Recipe - No Bake Oreo Cheesecake and Eurovision/40th Birthday night

Well, as I type this, the pork is cooked and sliced.  There's an Oreo Cheesecake chilling in the fridge, a chocolate cake made and a Sticky Toffee Pudding and toffee sauce made.  Stuffing is made and apple sauce decanted.  Bowl of couscous made.  Spicy potato wedges and hot and spicy onion rings ready to be put in when people arrive.  Nibbles and nuts to snack on.  Fruit is sliced ready for Pimms o'clock.  Beer is chilling.  D made homemade potato salad and coleslaw and H is bringing a salad.  All I need to do is to slice the baps ready, put some butter in a little dish...  print out score sheets for my Eurovision guests (DON'T judge me...)  Then it's just a case of making myself beautiful.  So, if anyone has a time machine to transport me back to 1992/3, that would be great, thanks...?  Lol.  

Oreo Cheesecake

I made this loosely based on Iced Jems fab Creme Egg cheesecake.  Because it's not a chocolate based mixture which is what I tend to make all my no-bake cheesecakes with, I like her combination of cream, sour cream, cheese and icing sugar.  I haven't used the exact quantities that she did, as I was only making a small-ish cheesecake.  

300g Original Oreo Biscuits (leave the cream inside)

90g butter, melted

284 ml carton Elmlea Double Cream

360g (2 smaller tubs) Philadelphia full fat cream cheese

300 ml carton Soured Cream

200g Icing sugar

3 packs of Cadbury's Mini Oreo Eggs, carefully halved along the 'seam'

2 bags of Mini Oreo biscuits

My (half) able assistant Adam helped me in the kitchen, as best he could with one arm in plaster!  

Blitz the large Oreos in a food processor, and when they're like breadcrumbs, pour in the butter and blast again.  Press this base into a greased and lined tin.

Whisk the cream in a jug.  In a large bowl, whisk the cream cheese, sour cream and icing sugar until combined.  Fold in the cream.

Gently stir in about 2/3 of the halved mini eggs.  Spoon the mixture onto the cheesecake base.

Then decorate the top of the cheesecake with the remaining halved eggs and mini oreo cookies.  Voila!  So simple, took us about half an hour from start to refrigeration.

Adam then decided he'd like to make a cake to go with their ice cream for dessert.  The children aren't so keen on cheesecake, but they always seem to home in on it and waste it.  And I'm sure you'll agree, that above cheesecake is too good to be binned!  He said he wanted to make a sponge with cream in the middle.  No jam, as he's not a fan.  And could he put Oreos on top, but no cream... it didn't sound very appetising to be honest.  And nothing that would go with ice cream, anyway.  So we had a think about it and decided that (slightly warmed) chocolate cake would be nice with ice cream.  And then I realised that if we sandwiched the cakes with vanilla cream rather than chocolate, it would look like a giant Oreo!  As he didn't want to put anything on top, he asked if he could crush up some of the remaining mini Oreos and scatter them over the vanilla cream centre before topping with the final layer.  I thought that would be a fantastic idea.  I'm looking forward to a small slice later.   I used the Mary Berry chocolate cake from BBC Food (click here) - so simple, everything all in one mixing bowl, less washing up.  

Adam's Oreo Cake

Looks pretty decent, doesn't it?  Fair play to him.  Looks like he many have inherited his mum's love of baking.

The sticky toffee pudding is the standard recipe, I'm sure it's posted here somewhere on the blog.  I wasn't going to make one but it's one of my trademark puddings and someone would be disappointed if I hadn't made it.

I know it looks flat... but it's not.

It's an absolutely glorious day here today, there isn't a cloud in the sky.  Slightly breezy, but hey, considering it was hailstoning two weeks ago, I can hardly complain.  Really looking forward to tonight now :-)  The garden looks half decent, the shed pub is looking spot on, complete now with another bargain we had last weekend that I forgot to report.  We'd bought a dart board from Aldi, heavily reduced.  But Mr G didn't trust me not to damage the walls around the board, so he said he would make a case, or buy one.  Well, to quote Mr G... HOW MUCH!  How bloody much!  So, when we were in Wrexham last Saturday, there's a massive local hospice charity shop there, which has always been closed when we're there on a Sunday.  We ambled around, and when we got to the windows, we saw a Phil Taylor Dart board and case.  The only thing missing were the darts, which we already had.  Mr G went out to see how much it was, a tenner!  They retail at between £30 and £40, so we had a real bargain, and gave to a worthy cause at the same time.  That's been put up, and after I had a dart bounce out of the board into the vinyl flooring and Mr G shouted at me :-(  I bought a long black runner type rug to put on the floor and act as an unofficial 'oche'.  If he shouts at me again, I'll make sure the next one goes in his head.  Just call me Michelle van Grundy... ♬ White Stripes - Seven Nation Army ♬

Everyone is due around 7.30 pm, so I may tootle off for a quick game of darts :-)