Making Mayonaise

Although obviously I am super wholesome and healthy in most ways, I do have the odd vice and one of them is a love of mayonnaise. Now for some odd reason I had it fixed as one of those things that is really hard to make and so subsequently you always have to buy it. How wrong I was, its actually rather easy.
 I recently had to replace my blender and so bought a hand held one with a mini blender bowl attachment at the bottom. When looking for things to blend I stumbled upon a few recipes for mayonnaise and so decided to give it a go. The basic recipe went something like this:

1 egg at room temperature. (lots of recipes just use egg yolk abut I found that its simpler and less wasteful just to use the whole egg and it still works well)
1 tsp Dijon mustard ( you can increase this as you start to find the taste you like)
1tsp pink salt/ sea salt
1 tsp brown sugar
300ml oil, (olive oil gives a very rich slightly bitter flavour, sunflower allows the other flavours to come through but is very high in omega 6. I have never tried coconut oil but I suspect that would work. There is probably lost of room for experimentation with different oils)
2 tbsp. white wine vinegar/ lemon juice or mixture of the two.

Lemon & garlic Aioli

Just blend the egg, mustard, salt and sugar together about 20 seconds. Then slowly add the oil, bit by bit, blending for approx. fifteen seconds between additions. The mayonnaise will start to form and make a white creamy stiff mixture. Then add the vinegar/lemon juice and mix until thoroughly combined. There you have it lovely mayonnaise simple and easy.

You can of course add additional flavours. For Lemon Garlic Aioli just add a few garlic cloves and some preserved lemons (omit the salt) in the first stage and use lemon juice instead of vinegar or add chives and whichever herbs you fancy at the end stage for a herb infused mayonnaise. Refrigerate, it should keep for a few days.

Please remember to  mention to any guests who are pregnant that the mayonnaise is homemade and contains raw egg.

You can make mayonnaise with a hand whisk, same order it just takes a little longer.

Baked Banana Cheesecake with Homemade Base

Time for a bit of indulgence, its cheesecake time.

Finding that I had an abundance of cream cheese that I had made myself, I decided it was time to make a baked cheesecake. Delicious dessert, beloved in my childhood years, its been too long.
I set about gathering the ingredients and for the base I was going to use the supposedly labour saving method of breaking up biscuits and adding butter, but unfortunately the super market had nothing wholesome enough or if it did they were contained within oodles of packaging. So when I got home I decided I would just make some of my own and crush them up etc. Then I started thinking about all the wasted oven energy and decided to experiment with just using in the raw biscuit mix for the base and cooking the whole thing together. I have never seen such a recipe before, but I am please to say it worked really well plus it meant I had full control of the ingredients I used for the whole thing. The biscuit recipe I used is quite tasty, however it might be a bit sugary for some tastes, in which case just used less sugar.

Ingredients

Biscuit Base

125g butter
200g brown sugar
1 egg
250g brown self raising flour
25g (approx.) LSA

Cheesecake Filling

500g approx. cream cheese (ideally home made)
100g brown sugar (can be decreased if banana is lovely and sweet)
1 banana
1/2 cup sour cream
1/4 cup cream
3 eggs

Method

1. Start with the biscuit base. Cream together softened butter and sugar. Add 1 egg, combine. Add flour & LSA and mix in thoroughly. Place in freezer to chill quickly.

2. Blend or mash banana thoroughly. Add creams. Blend together. Add sugar, blend together. Add cream cheese. Blend into mixture. Add eggs slowly, combining each with the mixture thoroughly before adding the next. It should be quite runny and not lumpy. Refrigerate

3. Remove biscuit base from freezer and pack into greased cake tin using hands. I used a 24cm diameter quiche dish, Though if I had one I would probably have used a cake tin with removable base. Sculpt a flat base and walls around the edge (0.5-0.7 cm thick). Put back into the freezer.

4. Turn on the oven, set it to 160 degrees centigrade.

5. Remove filling from the fridge, give it a quick stir to make sure it is well combined. Remove the base from the freezer it should be nice and firm. Pour the filling into the dish with the prepared base.

6. Bake in the oven for 50 mins to 1 hour. The centre should be firm and jelly like when cooked.

7. Leave to cool, if you can and refrigerate. For best results leave it to sit overnight in the fridge.

I had planned to keep my cheesecake eating a secret from the world, but it was so tasty I just had to share. However it was too late for any photos of the masterpiece intact