The Chronicles of a Cheesecake Baker Wannabe: Male by Birth, Baker by Choice

Since the title of this post is self-explanatory, I shall proceed with the events which occurred in the build up to the day on which the cheesecake was born.

7th of March
Life was pretty monotonous and uninspiring, no thanks to the reports and assignments our uni bestowed us with. So I came up with what initially was an out-of-this-world idea (to me at least); making a cake. No, not just any Tom-and-Dick nor Betty-and-Mary cake, it’s a cheesecake. Just hearing this word alone is sufficient to tantalize your emotions to that of orgasmic proportion, let alone sinking your teeth onto it, never wanting to let go, and exploring its undisturbed chastity with every single taste bud on your tongue. I’m not being explicit here; it’s just that cheesecake invokes superlatives. Of course, do have a glass of water beside you to ease its movement down your throat amidst that euphoric indulgence. I think I got carried away crap…

11th of April
After weeks of dilly-dallying, it was time I went seeking for the ingredients; eggs, butter, vanilla, sour cream so on and so forth. Why the procrastination? It was because I spent most of my time asking friends (who know and have tried baking, of course) where I could get the ingredients since I hardly do grocery. Also, I spent quite some time battering them with questions regarding the finer details of the recipe and instructions sourced from websites. Shoor Bing (an A-Levels friend) suggested that 1 cup in the recipe basically referred to 180mL while Yea Lee (friends since 13) insisted that it was 250mL. So much for trying to erase my confusion about the recipe haha. Anyway it is anyone’s guess as to whose measurement I followed in the end LOL. But I must thank both of you for been such a great sport, tolerating my non existent culinary knowhow. After much thinking, I came to a conclusion that when the Ang Mohs mention sugar, they are referring to castor or granulated sugar, only powder sugar refers to icing sugar. To think I actually contemplated using icing sugar to make the batter LOL, luckily I read the recipe carefully. Someone please correct me if I’m wrong.

With much confidence now, I headed to Tesco Puchong to get the materials specified in the recipe. Not all the stuffs were easily available such as Graham cracker crumb and sour cream. For the former, I substituted it with shortbread and digestives. Speaking about the latter, I asked one of the store attendants for its whereabouts but ended up with something else.

Me: Tumpang tanya di sini ada ‘sour cream’ ar?
Lady: Oh itu, ada ada, awak jalan ke lorong itu, finger pointing at a particular direction
Me: Oh okay thanks
So I headed to that particular lane but there was only one type of cream available on the shelves; shower cream. She must have misheard sour cream as shower cream. Should have just said krim masam instead. Asked other staff, some said it was available but some said no. So I decided to hunt for it myself, pretty much like a blind man navigating his directions without his walking stick. After almost an hour walking through a labyrinth of shelves to no avail, I decided to hit the road home. Now all I needed was just that sour cream.

At night, as I ironed out the finer details of baking by enquiring around, I realized I still haven’t comprehended the meaning of the word ‘cup’, so often used in the baking fraternity. What kind of cup? 180mL cup? 250mL cup? World cup? Or my Ikea mug? Luckily help arrived in the form of Yuan Ni (my training workplace colleague) who cleared my doubts regarding ‘cup’. Thanks a lot dudette. And also, you were right, Yea Lee…you know what I mean LOL. By then, it was 3.00a.m. already, felt like I just completed a lab report, time I hit the bed.

12th of April
The time was 830a.m., was still groggy but guessed the enthusiasm due to the novelty of this day kept me awake. Yes, it’s baking day! Took quite some time to gather the stuff I bought the previous day which were strewn all over the kitchen. All I needed was still the shower cream, erm, sour cream. Having no sour cream would have defeated the purpose of this day, wouldn’t it? So I set off my journey to Ivan’s place since he agreed to accompany me to Chloe’s (another coursemate of mine) house in Cheras. Thankfully this dudette agreed to let me use her kitchen since mine was ill-equipped. 15 minutes into the journey and I was still stuck at the road outside my housing area -_- only god knew what caused this massive traffic at 930a.m. It was close to 11 something by the time I picked Ivan. Off we went in search for the holy-grail-with-sour-cream in it and our first stop was King’s Confectionery in Sri Petaling. Asked the staff if they could sell me sour cream and the answer was a blank stare from them; that was so embarrassing and at that very moment I wished the earth would open up and swallow me LOL. Next stop, The Store and it turned out they ran out of supply. Darn, this cream was proving to be elusive indeed. Third stop: Carrefour and luckily there were 3 tubes left in the cold storage!

Reached Chloe’s house at 12 something and our arrival was greeted by 2 over-hyperactive dogs. One looked like Furby and another resembled a miniature imperial guardian lion from China. Good thing they didn’t bite or chew my foot, phew; I have a mild dog-phobia. Finally we started preparing the crumbs and the batter for the first trial cake. Ivan, who brought his marketing textbook to prepare for his test next week, helped a bit but mostly ‘supervised’ us LOL. Due to my non-existent dexterity in making cakes, Chloe’s presence did a world of good to the cake haha.

The compressed shortbread and digestives crumbs for the base of the cake

Pouring the batter onto the crumbs

One thing I must admit is I was put off by the preparation process; the amount of sugar and butter needed…can last a malnourished guy like me for almost 2 weeks, LOL. The first cake was disastrous; we removed it from the springform pan while it was still piping hot and the result was this:

But it tasted fine, success! So we adhered to the recipe and proceeded with the second cake. This time, learnt our lesson and the second cake was stored in the refrigerator overnight after cooling down. Came to collect it the next day and it turned out fine. Happiness and euphoria summed up my feeling just by the sight of it.

Once again, many thanks to everyone who made this seemingly wacky and cheesy dream of mine materialize. Now I dare say impossible is nothing; making cheesecake, I mean...

Say Cheessseeee!