Islands in the sky, food & travel

Just a quickie recipe because I'm getting requests for this no-bake triple chocolate cheesecake. I'm so pleased with how it turn out, the last one I made was a tad too soft and didn't hold together and the texture this time was perfect : firm, soft and creamy over a crunchy crust.  Also, with the previous one being too soft it was difficilt to get out of the mold and this time, I had a few tricks up my sleeve to avoid that disaster (wish I could have filmed that!) For the crust, I didn't have any chocolate biscuits so I made my own chocolate cookie crust using, but I did bake it a bit to get the crunchiness:  2 cups or 270 g butter cookies 4 tablespoons butter 1/8 cup Dutch process cocoa powder 2 tablespoons finely crushed white chocolate  1/2 teaspoon sea salt Pulverise the butter cookies. Add cocoa powder. Soften butter and mix with cookie mixture.  Add white chocolate bits and salt.  The texture should be dry and crumbly and not too sticky so you can press it...

Hi guys ! A bit late but I did say I would post this recipe, which was a fun cake to put together for a birthday.  I layered pink velvet and fudge brownie cakes with vanilla cream and candied cherries to make this Pink Black Forest cake for October Rose (breast cancer awareness month). Believe it or not, I didn't have fresh cherries, since it was late in the season, but here is reason to believe you can use frozen or preserved cherries and it works out well too. To be honest, I did make this cake over the space of 2 days. First I preserved the cherries, then made one cake layer and refrigerated everything.  The next day I made another cake layer, as well as the cream and assembled it.  Start with preparing the cherries. In a medium saucepan, over low heat, add 400-500 g of frozen or preserved (unsweetened in water) whole pitted cherries and 3/4 cup sugar, 3/4 cup of water, and 2 tablespoons of kirsch. Once simmering, add 1-1/2 tablespoons of cornstarch until dissolved and...