Cheesecake Tartelettes with Maple Syrup

There were multiple coincidences or factors that led to baking this cake.

The first was that I saw only at 2 pm Sunday afternoon that the biscuits I bought were not simple biscuits, but a kind of speculoos with cinnamon flavor and candy sugar. The second was that my only cheesecake recipe also includes sour cream, which apparently I forgot to buy. The third was that I just bought these cute tartelette forms and I wanted to try them out.   So at the end I came up with a totally new recipe.

TWD 4 - Irish Soda Bread with Olives

The next TWD challenge was the Irish Soda Bread.

To be honest I was bit hesitating to bake it as according to the recipe "by the end of the day, it will turn as hard as the Blarney Stone" and my original plan was to make it on Sunday for Monday breakfast.

However, I changed my mind when my husband decided to cook Hungarian ratatouille. 'Cause in any case you need a bread for that.

Red Berries Frangipane Galette

Not that I cannot bake anything without an excuse. Moreover, according to my weight scale, I bake much more I should have. :))

However, we were invited to our friends to visit their new-born (3 months old) baby, I had my excuse. Before the baby has born in December we already had a baby shower, for which I baked danish tea biscuits. This time I was thinking of pies.

Créme Patisserie

The story of today's recipe goes back to 4 September 2011, the day when I arrived in Luxembourg. My husband has already been in Luxembourg for 2 weeks discovering the city and its shops (mainly supermarkets). When I arrived, he surprised me with Strawberry Tartelettes. Despite that he is not really a sweet-tooth, he was surprisingly enthusiastic about these tartelettes. Of course, now I know. These amazingly simple and still overly delicious pastry is the best I ate here. And we already tried a couple of sorts, you can imagine. :)))

TWD 3 - Rugelach

When I saw in the book that the dough contains cream cheese, well I thought "Oh my God!". I mean I could not imagine how the cream cheese will effect the texture of the dough, as I only used it so far in creams.

Rugelach is by the way a Jewish pastry in a form of a roll or crescent filled with nuts and dried fruits. My versions were a bit different. I made two kinds of rugelach.

1) Plum lekvar (jam) with crushed walnut

2) Strawberry-rhubarb jam with dried cranberries and ground almond