Knitting Up the Loose Ends

Hello, crafty and sundry!

My, it’s been busy around here lately, and I’ve apparently fallen off the blogging bandwagon. It, in part, started because I was having computer troubles. My desktop’s GPU (graphics processing unit, or graphics card) was overheating for some reason, and I’ve spent some time troubleshooting it. That included taking things apart in the computer, putting them back together, cleaning them, cleaning them again, and then cleaning them again and again just to make sure. It’s all happy now, but I’m bemused about it. Old games like Sid Meier’s Railroads! should not cause a fairly up-to-date computer to freak out and overheat. Nor should Simcity, but anyways. It’s happy and sitting at a good temperature now, and I’m enjoying playing a region in Simcity offline… aka, where it doesn’t eat my saves and make my games unplayable (true story, repeatedly).

IMG_2767I’ve also been knitting, which probably comes to no surprise to anyone hereIMG_2755. I finally sewed up the second pair of arm warmers, though I’ve not sat down and turned it into a proper pattern. I also finished the scarf I’d started on… but it’s not for me now. I realised as I was working it that my mother-in-law would way love it, so it’s going to be a Christmas gift for her now! I bought some wool in a different colour to make myself one as well, so we’ll all sort of have matching scarves. And by all, I mean myself, my mother-in-law, and my eldest daughter. I’d taken what little was left over of the red wool, and cobbled together a complimentary pattern that was only 16 stitches across rather than 28, but that had the same basic elements as the original pattern.

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All my pattern-writing seems to happen on tiny bits of paper…

IMG_2787Unsurprisingly, I plan on taking that bit of cobbling and turning it into a free pattern as well. I’m excited that I’m starting to understand the elements of knitting well enough to be able to create things as such! I mean, okay, adapting a scarf pattern for another scarf pattern isn’t really that hard, nor is telling someone how to knit something that is essentially a tube with a bit of ribbing… but it’s still sort of encouraging and exciting.

I’m also apparently now hooked on doing more than one project at once… oh well. I’ve now finished the back and the first front of my cardigan, and am casting on to start the first sleeve today. While working on my scarf. Yeeep. I have to say though, the cardigan seems to be knitting up encouragingly quickly! I might even finish it while it’s still cold, ha ha. And then I’ve already got the wool and buttons purchased for the next one I’m thinking of doing, so yeah. I’m also thinking (always thinking!) that I’m going to make blanket squares to keep myself from burning out on one project too quickly, and to help use up wool that is otherwise just chilling in my drawers. Plus really, can’t have too many blankets, and it would be a chance to do some texturework practice — I have a Debbie Bliss book a friend let me borrow that has some great ideas for that in it.

For now, I’m just counting down the days to Christmas. If I’ve been a good girl, Santa is likely to get me some nice new circular needles. I was tempted by those, and this gorgeous Caspian set (mermaid needles!), but the latter was out of stock by the time ‘Santa’ was looking to do the shopping. And then they came back into stock. I said that there’s every chance I’d buy the one I didn’t get for Christmas with any gift cards or cash I got, earning me a flat look. What? Beautiful knitting needles are a practical and pragmatic thing to collect!

Past that, the Steam Winter Sale is on. Which means me pouring through games on sale and adding them to my wishlist to maybe buy later. And by that, I mean my husband convinced me I needed the Talisman Season Pass, and then I bought a couple of games that were less than a pound, and then a dear friend and her boyfriend gifted me some shinies off of my wishlist. So yanno, all sorts of goodie game build up for me to get around to, hee hee. I guess that will also require me to want to put down my knitting needles more; Simcity works well ’cause I can just watch it do its thing while I knit.

I hope everyone has a lovely holiday season!

<3

A Wild Scarf Appeared!

Hello, crafty and sundry!

Now me, I couldn’t resist a Pokémon reference, hee hee. While I don’t have Omega Ruby or Alpha Sapphire yet, they’ll eventually make their way into my hot little hands. Because yanno, I’ve been addicted to the franchise for the entire almost 20 year span, so… gotta catch ’em all!

IMG_2748 IMG_2749Now, I can report that I’ve been making some awesome progress on my cardigan. I’m to the part where I do the armhole shaping, which means I’m probably about halfway done with the back (which of course, is the biggest part). I was getting a right good tease about it at Stitch ‘n Bitch the other day; I’ve been taking Lilbit’s best friend’s mother with me, and as she’s a neophyte to the craft, she likes to rib me good-naturedly about my relative level of skill. I grin — she’s well on the way to joining me, especially now that she’s picked up purling. I mean really… if you can purl, and if you can knit, you’re like, 90% of the way to doing just about anything you want. Well, after she learns how to bind off, at least!

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Yesssh

IMG_2746I’m the kind of person that likes to have one thing on the go at a time. I only read one book at a time, I only do one project per craft at a time, and so on. So I surprised myself yesterday by deciding to do a scarf. I was cheering a friend on while she worked the pattern (available for free on Ravelry). I was also making a point to check the pattern math for her, because she’d somehow gained like, nine stitches. I couldn’t help too much, as she’s a right-handed continental knitter, and I’m a left-handed english knitter (thrower 4 lyfe!), but I got to thinking — scarves are easy, I have some chunky to use up, and I don’t have anything new to wear to the Stitch ‘n Bitch Christmas party. It’s our tradition to wear something we made, so I figured rocking up in a new pretty scarf out of the blue would kick ass.

As to be expected of chunky, it knits up really fast. I don’t know that I’ll finish it today, but I should definitely have it knocked out over the weekend by my reckoning. We’ll see. I like really long scarves, so it might be what runs out of steam first — me, or the ball of wool. And the wool leftovers that I’m using is James C. Brett Marble Chunky in MC 14; I consider this gloriously amusing, seeing how the cardigan is in James C. Brett Marble DK in MT11. I tend to just nab Stylecraft or King Cole because they’re cheap and cheerful and perfectly nice, so I didn’t expect to find myself doing two projects in fluffy gradient goodness (and especially not at the same time). But really, I guess it’s normal for a lot of knitters to do a small project in the middle of a big project to help keep sane, so it’s not like the hell of doing multiple crochet projects and trying to remember which hook fell out of which mass of yarn, ha ha.

Anyways, good times in the land of knitting.

<3

Return of the Knitting

IMG_2738Hello, crafty and sundry!

It’s a huge relief for November to be over. Even if I won NaNoWriMo on the 19th, and wrote ‘The End’ on the 21st, the rest of the month has totally been a cooling down period. I’ve refrained from thoughts of writing beyond my daily efforts (my private blog and my 750words.com entry), and just let myself veg out in Dragon Age:Inquisition and knitting. eXtreme knitting, if I’m honest — my efforts have ganked my shoulders all out of alignment. But as you can see, the progress on this part of the cardigan is coming along swimmingly. There’s still a million rows to go, but I’m starting to feel like I’m making good progress on it at this point.

itssI had to stop at one point because of something that was annoying me — increases and decreases. You see, for left-handed people, we have to flip them around. Where a right-handed person would do SSK (slip slip knit) for a right-leaning decrease, it becomes a left-leaning decrease for a lefty (as pictured here). I was also trying to figure out which increases and decreases looked best. I didn’t get too too far into experimenting. In part, it’s because I was not having any luck finding a comprehensive list of increases and decreases, and in part because doing that bit of work assured me that the four techniques I have there work well enough for most of what I need to do. I’m still hoping to find and create a comprehensive list, but I don’t think I’ll be doing that unless I get some help from my designer friend Miriam. Which means pawing back down my wall because I know she gave a pretty good list a few months back, ha ha.

ScreenshotWin32_0002_FinalScreenshotWin32_0000_FinalPast that, I’m still hardcore rocking out playing Dragon Age:Inquisition as mentioned above. I decided to play a Qunari, because why not. I’m mainly liking the game. There’s lots to do, from exploring to crafting to gardening, and most of my complaints are niggling things that I can hope they fix in patches. For example, the mini-map is a transparent circle with symbols on it, which is… feh. You have to pull up the main map to verify terrain and such, and that bothers me and most of my old-school gaming friends. We also agree that it’s WAY annoying that you can only have one bind for movement keys. Really, how hard is it to have WASD -and- the four direction pad able to move you? I also have some minor complaints about camera controls, but like the aforementioned — it’s a niggle rather than a game-stopper (only place I’ve hit game-stopping because of cameras and controls is the Elder Scrolls franchise, which is ridiculously bad and pretty much unplayable).

It’s also the Steam Black Friday/Cyber Monday/whatever sale, which is so far less tempting than the Summer Sale was. I picked up some games that were like, pence apiece for future consideration. I tend to fixate on one or two games at a time, and not explore around. So it surprised me that I booted up Talisman: Digital Edition. My husband is a fan of the game from way way back, so he was happy to gift it to me some time ago. I guess I had fun my first tinker with it? He booted his copy up on his laptop and we spent an hour or so complaining about the game back and forth, which really, is a lot of fun. All hail the RNG, the stinker that he/she/zer/it is! I’ll probably give it another go later, and I know that the husband would like to actually play a game with me in future. We tend to both solo our things in the same room rather than game together-together, so that’ll be a nice treat. I think.

Anyways, back to knitting!

<3

NaNoWriMo: Done and Dusted!

Winner-2014-Web-Banner

Hello, crafty and sundry!

B29c-VjCIAAkBsxHrm, the header is probably a bit of a giveaway, but — I did it. I won NaNoWriMo again. I hit 50k on the 19th, and wrote ‘the end’ on the 21st… just in time for the weekend, hee hee. If anyone is interested in reading it, I’ll be turning it into a ereader-friendly PDF in the near future.

And of course, the game of note out this week (besides Pokemon, which I don’t have yet), is Dragon Age:Inquisition. I fell into the franchise some years back when a friend from a fiction fan site had gone on at length about the first game and, (I think), was writing her own fan fiction off of the game. It’s been a few  years, so I can’t remember the specifics. I just know she really liked it, and  I figured I’d give it a punt. I ended up liking it a lot, as well as the sequel (the map repetitiveness thing bothered me less than most people). So whups, here’s me getting a game on release day, ha ha.

I’m liking it so far (le gasp), except for the fact it utterly hates my desktop computer. I’ve got a good set-up here (card is an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 SE in the desktop, versus a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 765M in the laptop), and while the card in my desktop is older, it should be working as good as or better than the one in the laptop, I’m pretty sure. Instead, the game crashes out like none other. I’ve done all I can to make sure it’s working right, but I finally threw my hands in the air and started playing it on my laptop and its smaller screen. I guess I’ll take it, ’cause yanno, isn’t crashing. At all. It was crashing after a minute or two on the desktop, even with graphics turned way down (which I should not have had to do).

IMG_2730On the upshot, I was so frustrated with it crashing on my desktop, I finally played a bit of Game Dev Tycoon and Goat Simulator. The former is a total delightful time sink; my husband and I were both playing on our copies and comparing how our efforts turned out. Me being a mature adult, the tamest title I think I had was ‘Faaaaaaaaaaaaaack’; most were as pervy as I could muster because dude, it’s hilarious and who is going to see it. We both really knew we wanted to buy the game after we heard their approach to dealing with pirates, but yeah… I tend to buy most games when they’re on sale and let them collect dust until I’m bored of my main games. I’m sure I’ll rack up some beauties this week in various online sales, ha ha.

Past that, need to buckle down and knit more now that I’m not writing all the time. I’ve only really been working on it when hanging out with other knitters (or, more likely, when not in the house). I’ve not even gotten the first section of the back of this cardigan done, though I’m pretty close. I’m also probably slacking on it for the simple reason that I’m currently intimidated by a ‘big’ project. I’m sure it’ll be fine once I get going, but anyways.  Just need to do it, really. And the sooner I finish this project, the sooner I can feel invigorated to trying something more complex, hee hee.

<3

Not Much Knitting, Very Much Writing

Hello, crafty and sundry!

IMG_2698I’ve continued to keep very busy with NaNoWriMo. I’m still in the game somehow, and am actually pulling ahead of pace to build a nice buffer. I’m still not sure where I’m going with it, but it’s continuing to be fun.

It’s been just about all I’ve been doing though. I’ve cast on for a cardigan, but I’ve only done a couple of rows, and only managed that because I did it at a friend’s house. I’ve got an armwarmer to sew up and the flat pattern to write, but I’m just not there right now.

By the same token, baking has tailed off. It’s probably for the best, ’cause I was keeping us in a steady stream of pies and cakes and the like. Having said that, the husband made Bakewell tarts, and they’re lovely.

I’m still debating whether or not to upload my chapters to my Figment account like I did in 2012… I might. We’ll see. I’ve not poked around Figment much because oh hey, home to kids, and I don’t want to take away from them competing with each other and the like.

I’m happy with my progress though. I totally made the main character bi/pansexual, sexually experienced, and not at all shamed about getting it on. And it’s not graphic in the slightest, which is one of my greatest peeves. The only overt recognition of the sex happening is that the main character’s lover’s mother realises they’re sleeping together and yells at them about it (but also, because the main character is a mortal, and her lover is not, and his mom is a snob about that).

But anyways, just wanted to wave at the page and let everyone who doesn’t follow me on Twitter or NaNo know how that was going, and that I’m still alive!

<3

An Unsurprising Hobby

 

Hello, crafty and sundry!

I’m sure it comes to no surprise to anyone here, but one of my myriad hobbies is writing. I know, shock, le gasp, a blogger engaging in writing as a hobby! But really, there are different sort of writing — blogging is just one of them. Article writing is another, and one that I don’t really get stuck into. I do, however, get stuck in to writing stories.

I didn’t use to be much for writing stories, mind. While I used to actively roleplay on a Wheel of Time fansite, it was something about the world itself that compelled me. I’d often write the shortest posts that I could get away with, and while I enjoyed it, I enjoyed it grudgingly. Having to write posts with a minimum of 200-400 words was super-daunting for some reason.

Enter The Chrysalis Experiment.

This was set up by a friend and a few of her friends in 2011, right around the time my head started thinking that maybe, just maybe, I wanted to write a few stories. I was really stressed by the guidelines of 1,000-10,000 words, but I thought I’d give it half a go. I managed to write a couple of stories whole, and a double handful of false starts, but it did something for me that I hadn’t done before — it got me attempting to write original fiction. I stashed those efforts over on Figment, as well as doing a few small bits for some of the contests that they run. Really, I like the idea, but as Figment is oriented more at younger writers, I didn’t quite feel like it was mete for me to try and compete with them. If I ever see an adult version of the site, I will be ecstatic.

Anyways, having acquired so many friends who liked to write over the years, I could not but help to be aware of NaNoWriMo. NaNoWriMo breaks out to ‘National Novel Writing Month’, and happens every November across the world (it started national and grew to be international with the quickness). The idea is to write a 50,000 word or more novel over the course of November. You are not allowed to write word one before November, though you can develop outlines and the like.

Considering how intimidated I was by 400 words, and then 1,000 words, the thought of 50,000 words was ridiculously scary. But in 2012, I actually had an idea in advance, and one of my best friends had often mentioned using The Snowflake Method to flesh out ideas. So I figured I would give it a go, because for once, I felt that maybe I could pull it off. It was nominally fan-fiction and an homage to the aforementioned best friend, but I did it and was way proud of myself (and if you want it for free, I’ve got it available as a pdf right here). It burnt me out fairly spectacularly on fiction writing, but that was okay. I had written a novel. I’d won a big scary thing and crossed it off of my Bucket List.

Now, I did think about it last year, but shrugged it off because I didn’t have enough of an idea to develop, and was still burnt out on the thought. But in April of last year I started on 750words.com, just because it seemed like a good site to lock in free account on. I picked up a set of Story Cubes and wrote more short fiction, but it quickly morphed into some self-therapizin’ brain dumping. Which is good — I actually really needed that. But between that and my daily on a more private journal, I was easily doing 1,000 words a day (not including other blogs like this one).

So when this year rolled around, I expected to shrug it off as well. I had even less of an idea, so what chance did I have getting off the ground. But somehow one popped into my head in the first couple sentences of scribbling, and I seem to be doing a surprisingly competent job. I don’t know if I’m going to make it the full run this time though; I sort of made myself go public with it so I might fail publicly and therefore deal another blow to my crippling perfectionism. But maybe I’ll end up with a novel instead. Either way, I can be pleased that I’ve managed to grow my writing chops to the point where I can choose to give it a go on a whim and keep above water.

I don’t know if I’ll write any more about NaNo here… we’ll see. You’re welcome to friend me on the site though if you are also giving it a go this time around. Or not if you see fit. But to everyone who is giving it a go — good luck, and good writing.

<3

Carrot Cake, or Carrot Pudding?

Hello, crafty and sundry!

IMG_2648Here in the UK, it’s cheapier and easier to have groceries delivered rather than to spend the petrol to go to the store. Because of that, we’ve been getting our groceries delivered for some time. The husband still has to spend nearly as long doing the online order, but at least he can do that from the comfort of the couch rather than being shouted at by an exuberant four and a half year old in the aisles. Well okay, she still shouts at him here, but moving on.

IMG_2649In the last order, he had asked for a bag of potatoes to replenish our supplies. I’d gone on a spate of making potato soup, so I’d used up most of what we had (worth it!). Instead, they brought a bag of carrots. We didn’t need a bag of carrots; we had more than enough for meals already in stock. So what do you do when God Tesco gives you lemons carrots? Why, you make carrot cake, of course.

IMG_2650My big girl had been telling us for weeks how much she liked carrot cake, so that had been some inspiration as well. I honestly can’t remember when last she had it, but she loves her dairy and a cream cheese frosting is bliss to her. Well, to all of us, let’s be honest. Whenever she would have, it would not have been something I’d made, as the last time I’d made a carrot cake was probably six years ago or so. I couldn’t remember if I had a recipe or not, so I started poking around online to see what I could find.

IMG_2651After pawing through many that tried to insist on weird things like pineapple and raisins (!!!), I settled on trying this one:

Moist Carrot Cake Recipe
http://www.chow.com/recipes/21792-moist-carrot-cake-recipe/

At least it baked up solid?

At least it baked up solid?

First of all, I’m wondering if my conversion from cups to grams was wrong, because it was a lot a lot of carrot. Translating between US and UK measurements can be a bit awkward, and while I could have shredded carrots and shoved it into my cup measurer, I was trying to come up with something a bit more… metric. Somehow I came up with 710ml, which I can sort of ghetto match because of my electronic scale. IMG_2656I’m thinking it should have been something more like 150 grams, so whups. I think that if I do make this recipe again, I will use a lot less carrot, because as tasty as it is, it’s more like a cake-shaped pudding than anything. Googling around backs that up, and suggests that 390 grams would have been closer to right. Will definitely keep that in mind…

Another thing was that the recipe specifically called for one to use the biggest section of the grater. It was my understanding that smaller was better, but I do tend to prefer to follow the instructions as closely as possible the first time through. IMG_2657I don’t think this was particularly a problem, and while I cannot remember if I did a finer or a coarser grate on my first carrot cake all those years ago, you could really taste the carrot this time around. But that might have also been because I used like, twice the carrot I should have.

I’d say the recipe is pretty good though, and that I’m going to have to give it another shot. It’s disappearing at a fair pace, so I can’t complain overmuch. Next time I make the icing though, I’m going to use more icing sugar. While it was perfectly delicious, it was a bit too runny for my tastes. I like it to stay where I put it, you know? Well, and I miiiight have a bit of a sweet tooth. Maybe. *whistles*

<3

Knitting Pattern: Easy Baby Armwarmers

Hello, crafty and sundry!

IMG_2659Today, I am pleased to announce the release of my first pattern. This one is a freebie, because come on — who charges for their first effort?!

Easy Baby Armwarmers

IMG_2663The desire to create this pattern came about because there seemed to be a dearth of patterns for armwarmers for tiny people. There’s tonnes out there for legs, and I did find one pattern for arms… but they were also mitts. I don’t know about anyone elses’ babies, but mine at this age are a constant font of drool, much of which gets on tiny hands as they get shoved into tiny faces. Therefore, I wanted something that was less likely to wick spittle and make a baby wetter and crankier.

This pattern is worked in the round, and only requires knowledge of ribbing (so really, just knit and purl), and well… working in the round, ha ha. I’ll be doing a flat version later, but I’m feeling lazy about doing the test knitting because I don’t want to have to sew it up. It’s not like mattress stitch is that hard, but I’d rather do magic loop if it were up to me, hee hee.

For now, share and enjoy!

<3

 

Homemade Enough

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For smiling, not eating!

Hello, crafty and sundry!

Before I even had the materials to hand to make the cheesecake the other day, I had picked up some goodies to make pumpkin pie. But while we were picking up actual pumpkins, those were to carve up for Halloween with my daughter. And by materials, I don’t mind a bag of flour and fresh fruit, no — I mean as in of Libby’s and a box of Jusroll.

While I am perfectly capable of making a pumpkin pie from scratch… well, scratchier? It’s not like I grow the grain, mill the flour, and then make the crust from that. But I can make the filling from an actual pumpkin, and the crust from flour and the other related ingredients. Okay well, I’d actually use a butternut squash over a pumpkin — it’s easier to work with, you get more material per vegetable, and it actually (to me) has a richer, creamier texture/flavour.

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The end result is fantastic, end of. 😀

Where was I… oh yes. I can make a pie from scratch, but sometimes, it doesn’t really matter or make that big of a difference. Nor does it necessarily make something better for being that bit fresher; results depend more on the person baking it, I reckon. Using the freshest ingredients doesn’t magically elevate someone to Master Baker, yanno? And even using prepared pastry and tinned pumpkin, you still have to have enough ‘talent’ (basic attention span?) to correctly mix the filling, and to make sure the pasty is prepared appropriately for the dish. Unless you’ve got an especially snobby group of family and friends, one’s use of store-bought materials isn’t going to make any real difference in how well received the pie is. It’s pie, it’s delicious, and it will well fulfill its duty of being shoved into happy faces.

And really? That’s homemade enough.

<3

The Start of an Epic Cheesecake Adventure

Hello, crafty and sundry!

There are many foods out there in the world that I have always been a little wary of making. Like, they struck me as too magical for me to sully with my own two hands.

One of those foods is cheesecake. It’s delicious and fancy and I figured it was probably one of the hardest things in the world to make. What can I say — I’m intimidated by egg rolls, and that’s just stuff in a wrapper. So I decided to put the all-call out and gather recipes from my friends, and to start a grand cheesecake-making adventure with the classic Philadelphia™® Cheesecake Recipe. I wanted a baked recipe because, in my head, it seemed like a ‘realer’ cheesecake than one of the no-bake jobs (I’ll find the truth of that out as I go along). I figured, like the Hershey cake, the recipe provided by that brand would be a fairly definitive recipe. Maybe that’s just my growing up American brand loyalty shining through, but one has to start somewhere!

IMG_2604IMG_2603Unfortunately, starting with an American recipe requires some translation. For example, graham crackers aren’t a readily available thing here. However, digestive biscuits work just as well, if not better. And, to my great joy, the 1 1/2 cups required was precisely 10 digestive biscuits! I love me a nice round number, hee hee. I put them in a zip bag and gently beat them with my husband’s gorgeous marble rolling pin, and then rolled them out until they had a suitable consistency.

There’s a few other minor translations as well, but those are mainly in regards to measurement units. My brain has completely shut down on what is what, but I do know it says grams on the packages of cream cheese here, so I went with that.

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Crust in situ!

IMG_2606Mixing that up with the eggs, sugar, and vanilla was pretty quick with my lovely mixer, though I will admit mild annoyance that the sugar and egg yolks were trying to cling to the side of the bowl and not mix in — grump. But I mastered it without overmixing it (I think), and popped it into the oven.

Now, there’s a lot I learned from this first effort. For starters, my cheesecake came out of the oven with a large crack, and a bit overcooked. I wasn’t too fussed — this is my first effort, after all, and outside of a bit of eggy taste around the edge, it came out most edible! I did leave it in the oven a few minutes too long, and also, I didn’t put it in a water bath. That would probably account for the crack, the overcooking (water baths help it cook more evenly), and the eggy taste. I also need to remember to let it cool in the oven first, and then on the counter, and then in the fridge. I skipped that first step, which probably contributed to further cracking. I also probably should have used room temperature ingredients too… anyways!

 

IMG_2607     IMG_2624IMG_2625

It also came out a bit crumbly, especially in the eggy bits. The rest of it was pretty smooth, and way darn rich. I might have to use a combination of low-fat and full-fat cream cheese next time (or eat smaller slices *cough*). My taste testers (better known as my husband, and my big girl Smallhausen) both have expressed their enjoyment of the cake, with Smallhausen declaring, ‘It’s my favorite. I love it!’ High praise, kiddo. And, I think, I will use it as my go-to recipe until I feel I’ve got the hang of the basics, and then I will work through the recipes my friends have given me.

Now, as said, I had to make some translations to make it work in British, so I figured I’d share that for anyone this side of the pond who wanted to take a whack at this recipe!

Philadelphia™® Classic Cheesecake Recipe

For the crust:
1.5 cups of digestive biscuit crumbs (approximately 10 biscuits)
3 tablespoons of sugar
75 grams of butter or margarine, melted

For the cheesecake:
900 grams of cream cheese, softened
1 cup of sugar
1 teaspoon of vanilla
4 eggs

  • Heat oven to 163°C.
  • Mix biscuit crumbs, 3 tablespoons sugar and butter; press onto bottom of 9-inch springform pan.
  • Beat cream cheese, 1 cup sugar and vanilla with mixer until blended. Add eggs, 1 at a time, mixing on low speed after each just until blended. Pour over crust.
  • Bake 55 min. or until center is almost set. Turn off oven and leave to cool in oven for one hour. Remove from oven, and allow to cool on counter until cold. Refrigerate 4 hours.

 

As suggested, there’s any number of various tips and tricks one can engage in to make the ‘perfect’ cheesecake. I hope to get there with practice! But thankfully, it’s pretty forgiving and delicious even if you don’t do a perfect job.

<3