Rhubarb cheesecake experiment

I thought I should update on the rhubarb cheesecake experiment. I didn't manage to get a shot of the whole cheesecake before we made a dent, but we did manage to stop before we ate it all.

I used the New York cheesecake recipe out of Sue Lawrence's Book of Baking as a starting point. The changes I made to the recipe, apart from downsizing it, were to use ginger nuts for the base instead of digestives and to add some stewed rhubarb stirred into the cream cheese mix. I used three stewed stalks and a little bit of extra unstewed, just to see if stewing was necessary. I didn't add any vanilla essence or lemon juice/zest.

It turned out to be a successful experiment, the rhubarb gave a fresh taste to the cheesecake that contrasted well with the creaminess of the cream cheese. I found that there was no need to have stewed the rhubarb before stirring it in, and I could have definitely put in more to make it even zingy-er.

So, definitely an experiment that will be tried again. Grow rhubarb, grow.

Count down

Some things I seem to be doing at the moment involve counting down - here are three of them:

Firstly, and probably needing the least amount of counting down is our rhubarb. This has come back nicely after the winter. I'll probably cut the first stalks this weekend. The plan is to make a rhubarb baked cheesecake - I don't really have a recipe to follow, but will adapt and experiment with my usual baked cheesecake recipe and see what happens.

Secondly, Andrew's jumper is still making progress. I've now knit 3 balls and I think I'm nearly half way to the arm pits. The felted tweed is knitting up nicely (as ever). I hope it fits him when it's finished.

And thirdly, the counting down of the bump... this is the progress at 25 weeks. It looks like a baby bump rather than a pie bump now.