Wilde day in Brooklyn

This weekend I spent my Saturday in Brooklyn with a whole bunch of NYC area food bloggers!  It was the NYC bake sale for No Kid Hungry and the delicious treats were out in full effect.  For some reason I only took one photo, I must have been distracted by all the sweets.  

The crowds were great, thanks to the beautiful sunshine, and once people learned it was all for charity, they really opened up their pocketbooks.  With a plethora of sweet options from over twenty local bloggers and bakeries, along with some fun raffles and tote bags to promote big purchases!  I picked up a few treats for myself too!

Image via Tasty Pursuits
Meet @sweetsillianah, @Takethetoyz, me, @TheRescueBaker, and @ChipChipHooray

Last week I told you about the birthday cake mallomars that I brought to the bake sale.  I also made some raspberry macarons and these Gluten-Free Cookies & Cream Mallomars!  Lillian had suggested I give a gluten-free mallomar a try and I had to agree that was a great idea!

I took one of my classic dark chocolate cut out cookies and swapped out the traditional all-purpose wheat flour with Bob's Red Mill gluten-free flour and some xantham gum.  Along with these cookies being gluten-free, they were made with the support of Divine Chocolate!

Divine Chocolates was one of the sponsors of the NYC bake sale and donated several baking kits to the bloggers to help make some seriously chocolatey treats.  These mallomars wound up super chocolatey because they contained the Divine 70% dark chocolate bars and dark cocoa powder.  The rich chocolate offset the sweet vanilla marshmallow perfectly.

In addition to being able to bake with the Divine Chocolate, the actual farmers (and owners) of Divine were in town this weekend.  I got to meet with and share my mallomars with two of the Ghana farmers.  I'm fairly certain they thought they were a bit too sweet, which means they were perfect for the American palate!  Give them a try!

Disclaimer - I received a package of Divine chocolate for use in this post.  All opinions are my own.

Wilde Week #15

1. It has been a week full of baking!  I was making all sorts of fun sweet for the NYC bake sale for No Kid Hungry and went through pounds and pounds of sugar, chocolate, almond flour and butter.  It was an amazing day where I got to help out a great cause and meet so many NYC area bloggers!  Such a great group of ladies (and guy!).  I'm looking forward to making some savory treats over the next few weeks.

2.  This is the most amazing lip balm ever.  A little expensive for lip balm, but it's amazing!!!

3. While in Brooklyn yesterday, BF and I came upon the Bust Magazine craft fair.  There were so many amazing artists, jewelers, sewers and crafters from the area and I found a few amazing pieces.  Including this necklace!  I have been lusting after a geode necklace for months and this one really caught my eye. (You can find the super nice jeweler, Eileen, here on Etsy!)

4. I love this list.  And yes, it makes me feel old.  So very old.

5. Chemistry has been not only fruitful this week, but it has been fun to look at!  The first flask contains dry potassium dichromate, the second flask is after dissolving in hydrochloric acid and adding zinc dust.  Inorganic chemistry is so pretty.

6. I bought a container of dried kiwis are Fairway market the other day and I have no idea what to do with them!  Other than eat them all, of course.  They taste like candy.

7. Spring is slowly coming to the Tri-state area.  I'm looking forward to the hot days of summer when BF and I can get strawberry shakes at Shake Shack and sit in the park.  We spent some time at the Brooklyn Bridge park this weekend, napping on the lawn, it was fabulous.

I hope you are enjoying your weekend and decompressing for the week to come!

Restaurant Wars 2013 - Cheesecake Factory

I wonder why I don't make cheesecake very often.

No wait, I know exactly why I don't make cheesecake very often.  It's because I would weigh nine hundred pounds.  Cheesecake is delicious and I have no self control around it.  This is why I was so excited about having the Cheesecake factory next on my list.  I was looking forward to that cheesecake menu.

For the most part, I have never been that impressed with the Cheesecake Factory's food menu.  I think it's because they have way too many options.  I want a menu with ten to fifteen great options, not seven pages of  sandwiches, burgers, pasta and entrees.  The power that Cheesecake Factory holds over me is in their two page cheesecake menu.

Boyfriend and I enjoyed a pretty basic lunch.  Apparently Cheesecake Factory realized that most of their menu items were super high in calories and has introduced a Skillylicious menu.  I ordered a salad and BF got a lunch-sized portion of pasta carbonara.  (He really likes carbonara and will order it off of just about any menu)  Since it was lunchtime, there was no way I was going to be able to eat my salad and a slice of cheesecake.  Luckily, they have these great to go boxes!

I asked the waitress which two cheesecakes were their most popular.  She suggested their white chocolate-raspberry cheesecake and their limited edition Oreo cheesecake.  I took a slice of each home and found out that I would be eating all of this cheesecake myself.  Boyfriend apparently doesn't like cheese in his dessert.  And he was the whole reason I got the Oreo cheesecake!  I guess I'm still learning new things about the guy I've been with for over ten years!

And you would all be so proud of me!  I had total self control with these two slices of cheesecake.  I had a bite of each once we got home from our day out and promptly put them in the fridge.  It took me until the end of the week to finish eating them!  I think it took me so long, because they weren't mindblowingly delicious.  The limited edition Oreo cheesecake was uber rich and had four layers of mousse, cheesecake, ganache and crumb.  It was just too much, you can see how it was falling over after a short ride in the car.  The white chocolate-raspberry cheesecake was half and half.  The top layer was amazing, but the raspberry-less bottom layer was just meh.

I decided to neglect the entire food menu of Cheesecake factory and try to recreate their white chocolate-raspberry cheesecake, in miniature form.  There was no way that I was going to have an entire 10-inch cheesecake sitting in my house, so my recipe makes six cupcake sized cakes!  I can handle having that many cute little cheesecakes in the house (especially since I'm the only one living in this apartment who likes cheesecake!).

Make these mini cheesecakes at home and enjoy the best part of going out to dinner at the Factory.