Mocha Cheesecake

Mocha Cheesecake

Crust:
1 stick of butter melted
1 1/2 chocolate wafer cookie crumbs (finely crushed)
1/4 Cup freshly ground coffee beans (not brewed)
1/4 Cup sugar

Mix all of these things together and use it to cover the bottom of a large spring form pan. Pat it down firmly with your hands to make it smooth. Then set the pan in the refrigerator until the filling is ready.




Filling:
3 8 ounce packages of cream cheese
3 eggs
1 can sweetened condensed milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
2/3 Cup sugar
1/4 Cup cold, strong coffee
1/2 Cup cocoa powder
1/4 unbleached all-purpose flour

Set out the eggs and cream cheese until they reach room temp.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Put the cream cheese in a blender or food processor. Add the sweeten condensed milk and sugar and blend at low speed. Do not blend this batter on high speed because that creates too many bubbles. Turn off the blender each time you add an egg and then beat a little in-between each egg. Add vanilla and coffee . Blend.

Pour 2 cups of batter into a bowl and set aside. Add the flour to the remaining batter and blend well. Pour the batter onto the crust in the spring form pan.

Add the cocoa powder to the 2 cups of batter and stir until thoroughly blended. Make alternating circles on the top of the cheesecake using the chocolate batter. A squirt bottle, like the bear shaped ones that honey sometimes comes in, or a pastry bag works great for this. After the circles have been made. Use a butter knife to make lines from the center outward. I made eight of these lines. Then between those lines, cut lines going from the outer edge, inward. The cake is now ready for baking.

Bake at 350 for 15 minutes. Then turn down the heat to 225 and continue baking for another hour. Let it cool completely before removing it from pan. Loosen the edges from the pan with a small sharp knife, then remove the sides of the pan. Chill over night before serving.


The little slide show I made in 2008 of how to do the flower design on the top of a cheese cake (a much more colorful cheesecake):

Quality of Life is Improving

Our apartment complex has been upgrading. They tore down the building with our common room and also the building that housed the office and laundry room. In their place is a new building that houses everything.



The new laundry room just opened this past Tuesday for the first time.



The filtered water fountain is part of the laundry room:



The play room opened at the same time as the laundry room, but the rest of the building is not ready for use, yet.



If anyone remembers the pictures of the ugly common room where Blaze had his 10th birthday party, this room will be its replacement. Through that door on the far side of the room, is a very nice kitchen.

Not Really the Big Slacker I Appear to Be

School has been mostly fun, but very tiring. Besides this blog, I also maintain the Trilogy School blog, which has been very active lately. That hasn't left much energy for this blog, but there is only about three weeks left until summer break. I am sorry for my inactivity on here, but I will be back soon. In the mean time, please go see what we have been doing at school:

http://trilogy-school.blogspot.com/

Remembering Maurice Sendak

Maurice Sendak passed away this morning. This is a great loss to children's literature, art, and creativity.

I did not have any Maurice Sendak books when I was growing up, but I do remember watching "Really Rosie" on television.
I was introduced to the books, particularly In the Night Kitchen, by the professor of a children's literature class I took, shortly before my oldest daughter was born. His books were frequent bedtime stories for all three of my children, which means that I have read some of them repeatedly for almost 23 years. The following five videos are the five Maurice Sendak books that I have read so many times, that I can probably recite them by heart.










The sound level on this one is very low and must be turned up:




Good-bye Mr. Sendak. You have enriched our lives and you will be missed.

A Fun Florida History Find

I found this fun stereoscope picture at Wolf's Head books in St. Augustine. According to an EBay auction, the photograph was taken in 1909, although there is no date on my copy.


The caption is a little faded, but it reads, "Delivering fresh milk. Key West, Fla."

A close-up of the picture:

Acting Out Lewis and Clark

I posted this to our class blog last week, but I'm reposting it here, because, of all the school pictures I've taken this year, these are my favorites.

Last week, my history class of younger elementary students finished up their unit about Lewis and Clark, by dressing up and acting out scenes from the Corp of Discovery's trip to the Pacific Ocean.


The younger elementary students aren't just learning about the Corps of Discovery, they ARE the Corp of Discovery.President Thomas Jefferson asks his personal secretary, Meriwether Lewis, to lead an expedition to the West, to make maps, study plants and animal, make friends with the natives, and possibly find a water route to the Pacific ocean.
While the corps spent the winter at Fort Mandan, they were joined by a French trader,Toussaint Charbonneau,and his young Shoshone wife, Sacagawea. They would work as guides and interpreters for the explorers. Sacagawea's baby, Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, better known as "Pomp" was born while they were still at Fort Mandan.
Sacagawea

Toussaint Charbonneau

Sacagawea and baby Pomp played an important roll in the rest of the trip. The native people they met were less suspicious of a group traveling with a woman and child, because they knew that nobody would take a woman and child to war.
Sacagawea knew which plants were edible and was able to cook for the men.
Once they crossed the mountains, they made dug-out canoes and continued their journey westward.

They finally reached the Pacific Ocean!
They spent the winter at Fort Clatsop.
The men became very fond of Pomp and Clark often referred to him a "my dancing boy".

The journey back to St. Louis:

This will be our last week studying Lewis and Clark. We will be finishing up this book tomorrow:

One of the reading groups is also reading the book Tall Tails, which is told from the perspective of Seaman, Lewis' dog.

We will also be watching the movie of The Time Warp Trio: Lewis and Clark

The Bounty in St. Augustine

The tall ship, H. M. S. Bounty, which was built for the 1962 Marlon Brando version of the movie, is giving tours to the pubic in St. Augustine this weekend.



We drove over there to see it, yesterday, and had a great day. I love St. Augustine!

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After touring the Bounty, we headed to the nearby Santa Maria restaurant for a light lunch and a chance for Blaze to feed the birds.

The Santa Maria is built on a pier, so that it is surrounded by water on three sides.



The tables are placed along the windows of the restaurant and each table has little hinged doors built into the windowsill, through which the patrons can throw food to the sea gulls, pigeons, and other birds that flock around the building. Each table is provided with a basket of bread to feed to the birds, while they wait for their own food.





Watching the pirate ship backing into it's docking place was also fun mealtime entertainment.



After lunch, we spent the rest of the day making the rounds of the shops on St. George Street and the antique shops.



We didn't know this beforehand, but the last Saturday night of every month is Uptown Saturday Night along San Marco Avenue, so the antique shops had snacks, wine tastings, and lemonade for their customers and there was live music outside.



Wolf's Head Books was the last shop we visited and the one where we were finally able to uphold our fine family tradition of always buying something awkward or heavy to carry while in St. Augustine. DH's books are awkward and heavy,



and so is the set of cast iron bookends that I bought for Blaze's room.



Sunset on the Bridge of Lions: