The $20US Cheesecake

Next week my classmate, Kieko, will return to Japan, her long, long holiday finally over. I'm gonna miss her, even though lately we haven't spent much time together. To send her off, I wanted to make her a cheesecake, and it took a long time to find all the ingredients. Thursday I finally found graham crackers (chocolate flavored, but still good for making a crust, just a pain in the ass to try to crush up in the blender - I want a box of crumbs, dammit!), which completed my list. Today I made the cheesecake.

Now, people in Taiwan just don't bake. Really, they don't. There are no ovens in most Taiwan kitchens, unless you have a fancy, ultra-modern, Western-style apartment, which I don't. So, I had bought one of those small tabletop ovens to use. I was uncertain whether this thing would actually bake a cake without catching on fire, and there was one loud sparking snap at the beginning of the cook cycle that prompted me to make sure the fire extinguishers were still outside my front door on the landing. But, all went well, no further mishaps.

I now have a cheesecake that has a slightly overdone top (OK, more than slightly. I meant to turn the bottom element on and picked the top one instead, what a dork.), but I tried a little sliver of it, and it seems to taste close to the ones I produced in the US. The sour cream was a different texture than what I'm used to (the stuff I got is imported from Australia), and I didn't know I was out of almond extract (yeah, try finding that here) so I couldn't add that, but it's still not bad! I tallied up the cost of the ingredients, and it's around $20US, way more than it would cost me to make there. I suppose that's good, because now I won't be tempted to make too many and eat them ;)

I also cleaned my house today, mopping all the floors squeaky clean, and did some laundry. Such an exciting weekend, bet you all with you were here, right?