Eggnog Cheesecake with Praline

Merry Christmas world!

My favorite Christmas memories:

• When i was young, we did not have Christmas stockings, but rather, Christmas SACKS! Running to the living room and rifling through a great hulking sack of presents from Santa was the best feeling in the Universe to a kid.
• Every year, Christmas lunch would be different. One of my favorite memories was playing Celebrity Heads, and the random hints my grandfather would give. For example, 'the block' was his hint for Barbie. How? Well, the 'block' referred to a block of land my Aunt and Uncle own. It has a fence. That fence has barbed wire. Barbed... Barbie.. get it? O_o
• Christmas with my strange Uncle the accordion player. Him cracking it out and belting some tunes, and always bringing the most random Christmas presents. Giant fly swats? Transformer bugs? That's only the beginning!
• The night before Christmas. Perhaps the thing i miss most now that all of the kids have flown the coop. But sitting together, excited, filled with trepidation, as we watch Christmas movies and listen out for Santa.

Passionfruit Cheesecake Icecream

Yum! Don't you love when a bunch of leftover ingredients sitting around lead to an awesome culinary creation: cue: 1 packet of cream cheese, 1 frozen container of passionfruit curd leftover from sponge cake, and an abundance of eggs (48 to be exact). Put them all together and what does that make: passionfruit cheesecake icecream!

Actually, to be honest, credit must go to my mother. I had originally decided to make passionfruit curd icecream, but it was mum who thought of throwing the cream cheese in there. A family of diabolical geniuses or what!

Cheesecake Brownies

My sister Hayley's family birthday dinner is tomorrow evening and we're having her favorites. Does this mean decadent roast duck with crisp skin and succulent pink meat? Or maybe, juicy chunks of crystal lobster grilled with garlic butter? Alas, no. We're talking cocktail frankfurts, nuggets, party pies and sausage rolls. Do i care? Hell no! I'm looking forward to it! I was tasked with making one of the desserts, so i decided to trace back to what my sister loved when we were kids, the cakes, slices, trifles and cookies that my mum used to make. Thinking through them, there was one clear stand out: cheesecake brownies.

Whoever thought of cheesecake brownies is clearly a person of high genius: How can one obtain, in a single mouthful, the gooey rich chocolatey goodness of a brownie, with the tangy, creamy soul of cheesecake? Mix them together!

Passionfruit Cheesecake

As the last cake i will probably make in my beautiful apartment in Hawthorn, i just had to be a cheesecake. Unlike the dense, creamy Dulce De Leche Cheesecake i made in January, this passionfruit cheesecake is airy, light, and delicate in taste. The addition of gingernut biscuits into the base add an extra layer of flavour to the cake. 

Baked Caramel Cheesecake

Cheesecake is definitely my favorite type of cheesecake. Once upon a time, there was nothing nicer to do than saunter down to Cafe Greco and sit out the front, cigarette in in one hand, the other hand interchanging between a cup of espresso and a fork to shovel delectably gooey cheesecake into my mouth.

So okay, now i don't live a lazy saunter's distance from cafe greco. And i don't smoke. But. Cheesecake. Will. Not. Die. And it's a fantastic excuse for using the second half of my dulce de leche, and to win over my family at dinner tomorrow. I hope they don't mind that i took a chunk out of it.... for photographic purposes *gulp*.