Kinder Bueno Cheesecake

Hi folks! I hope you all had a great weekend. On Saturday I had the pleasure of attending my very first southern Italian wedding; my stomach is now in recovery, and I will be posting all about it in the very near future! For now though, check out this delicious (and very simple) Kinder Bueno Cheesecake recipe, which I recently made to try and impress my boyfriend's family, along with a couple of other calorific treats (have a look at that blog post here)

  To give credit where credit is due, I actually took this recipe from boutiquebake.com. I only made one little alteration: just a little extra butter. I found that the original amount didn't quite bind the biscuit together as much as I wanted.

Here's what you'll need:

For the biscuit base: 300g of digestives and 200g of butter

For the cheesecake: 350ml of whipped cream, 450g of cream cheese, 150g of sifted icing sugar and 6 single Kinder Bueno bars. You can obviously use more Kinder Bueno bars if you wish!

 First, place a sheet of greaseproof paper in a circular spring clip tip. You could use a normal tin, but it might be a little tricky taking the cheesecake out later. Melt the butter and then crush the digestive biscuits well. Then mix them together and press into the tin. Make sure they are nice and compact.

Whip up the cream, and in a separate bowl mix the cream cheese and icing sugar. You can do this by hand but I found it much easier using an electric whisk! Melt the broken up Kinder Buenos either in the microwave or over a saucepan of hot water, then mix all of the ingredients together. Spread the mixture over the biscuit base, making sure it's smooth and level.

Put the cheesecake in the fridge for at least 4 or 5 hours to set properly. I left mine in there overnight at this was perfect. I then topped it with chocolate sauce and some extra Kinder Bueno chunks.

The great thing about this recipe is that you can modify it easily. In the future I'm going to use the same basic recipe to make an Oreo or Snickers cheesecake. It's making me hungry just thinking about it....

Buon appetito! :D

Easter treats

Well would you look at that. Easter is almost upon us! It's almost time to start scoffing chocolate eggs, which makes me very excited indeed. What makes me even MORE excited than consuming vast quantities of chocolate however, is that soon my parents will be arriving. It's been several months since I've seen them, and so it's about time that we saw each other. There are already several family meet-ups organised, the majority of which involve lunches or dinners (of course), and I'm once again looking forward to witnessing the (amusing) reliance on non verbal communication. Mine don't speak Italian, his don't speak English; you get the idea. In all seriousness though, it's amazing how much a big smile and a warm embrace can show affection and can create bonds. My boyfriend's dad does have one token phrase though; the ever-useful 'WHAT TIME IS IT?!'. I'm quite sure he doesn't know how to actually tell the time in English...but at least he's making an effort.

In other 'news', it has been a while since I've posted some pics of delicious dolce, so I thought I'd better deliver. The other morning, myself and my man went out for breakfast, and instead of a nice healthy colazione, we went for nice and unhealthy instead. Cappuccino? Check. Crostata alla nutella? Check. Small, cream filled croissant? Ohhh yes.

As I was enjoying my sweet breakfast, I also snapped a few pics of the cream cakes on offer at the bar. Sunday is the day of dolce, and so the counter was filled with all sorts of tasty treats.

And finally, a little while ago I discovered a cute little bar which serves great cocktails. Not only this, but their aperitivo is also pretty impressive.  And all for €6, cocktail included? Yes please! I recently went there with a friend and we had a very nice evening indeed.

Have a happy Easter folks! :D

Too much cake?! Is it even possible?!

So, I'm pretty sure by now that you are aware of my love for all sweet things. Gelato, chocolate and in particular, CAKE.

But even I struggled with this helping of sugary/chocolatey/creamy awesomeness that was placed in front of me at a recent family get together:

I mean, oh my WORD. I got through half of it and was almost in a sugar coma already. The hardest thing about it though, was that I wanted to finish it, because it was all just SO.DAMN.GOOD. Starting from the fork and working clockwise, we have nutella cake, some kind of lemony/spongy/gooey thing and of course, tiramisu.

I couldn't eat anything for about 2 days afterwards. Only then was I ready to face the nutella jar again.

Mini (food) blog

 I've got two food related things to share with you today (oh what a surprise!)

The first is, of course, a hunger-inducing photo of some Sunday dolce. It's typical to buy some tasty cakes for dessert on a Sunday lunchtime. So, in keeping with this local tradition (yes, sometimes it's so hard fitting in with the locals..!), I obliged and bought a selection of little cakes for me and the girls. A Sunday lunch of pasta with tomatoes and pancetta, followed by these:

Secondly, when I came back here after spending some time in the UK over summer, I brought some Marks & Spencer biscuits and cadburys chocolate buttons with me. Unfortunately for the buttons, the (very) hot weather changed their form somewhat. Into, well, this:

 But, as my nan says, it's still chocolate. It doesn't matter what shape it's in, it's still yummy. (Even if it has literally become a chocolate mass...mmm. That sounds even better than individual pieces...)

Buon pomeriggio! :D