Cooking Thursday

I made this cheesecake for our office Christmas party and it was so good! It took some time but wasn't hard to make and the time was worth it!  This was a good one for Christmas, but would also be good for Valentines Day.  If you're looking for a good cheesecake, this is it!

White Chocolate Peppermint Cheesecake

28 regular oreo cookies
2 tablespoons melted butter
1 pinch salt
Cheesecake
4 - 8 ounce packages cream cheese, softened
8 ounces sour cream
1 1/2 cup white sugar
5 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon peppermint extract
3/4 cup crushed peppermint candy
3/4 cup chopped white chocolate
Ganache
1/2 cup whipping cream
2/3 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
Garnish
Whipping cream 
Crushed peppermint candy

Crust:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
pulse oreo's in food processor until cookies become a fine crumb. Pour in the melted butter and pinch of salt, blend until combined.
Pour crumb mixture into greased springform pan. Press evenly into bottom of pan and up the sides of pan. Press in well to get a nice even crust.
Bake for 10 minutes and allow to cool completely.

Cheesecake:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees
Add softened cream cheese to mixing bowl and beat at medium/high speed for about 1 minute. Scrape down sides and bottom of bowl and beat for another 30 seconds or so to make sure cream cheese is as smooth as possible.
Add sugar and sour cream; mix at medium/low speed until just combined. Scrape bowl again and mix for another 15 seconds.
Add eggs and beat at low speed for about a minute, scraping bowl again.
Add vanilla and peppermint extract; beat until just combined. Batter should be smooth and runny.
Using heavy duty foil, wrap 4 sheets of foil around springform pan, making sure foil is up near the top of the pan.
Place your wrapped pan in a deep roasting pan. 
Stir the crushed peppermint candy and the chopped white chocolate into the cheesecake batter. Then pour the batter into the springform pan.
Add very hot water to the roasting pan until there is about 1 1/2 inches of water around the springform pan.
Carefully place the pan onto rack in lower third of oven.
Bake for 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 hours.  Jiggle the pan, it should be jiggly but not liquidy.
Once cheesecake is jiggly, but firm, turn oven off but leave cheesecake in oven for another hour.  Do not open the oven during this time.
After the hour, remove from oven and from roasting pan. 
Chill in refrigerator for 2-3 hours.
Ganache:
Place whipping cream in small bowl.
Microwave for 1 minute.
Put chocolate chips into bowl and allow hot cream to cover them.
Let stand for 2-3  minutes, then stir to combine.
Cool for 10-15 minutes in refrigerator, then spread over the top of the cheesecake.
Refrigerate for at least 4 hours.
Before serving garnish with whipped cream and chopped peppermint candies.

Winter Glow

This year Laura and Aaron gave us a years membership to the Meijer Gardens for Christmas. Meijer Gardens is 158 acre Botanical and Sculpture Garden - named best Sculpture Garden in the United States by USA today, and the #2 Botanical Garden in the United States.  We are so blessed to have a place like this near to us.  And now we will enjoy visiting it frequently!

They asked if we wanted to go with them on Friday night to see one of the exhibits that's been running through Christmas called Winter Glow.
For this they set up displays of Christmas trees decorated for every country around the world. They also decorate inside and outside with glowing lights.  There is an amazing train set up in the gardens inside with buildings made of all natural things that are modeled after notable buildings from Grand Rapids.

Here's a few photos of our visit.

The front of the building as we walked up from the parking lot.

Lots of trees with different decor to look at.

In Brazil the kids put their shoes under the tree, instead of hanging stockings.

Alaina and Ruby in front of the tree from the Netherlands.

Here's some of the "glow" outside.  It was beautiful and the photos don't do it justice.

This is looking at the back of the building from the Childrens Gardens.

Looking over the grounds from the building.

Then there was the Railway Garden.  There were 45 buildings from the Grand Rapids area and 5 from sister cities.  Seeing how they made these to scale, using natural materials like leaves, flowers twigs and mushrooms to make them was amazing.

A covered bridge that is well known around here.

This is the Mercer May house, a Frank Lloyd Wright home in Grand Rapids.

A charming little church.

A close up to show you the leaves on the roof and the mushrooms for steps.

Meijer Gardens building.

Even the Grand Haven Lighthouse!
We would have enjoyed studying these more, but there were lots of people trying to look at them.

Here's everyone in the Conservatory.

This picture doesn't really show how large this star was, hanging up high.

Everything was beautiful, and we had a great time wandering around enjoying it.
I'm sure you will see more pictures as we explore in the coming year.

Christmas!

Hi friends!  I had a lovely Christmas break, hope your Christmas season was good too.
I thought I'd share some pics of what we did on Christmas.
We had dinner with my extended family.  We used our church as we've done the last few years and it works well for a bigger group.
It was different and the absence of my Dad and stepmom was felt. However, we remembered what a nice day we had with them last year and were happy in knowing they were both having their best Christmas!

Our daughter Laura, along with Alaina and Ruby, finished up all the little houses that Catherine from My Home and Garden had sent for the girls. She used them to decorate our tables. 

She added pretty little vases and bottles with fresh greenery and wooden beads. The houses were lit with battery operated candles.  Everything looked so nice!

Here's the group that was able to be there.  We were missing a few due to travels and schedule issues, but those that could make it enjoyed it.

We played some fun games after we ate.

And we made the guys do a crazy game too.
By mid-afternoon we cleaned things up and went home.

About 4:30 the next round started.  Laura, Aaron, Andrew, Heather and the girls came over. 

They cooperated nicely for a photo and then we had supper.  We had ham and turkey sliders per Alaina's request.

Alaina read the Christmas story with a little help from Cassie.

They had fun opening stocking gifts and then the regular gifts too.
Cassie was very into opening gifts this year!

She decided to see if she could fit into a box!

Before we knew it the evening was done and it was time to go home.  Cassie wanted to stay here and had this sad little face when leaving.
It was such a nice day!