Why Cheesecake is So Darn Expensive: Part 1

In honor of my friend's long prolonged birthday party, I decided to make her a cheesecake. Because she likes cheesecake.  But also because we were going to make cheesecake together this summer, but since she moved and she's also quite busy, and I am now going to be heading off to MIT quite shortly, I decided to blog her cheesecake making process instead as a temporary substitute.

Let me just tell you the history of my decision to make an ultra fancy cheesecake: I like to bake things.  And preferably things you can't easily buy in a bakery.  So when my friend said "let's bake plain cheesecake" I told her that was boring, and of course linked her this: http://www.crazyforcrust.com/2013/11/110-cheesecake-recipes/.  Which of course led to the selection of Black Forest Cheesecake.

So now, 2 months later, I'm stuck making Black Forest Cheesecake and writing a blog post about it while praying to the baking gods that it turns out alright.  Although anything cakelike does tend to go "kablooey" (I'm mostly a cookie baker) on me, so I guess we'll see...

Credits to the Brown Eyed Baker for the recipe, with many modifications that were possibly not intentional.

To create your Black Forest Cheesecake, you must start with a delicious crust.  Since I knew my sister would want oreos, I bought two packages of oreos I'd actually want to eat, Megastuffed and Mint Oreos (Added benefit: Friend likes mint chocolate! Yay!).  I used approximately 12 Mint Oreos, 4 Megastuffed oreos, and about 5 graham crackers I found laying around and used a food processor to turn them into a not-so-fine-crumb-because-I'm-impatient.

Combination of Oreo and Graham Cracker Crumbs!

Theoretically, the combination of mint oreo, megastuffed oreo, and graham crackers should blend nicely together, the mint contrasting the somewhat earthy flavors of the graham cracker.  After pulverizing them to a crumb, I mixed in about a tablespoon of cocoa powder to darken the mixture and add some more chocolately flavor and a tablespoon of brown sugar (because brown sugar has nicer flavors than white).  Stir in about 1/4 cup of melted butter to form a moist crumb so it will press nicely into a crust (I used olive oil once.  Either I didn't use enough, should've waited for it to cool, or it's just a bad binder, but it made a really crumbly crust- so use butter!).  You may need less because the filling of the Oreos do make it a bit moist already, so use your good judgement.

After making your crust mixture, it's time to press it into the pan.  I want to remove the cheesecake from the pan onto a container so I don't have to give away my only springform pan as a present as well, so I put a circle of parchment paper on the bottom of the pan and started spreading around the crumb mixture and pressing it down using a spatula.  

A springform pan and my crust crumbs 

What is a springform pan, you might ask? Great question, I had no idea until about a month ago while making chocolate covered cheesecake bites.  It's essentially a flat pan with removable sides, and there's a clasp at the side that allows them to sort of "spring" apart, revealing your baked good within.  Anyway, after much spreading and pressing, I finally achieved a nice, decently thick crust.  Make sure you press down hard enough that no crumbs come loose from your crust and should you accidentally shift the crust around, the entire thing shifts.

A speckled Oreo-Graham Cracker Crust

Now for the cheesecake part.  First, you want to start off by melting the chocolate.  Chocolate is a) very delicious; b) very temperamental and c) very expensive.  I have a 3 lb bag of Ghiradelli's Dark Chocolate Chips that I got from BJ's that I've been using, and so I melted down a little less than 2 cups of the chips.

Chocolate Chips in a Double Boiler Type Setup!

Now chocolate needs low, even heating to melt, and can easily burn in a microwave, so I recommend you find a small pot, fill it up halfway with water, and put a bowl on top (the water should not touch the bowl) and allow the steam to melt your chocolate- this is how chocolate is typically melted, short of having some device to do all this for you.  If you find your chocolate burning/melting too fast, lower the heat.  If you find that it's overly thick, turn up the heat a bit.  Make sure you do not get any sort of water mixed with your chocolate- this will cause the chocolate to "seize" or turn into chunky little bits of non-molten chocolate and the oils and solids will separate and it'll be a big, expensive, irreversible mess (non polar and polar substances really don't mix).  If, for future projects, you find yourself melting chocolate for dipping in this manner and you wish to make it thinner, add a little bit of warm oil, although you will also find that the chocolate subsequently does not set as well if you add too much oil.  Also, do not mix temperatures of chocolate- this will also cause horrendous seizing and cause a terrific mess.  I may know this from experience.

A nice chocolate melting process

After the chocolate was melted, I set it aside to cool down a bit (don't let it solidify though!) and subsequently moved on to the "cheese" part of black forest cheesecake.

When I bake, I usually categorize things in my mind as either "taste" ingredients or "baking" ingredients.  "Taste" ingredients are only to make things taste better (e.g. mix ins, dashes of spices, cocoa powder, etc) and can be a bit flexible with the measurements. "Baking" ingredients are essentially to the structure and texture of the baked good, such as flour, baking soda/powder, cream of tartar, butter/oil, and sometimes your sugars.  These need to be measured correctly and generally cannot be messed with unless you are an experienced baker and know what you're doing/are looking to change the structure of the good.  Now in cheesecake, there is no flour, there is cream cheese.  With this background knowledge, I challenge you to spot the mistakes in the picture below: 

For lack of a scale, I figured 2/3 of 48 oz would be about 32 oz, the required amount of cream cheese for this particular recipe.  So, I divided it into thirds and started scooping it into my bowl:

Bowl with Ingredients

Really not the best idea, but the best I can do without a scale- but please don't try this yourself, just buy 4 8-oz boxes of cream cheese.  Which leads to crucial mistake number 2: The cream cheese is a lie.  It's in a tub, which means it's cream cheese spread, which in my ultimate stupidity I neglected to realize before I baked the cheesecake.  Oops- many prayers are being sent to the baking gods.  However, it explains why, while blending all the ingredients:

It seemed rather airy for the short amount of time I've been blending it.  Which is not desirable for a thick, rich cheesecake, but I guess it'll be a fluffy cheesecake instead?

Now, add four eggs, one at a time, and blend (not too much, you don't want to retain too much air)

Add in the chocolate:

Blend/mix again, making sure to scrape down the sides, and it should look somewhat like this:

Except thicker, if you use actual cream cheese (hopefully).  Then it's off to heat the oven to 350 degrees, scoop the batter into the bowl (you can give the raw batter a try if you're not scared of the safety hazards of eating raw eggs, but it tastes awful and slimy  like slightly sour chocolate pudding, the sourness from the cream cheese, so it's not really great for eating).  

Putting batter into the pan!

After you put the batter in the pan (for me, there was a lot of batter! It's going to be one thick cheesecake), make sure you smooth off the top as best as you can so it bakes somewhat evenly:

And off it pops into the oven! You may have noticed that I wrapped the pan in aluminium foil- springform pans have been known to leak, so it's a good precaution to take against such leakages.

Now, I have to admit, now that the cheesecake is baking,  a) it is a pain to make the more complex cheesecakes and b) all that cream cheese, chocolate, random graham crackers and oreos for the crust, and other materials really do add up in terms of cost.  Kudos to Cheesecake Factory, I understand your pain now (and your rather large prices, making my own cheesecake probably costs upwards of $30 without home ingredients too).

***After much praying, hoping, and blogging, I am pleased to announce that it looks fine (taste I have no idea), and it can now go into the fridge to cool overnight.  Stay tuned for Cheesecakes: Part Two

Learning How to Ride a Bike: Take 2

So upon getting my dorm assignment, which is a solid ten minute plus walk away from campus, I realized it might be helpful to bike.  Which made me realize three important facts:

1. I don't have a bike
2. I have not biked in years
3. I was never good at biking anyway.

New bike!

New Helmet!

So to remedy number one, I actually happened to be talking about bikes with a few other people during senior society (more on that some other time), and one of the people happened to be trying to get rid of their bike.  So free bike yay! It's a nice bike with multiple gears and whatnot, although a bit tall.  I also got a new helmet in MIT colors (actually red is my favorite color, the MIT colors thing was just a coincidence since it was the only red helmet there) as well as a bike pump, which was not interesting enough to photograph.  

For number two, I got on the bike. Yay back to being a five year old biking around an empty parking lot (of an elementary school no less)!  I googled how to get on and off a bike extensively beforehand, as well as consulted with some friends on how to best get on and off a bike.  Let me just tell you, leaning over and putting your foot down is not the best way to get off a bike.  But this link: http://sheldonbrown.com/starting.html has pretty good techniques for how to start and stop on a bike.

For number three, I'm still not good at riding a bike.  You know the saying "It's like riding a bike: you never forget"? If you never knew how to bike well, well chances are you'll forget.  Stay tuned to see if I ever gain enough proficiency to bike around a college campus without accidentally running over someone. Here's to practice and hoping that I'll be able to bike sometime soon!

I Don't Know

My friend showed me this video today, and I feel as though it thoroughly represents my current state of mind (and my state of mind for the past few years really):

For many, many years of my life, I have prided myself on knowing.  Knowing why, how, what exactly in our world works, and if I don't know, to go and find some answers about it.  Really, that's how this blog started: having too much stuff to say and not enough opportunities to say it.  Reading science articles as a middle schooler and being able to write and make some weird sense of it- or figuring out when to look up more to learn.  But now, I'm just uncomfortable and unconfident because I always have this pervasive sense of I don't know.

In a month, I'm going to be living and learning at MIT, one of the world's greatest institute for scientific and technological discoveries.  A community full of people who, well if they don't know, no one else does either.  I've heard oodles of advice, like "stay focused", "get involved", "but not too involved", "make the most of your time at MIT", "don't become too cocky", "you need confidence to get through MIT, because everyone else is going to be so amazing you'll feel quite insignificant otherwise".   I'll have more opportunities than I could possibly dream of, as well as being able to interact with some of the most brilliant people on this planet.  So it scares me that after four years of high school, I've come back to this blog and read through some of my old thoughts just to find that I not just don't know, but I really have Absolutely No Idea as to what I'm doing.  Let me just list some things in my big list of I don't knows:

I don't know what I want to do.  My goal in high school was to take all the AP sciences to find what I liked the most.  Verdict? I don't know whether I like chem, bio, or physics better.

I don't know anything about computer science except for the slow progress I'm making on codeacademy. Which may prove to be a problem most immediately when I participate in HackMIT, but more importantly in the long run as to what kind of things I want to do in my life.  (What are things? I don't really know either)

I don't know where I stand on so many issues.  I've actually stopped following Upworthy on Facebook because I realized its very strongly liberal articles are heavily warping my vision of the world, and I need to balance it out.  As the video relates, there's no one "true" opinion, and there are so many out there, that I simply find myself throwing up my hands going "I don't know".  Feminist? Supportive of education reform? Income inequality? I don't know! Or rather, I know the facts, I don't know my stance.

I don't know how to write a resume, or talk to professors, or do any of those things people say you need to apply to MISTI and internships and all of those.  Seriously, how do I do the adult thing? Or at least the college student thing?

I don't know what I even want to do as extracurriculars in college. Focus on research? Wind Ensemble? Leadership? Service? What can I even handle? Hopefully the pass/fail system at MIT will help me figure that out, but as of right now, looking through the extracurricular offerings is just.... confusing.

Quite frankly, I don't even know why I was admitted to MIT, because I'm completely lost as to what I want to do.  It might be in part because I assumed I would do premed, or something towards a biological research position, but realized that I haven't even touched the whole "engineering/computer science" sector of society and I want to jump in and see if I like it.

I realize that all of these things are normal, and just a part of growing up.  But I still can't shake the feeling of fear for the future, of all the unknowns.  I should be excited: at MIT, all my dreams can quite possibly come true: from lifelong friendships with people like me, to studying, researching, developing, and creating the things that I'm truly passionate about. If I work for it. If I seize the moment.  If I can figure out what "things" is, who those friendships will be with, and how I want to live my life.

I don't know if those if's will happen: as they say, be careful what you wish for. But at least, I can hope they will.  After all, I'm at least allowed to have an opinion, even if it might not be true.

And to the MIT admissions crew who may be looking at this blog in the next few days or weeks: just a shout out to say thank you for admitting me. I have no idea what you saw in me, but I will try my hardest to figure out what all these "I don't know"'s are, and make my MIT dreams come true.

Dorm Shopping

In the last few weeks, I've been shopping around quite a bit for my dorm room, with heavy guidance from a friend of mind who, despite being of the opposite gender, appears to be a much better shopper than me.
I was originally going to buy this at the linens site associated with my school (and many others), but after I ordered it, I did a quick google search and found many complaints about its quality.  So, I canceled the order and decided to go searching for my own things, hopefully matching and/or beating the price of the full pack. Here are my picks:

First, a trip to Five and Below revealed these goodies.  Actually, the storage ottoman and the laundry bag were gifts from a birthday party.  They match each other nicely, and since the jewelry organizer and the bath set were both nicely priced compared to other places ($5 each), it was a good deal. 

Total so far: $10

If you'd excuse my foot in this picture, I got some nice towels from TJ Max for about $21 total.  There are 2 face washcloths, a hand towel (pink), and a bath towel.  The tags say DKNY, so I'm assuming they're of good quality (or at least hopefully better than generic brand towels).

Total thus far: $31

Upon a trip to Target, I realized that a) dorm stuff is actually pretty cheap at Target and b) it's pretty nice stuff.  So I bought an organizer lamp for $15 (I could have sworn it was 13 the other day I visited), a shower mesh caddy for another $8, and the comforter sheets (which I liked the design of, thus the higher price) for about $50.  However, since I used a $10 off coupon, the total came down to about $63 instead. 

Total thus far: $94

'

The PUR 5 Liter Water Pitcher

I didn't think of buying a water pitcher for college in all honesty, that was said friend's idea.  My family owns a Brita Water pitcher which works quite nicely at home, and upon searching for one of those on Amazon, I realized that they were upwards of at least twenty dollars, which was a little more than I wanted to pay for a single/double person pitcher.  So I found that this water pitcher, of the PUR brand, is thankfully only $9.97 and significantly cheaper than any Brita product, even at Costco or other places.

Total thus far: $104 (approx)

And among other uninteresting things such as power strips, a pillow, hangers, a gel infused memory foam topper (well actually, that's mildly interesting, but I still have yet to use it so more on it later), and a hamper, my spending total comes out to about $180, $20 shy of the $200 Campus Pack price with other items like the pitcher that aren't included in the Pack, but rather useful for dorm life.  All in all, not bad shopping.

The Laziest Summer Ever

This summer, I have embarked upon what will forever be referred to in my memories as the laziest summer ever.  With absolutely nothing to do pending going to college, I have to admit, although such a long period of idleness will most likely never grace my schedule again, I would be quite glad for it.  For once, I am finally understanding the true meanings of "bored", "idle", and "lazy" means, and although it's quite satisfying to be lazy, it's also extremely aggravating.

So in the extreme nothingness of this summer, I've decided to apply for a blogger position at MIT.  And in doing so, I have to of course, submit samples of blogging. Which caused me to come back to this blog and look through some old posts and whatnot, back at the heyday of my blogging.  I've come to realize that there are several annoying blogging habits that make my writing difficult to read.

First of all: gigantic chunks of text. In this texting/email era, who wants to start reading a paragraph with seemingly no end? Even my patience has begun to run short with some of the long ramblings on this blog.

Second of all, I need pictures.  Admittedly, as a science blogger I was a bit concerned about copyrights, thus the extreme dearth of pictures of my blog, but I guess if I blog about say my own life, then I should include pictures.  A lot more of them.

Lastly, I need to stop sounding like I'm trying to pitch sales to people.  There are way too many !! marks, which is probably either a consequence of being young or a consequence of being excited about whatever I'm writing about.  Either way, although they're not bad reasons, I really don't need to sound like those people at the mall telling you to look at this product!! It's so amazing!!!

So in my future blogging habits, I will attempt to try to correct these poor habits, as well as find some interesting things to blog about.  On the note of blogs, here is my tumblr where I enjoy reblogging interesting science posts that come my way: https://www.tumblr.com/blog/pippinpoppin. Check it out for cool happenings in the world of science (strongly resists urge for the exclamation point...)

Resource Sharing

I don't know about others, but I noticed that schools- at least, my school- has a lot of resources.  Instruments, lab equipment, food, microwaves, you name it, they've got it.  And yet, I never really see these resources get shared- the beakers stay in the cabinets, used once in an eternity.  The instruments- I understand, it's a little hard to move a piano.  The food- well, I don't really know what they do with the extra cafeteria food, but I don't think that it's going anywhere useful.  What if we could say, make all these wonderful resources available, though, to everyone?  For instance, let's say an elementary school teacher wants to conduct a science experiment with his/her students, but they don't know who to ask for stuff-  none of the teachers at the elementary school has science materials to spare, and they don't really know the science department well at the high school.  An opportunity for learning and discovery is gone to waste! Unless there is a way that isn't a major headache for the teacher to see at a glance what is available (movable equipment-wise) at the high school that currently isn't in use and call up those teachers to see whether he/she can borrow the equipment.  What I'm proposing, ladies and gents, is something like carpooling among teachers.  What I think should be done is that a catalogue should be made of say, science equipment- beakers, graduated cylinders,  goggles, you get the idea.  This should be put online in a sort of database.  Then, should say, an elementary teacher request 5 beakers, the computer can automatically email teachers with beakers that Ms. Teacher from That School wants to borrow some beakers, and so could they spare some beakers?  It's carpooling, school supplies style.  Similarly, it can be done for, say, markers, 'specially where markers/crayons/art supplies just aren't used on a day to day basis in class.  If you ask me, there's no reason for teachers to hoard perfectly good supplies that they never use in their lessons- let someone else borrow it for a change!!  And who knows, maybe this idea can save money in the long run as some teachers realize they don't (or perhaps do, if they borrow frequently) need an entire class set of supplies for every little thing, thus cutting costs on supplies.  At the very least, it'll build tighter bonds in the school community.

PS. Of course, there are problems- transportation of these items, for instance.  But I think it's a legitimate idea that may even be branched out to let students borrow stuff once in a while, so long as they, say, pay rent, or put up a collateral while they borrow it.  Perhaps schools could even earn a little revenue by letting students borrow things.

Great Percussion Site!

Do you want to become a percussionist?  Do you NOT have the money to seek a private tutor?  Well, don't despair!!  There is a wonderful site my "band" teacher told me about called www.vicfirth.com/education/ that is your complete guide to being a great percussionist!! I know for me, at least, it is a life-saver, as I aspire one day to be a percussionist in the honors band group in my school.  In order to achieve that, though, I'd have to know how to play percussion instruments besides the marimba.  So I've started taking notes on various instruments- here's a couple of Did You Knows? for the week:

Did you know?  A gong has a definite pitch, whether as a tam-tam does not.

Did you know? You only play on one side of a concert bass drum- the other side is the resonant side and should be tuned lower than the beating side.

Did you know?  Jingles made out of tin on a tambourine will not produce the right sound in a concert setting.

Taking Initiative

Today, I was walking in the hallway to visit my choir teacher (yes, I admit: I'm a BIG music geek.  Probably not the biggest, and DEFINITELY not the most talented, but I like to play music.  A lot), and I met one of the teachers in charge of a science competition thingy in the hallway.  I asked him a seemingly innocent question of when practice tests would be available, and it got turned on its head, suddenly becoming my fault that I lack the initiative to go seek practice tests that aren't always available in the first place!!  Not to mention the fact that I don't consider myself a person who "lacks initiative"- I spend my lunches in a band room practicing mallets just so I can get better and not drag everyone else in percussion ensemble behind.  And to make up for the fact that I don't personally take band class.  But then, I looked at it from his standpoint- a random science teacher who hardly knows what I do and why I do it would not know these things.  In fact, when he's around, I'm not always in tip-top shape when it comes to initiative- I stopped going to his "club" when I realized it was nothing but a chess and science olympiad club, neither of which I was eligible to do (well, the chess was a waste of time), and I don't always score well on the competition tests. I'm going to use this opportunity to reflect where I'm taking "initiative" and where I'm not:
Yes, I am taking initiative:
Percussion
Blogging (when I can)
Keeping up with schoolwork

No, I'm not taking initiative:
Those science tests.  I really need to pick them up.
Searching for Volunteer Opportunities and actually applying for them.
Searching for an Internship
Learning Chinese

And everything else I'd say falls in the middle.  So maybe, he did have a point.  Just about the wrong things- just because I don't chase after one thing doesn't mean I'm a lazy bump on the log.  What do YOU think about "taking initiative"?

Why I Don't Blog about Science (as much)

As you may have noticed, I just don't blog about science that much anymore.  (Admittedly, I don't blog much anymore, but when I do, I prefer to talk about school).  And so, to record my reasoning for when I'm older and looking back on this blog, I'm going to spit out my reasoning for not blogging about science: I just don't really know enough to come up with a good opinion on anything.  As a high school freshman, I'm not exactly the brightest of the bright- but not that green either, which is how I came to the conclusion that there is a LOT to learn out there.  How could I be able to talk about, say, a new atom smasher if I'm not even sure of what it's used for?  I might know that say, it's used to achieve high energies to find really, really, really, really, really, really (you get the idea), really, small particles.  But I barely know the difference between a lepton and a meson or gluon or photon or any of that.  And until I do know, until I can form a good, educated opinion using a good, solid background in science, I'm going to hold off on my scientific blogging.  Just for a while.

Happy Chinese New Year!

The year of the Rabbit is here, folks! And with it, the Chinese start to spring (although, the snow's piled so high spring will have to be redefined for this year).  Chinese New Year is a fantastic time- food, money, and lots 'o love is all around!!  Here's some factoids about Chinese New Year that I know off the top of my head:

• Red is a lucky color.  Luck is good!
• You're supposed to clean out the house before the New Year- but....
• Kids get money in red envelopes.  That's good too!
• Oranges represent something along the lines of wealth or something good like that...
• Fish should be eaten, because the word for fish in Chinese sounds like another word that means something good....
• You should have plenty of leftovers to represent a prosperous year.
• If you're from northern China (and excuse me if I get this all wrong), dumplings are eaten as well
• Offering sticky, sweet candies to the Kitchen God ensures that he'll only say nice things about your family.  If you want the whole story (and it is kind of amusing), look it up on google!
• There's a type of cake called nian gao that's sort of sticky and sweet and really tasty and is also supposed to represent something good.  What, I don't know, but it sure does taste good!

So, in summary, this is about as far as my family celebrates Chinese New Year, save for offering candy to the Kitchen God, the dumplings, and the cleaning the house part.  And hanging decorations of various lucky and springy and wealthy words around the house.  But, we do get a lot of food!