With Christmas coming up I thought it would be an interesting exercise in the holiday spirit to try out some of the many recipes offered on Pinterest, a place where obsessive materialists, culinary connoisseurs and DIY homebodies converge to digiatlly scrapebook and share their ideas and interests. Let me just say was hard to pick just one to fail spectacularly at.
No Bake Brownie Cheesecake
Ingredients:
2 blocks of Cream Cheese
Sweetened Condensed Milk
1 tablespoon Lemon Juice
Powdered Sugar
Whipped Cream
Semi-Sweet Baking Chocolate
Brownie Mix
2 Eggs
1 cup of Vegetable Oil
¼ Cup of Water
Sometimes you just can’t decide what kind of dessert you want and you have to get both. Ice cream and cake? Yep. Waffle Donuts? You bet. Brownies and Cheesecake? Heaven is a place on Earth. I’ve always favored no-bake over baked cheesecake, there’s just something more satisfying about.
Starting with the base, mix eggs, water, oil and brownie mix according to the recipe on the box. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and grease your pan with nonstick spray. I used two circular pans, one for the brownie base and the other for the cheesecake.
In a separate bowl, mix cream cheese and lemon juice, the acid will help to break down the solid. Working in sweetened condensed milk until smooth. You can add to taste, mine always teeters somewhere in between just right and slight diabetes, so be cautious about how much you add.
Lay down aluminum foil or saran wrap in second pan, pour mixture into pan and put in freezer for 2-3 hours. In another bowl mix powdered sugar, a small portion of melted semi sweet baking chocolate and whipped cream until smooth, this will be the filling that goes in between the brownie and cheesecake layer.
Now here comes the part where I where I knew I screwed up. I thought I was moving at reasonable pace. I had taken out the brownie base and cooled it for an hour. So I checked on the cheesecake layer and it seemed solid enough so I placed it on top of the brownie layer after spreading the filling and placed it in the freezer.
Two hours later I checked back in the freezer on my dessert and it was leaning harder than Fat Joe and Remy. Between crying and trying to save my pour cheesecake from sliding off like a bad wig, I rigged a makeshift mold out of construction paper wrapped in aluminum to hold the sides together like a tourniquet. Did it look inedible? Maybe, but it was nothing a little chocolate drizzle couldn’t pretty up.
Watermelon Cake:
Pink Velvet Cake Mix
Cream Cheese Cake Frosting
Semi-Sweet Baking Chocolate
1 Stick of Butter
1 Cup of Water
2-3 Eggs
I know a fruit like watermelon belongs exclusively to the summer time but this recipe is too cute to confine to one season. The original recipe calls for fondant but this is the University of Pinterest where substitution and makeshift remedies are encouraged…Just kidding, this cake was a pain to make mostly because I was trying to be creative and thrifty.
For one, I know fondant isn’t the cheapest but if I was going to substitute it for anything I should not have swapped the green food dye for lime Jell-o. Baking the cake was easy, mixing the frosting and dyeing it with Jell-o was a nightmare. I felt like I was getting slimed at the Kids’ Choice Awards.
To start, preheat your oven to 325 degrees. Mix water, eggs, cake mix and butter according to the directions on the cake box. Grease your pan ( I used a bundt) and then flour it, dump excess flour. For every scoop of cake batter that you put in your pan, add in your semisweet chocolate before pouring on the next layer–you may use chocolate chips or a chocolate bar chopped into pieces. You may refer to directions on box but bake for 32-36 mins and then let cool.
Now comes the part where I knew I screwed up. I found a recipe on Pinterest for dyeing frosting with Jell-o. So, naturally, I decided to wing it. Boiling what I eyeballed as a ¼ of water, I poured the water water into the Jell-o and mixed it. Before it cooled I added a spare amount of frosting to the mix and stirred until the ingredients were combined in an oozing mess.
I did this in intervals, mixing the Jell-o and then adding it to the frosting and chilling it for 2 hours. What the recipe promised would be a satin, creamy topping turned out to be a hideous pastel Easter green mess. And I put that hot mess on my cake and it slid right off. Just delightful.
Door Wreath:
You Will Need:
Flowers
Scissors
Hot Glue Gun
Ribbon
Wreath (Wire, Straw or Styrofoam)
Nothing is sadder in the winter than a bare door. Okay so there are a million more tragic issues to attend to than the state of your entry way décor but I doorway is nothing without adornment nonetheless. If you are feeling particularly festive, slap some pine cones and a wreath on it.
This was the easiest to do out of the three crafts although I did burn myself more than enough times. There were no instructions or measurements to go by. I mostly did it all by sight and prayed just a little that it didn’t turn out like some horrible church hat for someone with eccentric tastes on the mothers’ board.
I used a premade straw wreath and the only thing I had to measure was the length of the ribbon to make sure there was enough to coil around the wreath. You can buy any bundle of synthetic flowers from any crafts store or at Wal-Mart. Just clip the flowers off of their wire stems (watch your fingers) and arrange them however you see fit. It’s your prerogative.
Zhana Johnson
Senior Features Editor