway cake. I’d been going with Safeway cakes for several years – ever since I got a horrible cake from Just Desserts for her welcoming ceremony. Why pay $60+ dollars for something that in the end doesn’t taste good?
Part of the reason I go with Safeway is that there aren’t many choices for cakes in San Leandro. Costco has cheap cakes, but I dislike the frostings (which you know most likely have hydrogenated oils in them) and they only have basic designs, OK when your kid is very young but a problem by the time they are into cartoon characters. (Yes, I’m one of those parents that gives into commercialism and let’s her kids have character parties – I also buy Bratz for Mika! shoot me).
The chinese bakery
has nicely decorated cakes, with cartoon characters and all, but I find their cakes not to be sweet enough. This is a plus for some people, but I’m just not into them.
There is, of course, Marita’s, whom I like to support as they are locally and minority owned -, but while I like their cakes (in particualr their frostings), they don’t offer decorations. Plus I’m not sure you can get a rectangular cake that is less than a 1/2 or full sheet.
Then there is Baskin Robbins. We’ve gotten cakes from there before, and they are usually pretty good – if extremely expensive. Indeed, we were planning to get Mika one of them – but they didn’t have the Bratz decorations she wanted.
So we went for our tried and true Safeway cake. They didn’t have Bratz decorations but they did have Bratz pets decorations (I didn’t even know they existed!) and that was OK with Mika – who by then realized there weren’t many other choices. Plus the good thing about Safeway is that if you don’t want such a junky cake you can order it with whipped cream and strawberries (or another fruit). I usually get the white cake, which is very light, and the results are very good. For Camila’s birthday I actually got the whipped cream and banana cake, and I may have liked it even more. Best of all, the kids love it and I don’t feel they are eating too much sugar.
The one minus about Safeway cakes is that they aren’t cheap. A small, 1/4 sheet cake is about $21! You can get a half-sheet cake for about $16 at Costco. But hey, I’m willing to pay for whipped cream and fresh strawberries (and nice decorations). You can order the cakes just one day in advance, good for us procrastinators.
One thing to keep in mind is that the cake book that they have outside does not include all the decoration options. I was bummed when we didn’t find the Bratz there, but Mika insisted that we ask if they had Bratz anyway. I thought it was futile, but once again my 6-yo proved to be smarter than her mother. They indeed have other cake books under the counter – and usually they carry a Bratz cake. Unfortunately, there is a backorder on Bratz decorations and that’s why we had to go for the Bratz pets, but the point is that even if you don’t see what you want in the book, you should ask.
Anyway, this is a long posting to say that I like Safeway cake.
Last night I had my friend Aamani and her family over for hors d’ouvres and sangria. I wasn’t up to actually cooking, so I let Trader Joe’s do the catering. I got the Coconut Curry Chicken Sticks, the Pastry Bites with Feta cheese and caramelized onions and the Mushroom Turnovers. I’d had all before. The chicken sticks are pretty good but they scream for some kind of dip – probably that Thai sweet and sour sauce. I didn’t have any, though. The mushroom turnovers are also very tasty, a favorite of mine. But the pastry bites were just delicious, I can’t imagine I could make something better. I can seem myself buying a couple of boxes for my next party (hey, nobody needs to know). The only problem is that I may eat them all myself.
I also served TJ’s andouille sausage, which nobody ate, and bread with triple cream brie, which was very good.
We bought this bacon because we liked the idea that it doesn’t have any nitrates or nitrites added (not that I know the difference between the two). I don’t think consuming these substances is good for children. As a “healthier” (very much in quotation marks) bacon, I was afraid it wouldn’t be as good. Boy, was I wrong. It’s simply delicious. It has a great smoky flavor that doesn’t taste fake, and it’s deep and satisfying. It’s a bit too salty for me, however, though that is often true of bacon. In any case, I’ll buy it again – specially if it’s on sale at buy-1-get-1-free like it was last time.
Tonight we had leftover lamb with TJ’s Thai Red Curry Sauce. I really like their yellow curry sauce, and this one is not bad, albeit too salty for me. It’s a bit on the spicy side, but nothing that some rice can’t cure. It was good for a change of pace, but I think I’ll stick with the yellow one in the future.
We had that for dinner. Mike liked it, so did Camila. I thought the seasoning was too salty, but I’d buy it again. I served Mika plain mahi mahi, she has a problem with anything that’s in the least spicy (read “seasoned”). It was a struggle to get her to eat the fish – she had to really understand that that was all there was for dinner – but she finally did it and did not complain she didn’t like it.
I served the fish with steamed broccoli and it was wonderful to hear Camila repeating “I want more broccoli”. Mika used to like it too at that age, but she stopped liking it with age 🙁
I really like hot brie, at least what I’ve had at Horatio’s, and I’ve been having a craving for some since my last visit to that restaurant (which I think was on my birthday, in May). I knew that a supermarket product wouldn’t be the same, but I had no idea it could be so inferior. The pastry itself seemed underdone and heavy, while the brie was light and uninteresting. I didn’t even think it was worth it to bring down my very expensive balsamic vinegar to mix with it.
In all, I won’t buy this product again.
I’m not a big pork eater in the first place, but once in a great while I’ll have pork ribs or pork tenderloin. No more. This article by Rolling Stones magazine has convinced me not only that eating pork is unethical, but that it’s also bad for my health. Thanks god my children have only had it a handful of times in their lives.
Here is an excerpt:
Smithfield’s pigs live by the hundreds or thousands in warehouse-like barns, in rows of wall-to-wall pens. Sows are artificially inseminated and fed and delivered of their piglets in cages so small they cannot turn around. Forty fully grown 250-pound male hogs often occupy a pen the size of a tiny apartment. They trample each other to death. There is no sunlight, straw, fresh air or earth. The floors are slatted to allow excrement to fall into a catchment pit under the pens, but many things besides excrement can wind up in the pits: afterbirths, piglets accidentally crushed by their mothers, old batteries, broken bottles of insecticide, antibiotic syringes, stillborn pigs — anything small enough to fit through the foot-wide pipes that drain the pits. The pipes remain closed until enough sewage accumulates in the pits to create good expulsion pressure; then the pipes are opened and everything bursts out into a large holding pond.
The temperature inside hog houses is often hotter than ninety degrees. The air, saturated almost to the point of precipitation with gases from shit and chemicals, can be lethal to the pigs. Enormous exhaust fans run twenty-four hours a day. The ventilation systems function like the ventilators of terminal patients: If they break down for any length of time, pigs start dying.
From Smithfield’s point of view, the problem with this lifestyle is immunological. Taken together, the immobility, poisonous air and terror of confinement badly damage the pigs’ immune systems. They become susceptible to infection, and in such dense quarters microbes or parasites or fungi, once established in one pig, will rush spritelike through the whole population. Accordingly, factory pigs are infused with a huge range of antibiotics and vaccines, and are doused with insecticides. Without these compounds — oxytetracycline, draxxin, ceftiofur, tiamulin — diseases would likely kill them. Thus factory-farm pigs remain in a state of dying until they’re slaughtered. When a pig nearly ready to be slaughtered grows ill, workers sometimes shoot it up with as many drugs as necessary to get it to the slaughterhouse under its own power. As long as the pig remains ambulatory, it can be legally killed and sold as meat.
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