HCB: Cranberry Crown Cheesecake and Financier Style Vanilla Bean Pound Cake

Another catch up week for me, as it turned out. First we have Cranberry Crown Cheesecake.

I am not a big fan of cheesecake, but I am curious about this cake. It has more sour cream than cream cheese in it, and the cranberries component sounds yummy.

This cake is pretty easy to make. Even though I make my own ladyfingers it, it only took a couple of hours to put together. Not bad compared to some of the other cakes in the book.

I made 1/2 recipe again in a 7 inch pan. Not sure whether 1/2 recipe ladyfingers would be enough, I made 2/3 recipe. Turned out to be the perfect amount, have just enough ladyfingers for the sides and the bottom.

The cheesecake batter came together very easily. First whisked the cream cheese and sugar until well blended. Next add the eggs vanilla mixture. Finally, add in the sour cream until blended.

I put the cake pan inside a 9 inch silicone pan that I got for $5 on ebay last year. This is the 1st time I used the silicone pan, and it felt good using it, considering it's $5 hehe. The silicone pan is then placed inside a baking pan with an inch of hot water.

I must have overbaked the ladyfingers, because only after 15 minutes, the tip started browning, so I cover the edges of the cake with foil for the rest of the baking time.

After the cake finished baking, I left it in the oven for an hour, as Rose prescribed. I was a little worried about this, what if the cake overcooked. But I thought to myself that I should trust Rose, as always. After the 1 hour mark, I let the cake rest at room temperature for another hour, before storing it in the fridge overnight.

At this point, I realized that I had forgotten to spray the pan with baking spray prior to baking. Shoot! Now I'm really worried and stressed, what if the ladyfingers stuck to the side of the pan.

As you can see from the pictures, that didn't happen. I don't know why it didn't, but I'm glad regardless.

Tasting impressions:
This is really good. I'm not a cheesecake fan, and hubby isn't either. But we both love it. It paired up really nicely with the cranberry topping (which was so good btw, that I made more of it, with the rest of the frozen cranberries).  Hubby said it's the best cheesecake he's ever had. I remembered that he said the same thing about the Baby Lemon Cheesecakes. Which tells you one thing: Rose's cheesecakes are awesome :).

Financier-Style Vanilla Bean Poundcake

I wasn't planning on making another cake this weekend. But yesterday I felt like having some dessert, and as the cheesecake needs to be refrigerated for a day, and I have leftover egg whites at room temperature, I thought of this cake.

This is the easiest cake to make in the book. I made 1/2 recipe and it took me 15 minutes to put everything together. The 15 minutes even includes mis-en-place, using the microwave to soften the butter, and weighing the batter into each of the 5 financier cavity. It took longer to bake the cake (18 minutes). Of course what's really sad is that it took us 5 minutes to eat the 5 cakes.

I have to apologize for the bad picture. I brought 3 of the cakes to my husband, who was upstairs - along with 2 cups of coffee - as a surprise. I didn't want the coffee to get cold so I didn't bother doing the fancy photo shoot and just snap a quick one with the camera.

Tasting impressions:
I had a feeling I will like this cake, after reading what the HCB bakers thought of this cake. I tend to like light and airy cakes more, and though I do like pound cakes, sometimes they are too much. This little babies are really good, too good perhaps as we both wolfed down all 5 of them in minutes.