My First Cheesecake

This is the first cheesecake I made that didn't come out of a box. I used the recipe Vanilla Cheesecake from Williams-Sonoma Dessert cookbook. The cinnamon in the graham crust and the vanilla in the filling created a delicious dessert that could stand on it's own without a berry topping, although I did have sliced strawberries on hand. When I first pulled the cheesecake out of the oven, the center was not split like in the picture, but the it was split along the edges. As it cooled, the edges unsplit and the center pulled apart. I should have tried running a knife around the edge when I took it out of the oven so it wouldn't split down the middle I think. I have decided that cheesecakes are not that hard to make and will definitely make one again. Here is a less vanilla variety I am thinking of trying next: S'mores Cheesecake.

Cookie Flower Bouquet

I used my normal sugar cookie recipe for this. I made sure not to roll the dough out too thin. After I cut out the shape with a cookie cutter, I placed it on a cookie sheet and stuck a stem in. For the stem you could use the white candy making sticks, but I happened to have the long bamboo skewers on hand so I used those. Then I baked the cookies as normal until done. After cooling, I frosted with a powdered sugar frosting. I learned that the frosting should be just barely runny enough that you can move it to frost, and if you are doing multiple colors on a cookie, you really need to let the first one dry so you don't mess it up with the second color.

When the frosting was dry I wrapped each cookie in plastic wrap and used a green ribbon to secure it like leaves. I put styrofoam in a pail and topped it with paper grass so I could stick my cookie flower stems in. The "birds" are peeps, also wrapped in plastic so they don't dry out.

This is definitely one of those things that would hopefully turn out better the second time around. The frosting didn't go as well as I hoped because it was too runny, and then I should have let it dry longer before standing it up in the bucket. A container that was rectangular would make a nice planter box so you could spread the flowers out and could even get some gummie bugs/worms for decorating the "grass".