Ashler's Bashler's Birthday Bash!

Oh, OH-MY! This is an "OH-MY" picture & I just feel very "Oh-my" when I see it. If I may just say, I am a cheesecake girl in a cheesecake world! Something about half-eaten food REALLY makes me hungry.

This was supposed to be a post all about my daughter's 9th birthday but it somehow really turned into a mighty "cheesey weezy" cake moment, for me. Partly because of the lack of birthday pics I guess. Well, I'm giving it a try, anyway!

So again, Birthday season strikes & Ashley turned 9. This year she asked for a cheesecake. So it started out a little something like this:
Well no, actually it started with her looking through my totally impractical dessert cookbook looking for a cheesecake I could make. Thankfully she chose something pretty realistic. It was a buttermilk cheesecake with raspberry sauce. I sized up the recipe made my adjustments & went to work. She was tickled to help me here & there & of course take some pictures for me. My mixer (still haven't given him a name) got to do the heavy work of mixing 500g of cream cheese, 1 tbsp lemon juice, 1 tbsp cornstarch 2 egg yolks & 1/2 c of honey & 3/4 c of milk ( 1 tsp of vinegar added to the milk makes a great substitute for buttermilk) . Check out the sticker deco on the top, very "Erika".The cream cheese came with little packs of blueberry jam so I added spread that on the bottom of the (not cooked/now frozen) cookie crumb crust. (grated @ 1 tsp of lemon rind in the crust, I think it helped) For anyone whose interested...I would highly recommend not pre-baking the crust but freezing instead.Now I don't know about yours but my Law of baked cheesecake states: "My cheesecake shall never fall from the balcony & maim a hapless pedestrian, but rather "splat" harmlessly upon their unsuspecting head in a comical manner that shall cause me no negative legal reprecutions whatsoever. Egg whites SHALL be beaten till stiff & folded into cream cheese mixture to avoid "block-of-cheese-disguised-as-cheesecake" type disasters."
Baked for 1hr 15 min at 160c gave it a much darker crust then I'd have liked but it worked. Decorated with whip cream & left over raspberries. Sadly I have no evidence of the raspberry sauce but it was simply blended raspberries, strained in a sieve & mixed with apple sauce (to stretch....come on, do you know how expensive raspberries are?) Tasted great but looked incredibly like ketchup. With all the aunts & uncles coming over, the poor raspberry sauce didn't stand a chance. Tsk tsk!

And here they are now! Here's where the camera gets swept away in the tide of overly enthusiastic children greeting slightly-tired but equally enthusiastic Aunts & Uncles.

Grandpa's I-phone games are all the rage. (And no, I see it too! There is indeed a very large, odd hat upon Uncle Masa's head)Yeah, still there. They were doing unspeakable things to the poor chalk-man stuck in the I-phone!
And of course there were the usual friendly attempts to win Ban-tan's trust. Poor kid, I'm surprised he survived the night.
Here's the Birthday lady! Hmm....I did not have the camera at this point! And who has time for pictures when you have a table of expectant kids waiting for a piece of the action. We had a great time cutting into some pretty light cheesecake, & smothered our ice cream with ketchup (I mean, raspberry sauce). Well, there you have it. I'm always sorry I don't get around to taking more pictures of our birthday get together's but it's near impossible. I guess you have to see it to believe it!

Next up Travster! Poor guy is anticipating it so much he asked the next morning if it was his birthday. (Since he knows his is next).