I recently began cooking and writing occasional mini-reviews for Cooks & Books & Recipes, an awesome website that focuses exclusively on reviews of the latest cookbooks, featuring a sample recipe from each one. Okay, I’ve done two, so far. But if you’re thinking of buying any of the new cookbooks coming out, be sure to check Cooks & Books & Recipes for the inside scoop!

One of the latest cookbooks reviewed at Cooks & Books (I call it for short), is Abby Dodge’s Desserts 4 Today. The recipe featured from the cookbook is Mini Bittersweet Chocolate Cheesecakes. Cheesecake? How could I pass up trying a recipe for personal-sized cheesecakes that takes 5 minutes to throw together and only 15 minutes in the oven?

Abby encourages creativity and even gives suggestions for ingredient switch-ins (or outs) and additions in case you want to “Gussy It Up.” I, of course, couldn’t leave well-enough alone and adapted her recipe even further. Not once, but twice! Because I’m just that kind of a girl. I give you

Coffee Chocolate Chip Mini Cheesecakes
(makes 6 mini cheesecakes) (Recipe adapted from Desserts 4 Today by Abigail Johnson Dodge)

Ingredients:

1 8 oz. pkg. cream cheese, softened at room temperature
1/3 cup dark brown sugar
1 tsp. instant coffee powder
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 large egg
2/3 cup mini chocolate chips (do not use regular-sized chips)

Preparation:

Preheat oven to 300º F.

In a medium bowl, beat the cream cheese with an electric hand-mixer until smooth. Add the brown sugar and beat until thoroughly incorporated. Make sure you scrape down the sides of the bowl between each step.

Dissolve the coffee powder in the vanilla extract and add to the cream cheese mixture, then add the egg. Beat thoroughly. Add the mini chocolate chips and stir to combine completely.

Take a regular-sized muffin tin and place foil liners into 6 of the cups, then spray with no-stick cooking spray. Alternatively, you can use reusable silicone cupcake liners without the cooking spray.

Bake for 15-18 minutes. The centers should barely jiggle when you nudge the pan. Set the muffin tin on a rack to cool completely, then refrigerate for a minimum of 2 hours.

Notes:

About 30 minutes prior to serving, take the cheesecakes out of the refrigerator and remove from the liners. If using the silicone liners, just pull back the edges slightly with your fingers, then turn them over and push the bottoms with your thumbs. They should pop right out. This allows them to take some of the chill off and the cheesecakes to return to that creamy mouthfeel we all love about them.

And because I couldn’t stop playing with it, and because I love you, here’s your *Bonus* Recipe:

Mini Nutella Cheesecakes
(makes 6 mini cheesecakes) (Recipe adapted from Desserts 4 Today by Abigail Johnson Dodge)

Ingredients:

1 8 oz. pkg. cream cheese, softened at room temperature
1/3 cup natural cane sugar (or granulated white sugar)
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 large egg
1/3 cup Nutella
A few hazelnuts, finely chopped for garnish

Preparation:

Preheat oven to 300º F.

In a medium bowl, beat the cream cheese with an electric hand-mixer until smooth. Add the sugar and beat until thoroughly incorporated. Make sure you scrape down the sides of the bowl between each step.

Add the egg, vanilla, and the Nutella, and beat till thoroughly combined.

Take a regular-sized muffin tin and place foil liners into 6 of the cups, then spray with no-stick cooking spray. Alternatively, you can use reusable silicone cupcake liners without the cooking spray.

Bake for 18 – 20 minutes. The centers should barely jiggle when you nudge the pan. Set the muffin tin on a rack to cool completely, then refrigerate for a minimum of 2 hours. After unmolding, garnish with the chopped hazelnuts.

For the original Bittersweet Chocolate Mini Cheesecakes recipe and a full review of Desserts 4 Today (and my mini-review!), click here.

Just think of the make-ahead possibilities for the Holidays. Or any day. Ooo… wonder what I could do with pumpkin…

Alert! Alert! Food Blog Police! OMG! I don’t have a badge! Ack!

I can’t believe it’s been a whole year since I last wrote about my adventures in South Indian cooking!

Sometime after I wrote that post, I was contacted by the author, Viji Varadarajan, to thank me and to offer advice, if I needed it. Seriously! Since I was still planning that special dinner for our friends who had gotten married like, a year and a half before, I took Viji up on her offer. Wouldn’t you?

I had been cooking out of an earlier edition of Vegetarian Samayal: Delicious Cooking from a Tamil Cuisine and asked Viji for a couple of sample menus that would be appropriate for a small dinner party. This is the menu we finally served that night.

Click if you can’t read it

A total success! The variety of textures and flavors flowed perfectly. Our guests of honor (one of which is from a Tamil family) were duly impressed. Yay!

Over this past year, Viji and I have corresponded via e-mail, and have become rather friendly. She came out with a new edition of Vegetarian Samayal, which I duly bought and have continued to cook from. When she came out with a new edition of one of her first books, Samayal: The Pleasures of South Indian Vegetarian Cooking, she sent me a copy to get my opinion. So, here goes:

I was going to link this with the Amazon.com listing, but they only seem to have the previous edition for sale right now, which is organized differently. Viji went to a lot of trouble to reorganize the sixth edition of Samayal, adding many pictures with the page numbers of the corresponding recipes, and meal plans, so you can put together a complete dinner of complimentary dishes. Which, if you’re a whitebread girl like me, is very nearly indispensable. She did something similar with the new edition of Vegetarian Samayal.

Two other indispensable features of the several books of hers that I own, are 1) the guide to what to do with individual ingredients (If You Have Eggplant You Can Make…); and 2) the pictorial guide to ingredients (what the heck are “drumsticks”?).

Samayal (as are all her cookbooks) is primarily geared to the young person of South Indian extraction, who, in today’s modern hectic world, is more inclined to get take-out than try to cook a meal, but longs for the fresh flavors of Mom’s (or Grandma’s) home cooking. That’s what makes it so attractive to those of us who love Indian food, but are intimidated by the sheer complexity of most cookbooks of the genre. I love the tips and tricks she includes with most of these recipes to make them even quicker (use your microwave!) and suggesting substitutions for some harder to find ingredients.

Personally, I’m substituting okra for anything that lists drumsticks as an ingredient. Sorry, Viji. I guess you just have to grow up eating certain vegetables…:-) But if you love to experiment with ethnic foods and cooking, and you’ve got a decently stocked Asian / Indian grocery nearby, you’ve definitely come to the right place. We love the rasams (soups), the differently flavored rice dishes, and the desserts are to die-for.

If there are any flaws, however, they lie with her copy editor. At least one recipe ends in mid-sentence, and a couple of others neglect to mention what to do with a listed ingredient (although you can figure it out by reading another recipe in the same section).

The new edition of Samayal also comes with a free Ayurvedic booklet discussing the nature of ayurveda and has some recipes from the Kerala region. This is a treat, especially if you’ve had any curiosity about this popular culture of self-purification.

We own over 65 titles of Indian cookbooks, covering just about every regional cuisine. We buy basmati rice at Costco, if that gives you any indication. South Indian (Tamil) cuisine has become my favorite type of Indian food, and MJ and I really enjoy cooking it for ourselves (the closest South Indian cuisine restaurant is an hour’s drive from us). While I haven’t tried every recipe (idlis still intimidate me), I can honestly say that the new editions of Samayal and Vegetarian Samayal by Viji Varadarajan are the go-to books in our library.