The Day Before Christmas

Merry Merry Christmas
Lonely Lonely Christmas.......

Those Eason Chan's fans would immediately recognize this. What a lonely Christmas eve I'd to go through. I slept extremely early last night, extra-ordinary early for a Saturday night and woke up extra early this morning, 8.30am. I know that's not ultra early but any usual Sunday I woke up at around 10am. I should not wake up so early today because I don't have anything to do.....what a pathetic and lonely Sunday for me....and to add more tragic to it, it is A CHRISTMAS EVE.

Well, I don't celebrate Xmas but it IS the most romantic festive celebration especially the eve. *sigh* And as romantic as it is, I had to spend it all alone. My dear went to his kampung in Kedah and most of my friends did not come back for holidays. They will come back for New Year instead, which is next week and it will be an even longer weekend because there's another festive holiday which falls just on the next day of New Year. *yayyyy* All my friends will be around and we're planning to cheer for the New Year together.

Only Yokie came back for holiday (she came back almost everyweek) and we went for shopping at Greentown area. I never shop there before, only hunt around my area but not bad, we got some really good bargain and pretty stuff. We're both so happy with our purchase. Yokie wants to revamp her wardrobe and brought something out of her usual style. I should take a pic of her and blog it out but....I think she will do that later. LOL.

Here's what I did on the lonely lonely Christmas eve.

Shopped alone in Jusco. I had to wander around in the carpark for ~30mins and it was just 11am. Sheesh...Ipoh ppl have nowhere else to go ar?

Bought a lot of stuff. haha...bought some Kleenex also. Looked so aunty but I can't resist the pink. Don't really like Winnie the Pooh though.

Yokie always talk about improving and enhancing her appearance, such as revamping her wardrobe, and learning to put on make ups. I'm a bit influenced by her. I guess my wardrobe is pretty congested now...so I added a few cosmetic must-haves. Tra-la-la....concealer, loose powder, lip gloss, ultra-lengthening mascara and er...the hot oil is for my poor damaged hair. All the beauty stuff cost me around ~RM90....sigh, not easy being a woman.

And the rest of the loads are for my cheese cake.
I'm going to make

BLACK AND WHITE CHOCOLATE CHEESECAKE

Ingredients (Original recipe was from Kelly Tang's Yummy Cheesecake. I altered the original recipe a bit, those in brackets were what I used instead)
Chocolate Cookie Dough Crust
60g butter
60g brown suger
1/2 egg yolk (I used the whole egg yolk)
1/2 vanilla essence
90g plain flour, sieved (I used more than 90g, I think approx 100g flour and I'm too lazy to sieve it...hehe)
1 tbsp cocoa powder
30g chocolate chips (I sliced some dark chocolate instead, I think the dark chocolates were even better than chips)

Cheese Filling
250g softened cream cheese (I think 250g is a tad too little cheese, I used 500g instead, I love my cheesecake to be more cheesy ^_^)
60g caster sugar
3 eggs (I only use 1 egg, I'm afraid 3 eggs will be too watery)
110g melted white chocolate
1/2 tbsp cocoa powder or chocolate paste (I use like 1 tbsp, I want my cake to be more choco-aromatic)

Mixing the chocolate cookie crust ingredients. Smell so chocolatey nice.

1. Combine butter and brown suger in a mixing bowl. Add in egg yolk, vanilla essence and continue to beat until the sugar dissolved (or till your hand get kinda numb). Slowly add in plain flour and cocoa powder and mix into a dough. Remember, into a dough. At first my batter doesn't seems dough-like. So I added more flour (hence the 100g instead of 90g)

See....now I get the dough. Erm, looks yucky but it taste GOOD!!!!! It will turn into cookie crust what. Same like making cookie lar.

2. Press the dough into the springform pan. Prick with fork to ensure the base is flat after baking. Bake in a preheated oven at 160 degree celcius until golden brown. For my base, I need approx 30mins to bake it into crusty base.

3. Now to make the cheese filing.
Beat cream cheese and sugar until smooth. Add in eggs gradually and mix well.

Here's a tip on how to melt your chocolate. Melt it under a waterbath. Easy! ^_^

4. Add in melted white chocolate and beat well. Divide into 3 portion.

5. Mix a portion of cheese mixture with cocoa powder. Leave aside.

6. Pour a portion of white cheese mixture onto the chocolate cookie crust. Bake in a preheated oven with 170degree celcius mixture and bake for 15mins. Remove, pour in cocoa cheese mixture and bake for 10mins.

7. Lastly, pour in the last portion of white cheese mixture on top and bake for 15mins. (All the hardwork to make 3 layers of cheese...hence the name 'Black and White Chocolate Cheesecake')

8. Let cake cool in the oven with heat off. Remove from oven after 1 hour. Chill in fridge for at least 6 hours or overnight before serving.

Here's the Black and White Chocolate Cheesecake fresh out from the oven. The cake was a little cracked in the middle because I didn't bake it in a waterbath(which I usually did to prevent the cake from getting too dry and crack). I had to take the cakes out from the oven every 10/15mins to pour in layers of black and white chocolate, so I skip the fuss of baking in waterbath. *sigh* shouldn't be lazy and take any shortcuts in making a cake. Kelian my cake with a crack. :(

Well, that's so much for today. I baked the cake all on my own because my parents were busy playing mahjong -_-. And this cake will be my deardear's christmas present from me. *sigh* Wish he could come back soon.

Woot...the clock just striked 12am.

"MERRY CHRISTMAS"