Wordless Wednesday: Halloween Part 2

Memorial Day Weekend

Hey all, it's Jeff. For now, I'm just going to post some pics from last weekend. Enjoy! (As always, click on the image for the full size version.)

ETA: HA! He thinks he's going to take my blog over that easily? The silly didn't even bother to caption his 10 gazillion pictures he uploaded. So I did it for him. I'm a super awesome wife.

Me and Mommy at the Japanese Gardens.


Dad and H looking thoughtful at the view of Portland from Pittock.


A flower both Mom and Dad noticed and know the name of, but that we can't remember the name of.


Jeff and G went hiking super duper early one morning at Multnomah Falls.


I guess G wanted a picture of those 4 rocks or some such thing.



Isn't this one pretty? The trail is empty and pretty, wandering off to who knows where (well, Jeff and G know. I think I know, too, but it's been awhile so I've prolly forgotten.)



I pink puffy heart this picture. Jeff and G were playing with sunshine rays.


Jeff said this flower smelled fantastic. But did he bring one back for me to sniff? Nooooooo . . .


My Fairy Falls! I love them most of all. And that's somthin' because there are LOTS of waterfalls on that hike.


Looking over at Washington.


In case you didn't know, the morning fog was still around. ;)


So there's this wall that has all of this awesome moss on it and these beautiful little sparkles of water trickle down it. Faeries totally love to live in Oregon. Now if I could just meet one . . .


Wahkeena.


My mountain!



My family and me, minus Jeff. Because someone had to take a picture of us!


Hmmmm . . . looking down Multnomah Falls, maybe?


Uncle J happened to be in the area and came over to visit for awhile. Summit loooooves him. She's got her blissed-out Yoda face on.


G's GQ pose.

I'm leavin' on a tra-ain . . .

It doesn't work quite as well as the whole leavin' on a jet plane thing does it? I left Sunday to go home for Christmas. And boy has it been an interesting trip.

Sunday in Portland was snowy. Portland got about half an inch of snow or so. Of course that pretty much means that the entire city got shut down. Because you know, Portland doesn't get snow. They don't have snowplows. I don't think they even salt or sand the roads. People run to the store and fight over things like bread and milk and toilet paper. It's like NC all over again. So Jeff and I left a little bit early to get to the train station thinking it would take a bit of extra time.

The smart handled very well in the snow. But it wasn't really that bad, all things considered. I'm sure Portland-ites think it was bad. I know that for a fact, actually, because once we got close to Portland there were signs saying that chains were required in the metro area. Jeff and I laughed the whole way into town after seeing four wheel drive trucks pull over to put tires on their trucks with the whole half an inch of snow on the ground. *snorts* It seems I'm still giggling about it. :)

So right now I'm just outside of Grand Springs, Colorado. The ride has been absolutely amazing so far. It's pretty much been snowy everywhere I've been, except for Sacramento. Portland is beautiful without snow, but it's amazing with snow. The Sierra Nevada Mountains and plateaus and canyons and gorges are beautiful without snow. But they're incredible with. I can't wait until I get into Denver tonight. Going through the Rockies is going to be fun!

I would like to thank my awesome Jeff for rigging up a method of making my phone work as my modem for my laptop. As long as I have cell service I have dial-up speeds or faster internet for the most part. It's not perfect and doesn't always work. But it's been good enough so far!

Oops! I forgot these!

Thanksgiving pictures!

Jeff & Uncle J. playing the Wii.

Jeff and I while Uncle J. does all of the cooking.

Uncle J. and the turkey!

Holy pumpkin pie, Batman! It came from Costco and it was huge! And very delicious.

So about that cheesecake . . .

The one I said we had at Thanksgiving?

I made it.

It was amazing.

It was a brownie mosaic cheesecake.

Here is the recipe.

You should try it.

It looks hard and time consuming, but it's not. And it goes even faster if you use a brownie mix. We used a Whole Foods brand one that was completely amazing. It had chocolate chips in it. And little crunchy yummy bits. I highly recommend it. Plus I'm pretty sure it called for butter instead of eggs and oil. How do you go wrong with butter?

I'm copy and pasting the recipe in so I'll never lose it. But it came from this blog that one of the Amazing Ladies found.

Brownie Mosaic Cheesecake
Adapted wildly from A Piece of Cake, by Susan G. Purdy via Eat

Part One: One Bowl Brownies
Adapted from Baker’s One Bowl Brownies

4 ounces unsweetened chocolate (Baker’s chocolate, optional of course)
3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) butter
1 3/4cups sugar
3 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup flour

Preheat oven to 350°F. Line 13×9-inch baking pan with foil, with ends of foil extending over sides of pan. Grease foil.

Microwave chocolate and butter in large microwaveable bowl on HIGH 2 min. or until butter is melted. Stir until chocolate is completely melted. Stir in sugar. Blend in eggs and vanilla. Add flour and salt; mix well. Spread into prepared pan.

Bake 30 to 35 minute or until toothpick inserted in center comes out with fudgy crumbs. (Do not overbake.) Cool in pan on wire rack. Remove brownies from pan, using foil handles.

Cool brownies, then cut* them into 3/4- to 1-inch squares for use in the cheesecake. You will have more than the two cups of cubes, loosely measured, than you will need, and I’m sorry, you’re just going to have to decide for yourself what to do with the extra. Add cubes to cake batter as directed below.

* I find that brownies are fantastically easy to cut once they’ve been refrigerated–you end up with nice clean lines, and in this case, a sharp pizza wheel was especially helpful. Also, brownies taste better cold. I’m just saying.

Part Two: Crumb Crust
Recipe adapted from Gourmet, 1999

I like a doubled crumb crust. I can’t get enough cookie. Below are proportions for one crust with the amounts to double the recipe in parentheses. You know you wanna.

1 1/2 cups or 5 ounces (3 cups or 10 ounces to double) finely ground cookies such as chocolate wafers. Or Chocolate Teddy Grahams.
5 tablespoons (10 tablespoons to double) unsalted butter, melted
1/3 cup (2/3 cup to double) sugar
1/8 (1/4 teaspoon to double) teaspoon salt

Stir together crust ingredients and press onto bottom and 1 inch up side of a buttered 24-centimeter springform pan. Fill right away or chill up to 2 hours.

Part Three: Cheesecake
Three Cities of Spain Coffeehouse

3 (8-oz) packages cream cheese, softened
4 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup sugar

Make crumb crust as directed above for 24-centimeter cheesecake. Preheat oven to 350°F.

Make filling and bake cake: Beat cream cheese with an electric mixer until fluffy and add eggs, 1 at a time, then vanilla and sugar, beating on low speed until each ingredient is incorporated and scraping down bowl between additions.

Fold brownie cubes in very gently and pour mixture into prepared pan. Put springform pan with crust in a shallow baking pan. Pour filling into crust and bake in baking pan (to catch drips) in middle of oven 45 minutes, or until cake is set 3 inches from edge but center is still slightly wobbly when pan is gently shaken.

When completely cool, top with following glaze.

Part Four: Ganache Glaze
From Purdy’s original recipe

3 oz. bittersweet chocolate, broken up, or 1/2 cup chocolate morsels
2 oz. butter
1/4 cup heavy cream
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon confectioners sugar

Grind the chocolate into powder in the food processor, scald the butter and cream in a saucepan (or in a Pyrex cup in the microwave). With the machine running, pour the hot cream/butter mixture slowly through the feed tube onto the chocolate. Blend until completely smooth, stopping machine to scrape down sides once or twice. Add the extract and sugar and process until smooth. Spread over cheesecake while ganache is still warm. Chill until ready to serve.

And in case you're interested, this is what the cheesecake looked like after cooking but before ganache-ing.

I lowered the temperature of the oven to 325, if I remember right since ours is sort of a convection oven and things need to cook lower and shorter in it. And I also put it in a water bath. I'm not sure I'll do that again. Some of the butter melted up around the edges of the cheesecake and I freaked out the whole time thinking it was water. It's terrifying thinking your foil-proof lined pan (haha, get it? pan? lined in foil? foil proof? It's OK, in the words of one of my favorite customers at CVS Mary B. "I don't think I'm that funny sometimes, either.") leaked and ruined your cheesecake.

This is what it looked like post ganach-ing.

There aren't any more pictures. For obvious reasons (eating is more important than pictures).

I've been decorating!

For almost the entire month of November. That's why I haven't blogged in almost a month.

What, you don't believe me?

That's OK, I wouldn't believe me either.

Since I don't really remember what happened in November for the most part, because it wasn't very exciting. Oh! Hey, now I remember why I haven't blogged in a million years.

Animal Crossing: City Folk (otherwise known as crack) came out. I've pretty much been filling up my spare time playing the Wii all day long. It's got a cool feature where it will take a picture and save it to an SD card, so I'll post pictures someday.

Anyway, the only other things I remember about November are food. Thanksgiving, mostly. Jeff and I drove up to Uncle J's in Spokane, Washington to celebrate with him. It was a lot of fun! We had turkey, potatoes, stuffing, pumpkin pie, corn, cheesecake and Uncle J made the gravy. I was so excited. :)

It seems I have some thought organizing and picture organizing to do, so I'll be back shortly. ;)