cream cheese tagged posts

The cheesecake is indeed an american classic. I never considered myself american or even close to the culture it represents till the moment my oven rolled out one of these beauties! It is a desert that sums up the american spirit. Many reasons for that. First of all it has a bunch of american ingredients, cream cheese, Graham cookies and butter. The all american cooking fat. Also the idea of a cake that has a base that can be tailored to anything sweet and savory it is an all american classic. An all american classic. But most of all it is the basic custard filling that is the heart and soul of the american country desert cooking.

Cream cheese is the top choice spread for bagels. It is a great way to add, energy and nutritional value to the bagel. And I am not joking; bagels contain a substantial number of carbohydrates, fiber and some vitamins, but they lack in fat and protein. Cream cheese can full-fill both aspects and on top add the calcium. So it is in deed highly nutritious. The cream cheese is not really a cheese as it has more common with the yogurt, than the cheese we all know. According to the USA FDA it should have 33% at least milk fat, up to 55% water and acidic pH 4.4 to 4.9. It is not naturally maturing (aging) similarly to yogurt. It is different than yogurt though since it utilizes salt as flavoring where yogurt does not. According to Kraft, the first American creme cheese was made in 1872 by William Lawrence, and I say american since similar types of cheeses were made in various part of the world. 

Yesterday I was invited to a desert party for Valentine’s day. It was desert so I assumed (wrongfully as it was proofed) that the main thing will be chocolate, since there is all this philosophy about chocolate and love and yada, yada. Instead of repeating the same pattern I decided to make something different. I made (as you can tell from the picture) cinnamon rolls. There are a couple of reasons for that: 1) I love cinnamon (I dedicated a whole blog entry on that) and 2) there is something about the aroma of yeast that makes homes really smell like homes, nice and cozy. Good cinnamon rolls, however, although simple to make, for sure require time and careful steps. They can go from puffed to flat in matter of minutes. None of the steps requires any super talent or any excellence or even any skill for that matter. All of them though, require religious attention to the execution.