It's been a month since Chinese New Year and I still have 1/2kg of cream cheese in my fridge. It started about 2 weeks before Chinese New Year. I had this urge to make cheesecake. You know what it's like when you suddenly have this drive to do something and you have to ride this wave of creative energy before it fades out, which it usually does pretty quickly.
So, I had the sudden desire to make cheesecake. Lots of it, to give to my sisters, dad, aunties, etc... for Chinese New Year. Out I went to get all the ingredients. I bought the cream cheese at Choice Premier. A 1kg block was selling for around RM42 and a 2 kg block cost around RM58, if I remember correctly. It was therefore simple logic and elementary mathematics which commanded that I must buy the 2kg block. The fact that I only needed 1kg was not essential! (I get my cheap thrills from getting good deals when shopping! I am a self-professed sucker for 'sales' and 'discounts'!)
Okay, so now I had everything I needed except for gelatine. This was the type of cheesecake you freeze and not bake. Thus began 'The Great Hunt for Gelatine'. I was everywhere, Choice Premier, Choice Daily, Everrise BDC, Cold Storage, Ta Kiong... either everyone was making cheesecake for Chinese New Year or someone was filling his pool with jelly! Well, a week later I finally found it at a small baking goods store. They had tonnes of it! Hooray! I found the gelatine! What did I need it for again?
Cheesecake. Right. By then my wave had pretty much diminished to a teensy weensy ripple. Sigh. I managed to crank out 2 small cheesecakes at least. That used up 500g of cream cheese. So now I had 1 1/2kg of cream cheese sitting in my fridge.
Now I'm one of those people who detest clutter. Therefore, starting about a week ago, the cream cheese achieved high priority status on the list of 'things to get rid of'! Everytime I opened the fridge, I saw the cheese staring at me. Yet I couldn't toss it out before it turned a suspicious shade of green. No, that would be wasteful. So, I went online in search of recipes for anything that needed cream cheese.
One thing I now know; you cannot trust everything you get from the internet. I tried a quiche recipe and it puffed up like a souffle in the oven only to collapse later upon cooling. The texture was not right. I had to throw away some leftovers. But the good news was, I was now left with only 1kg of cream cheese!
Then, I made some cream cheese frosting for a brownie recipe which I had made successfully before. I thought that turned out pretty ok, but the kids scraped off the cheese before eating the brownie! Nevermind, now I was down to 750g.
Then I came across a really simple recipe. Oreo Cheeseballs. Only 3 ingredients and no baking! Oreos, cream cheese and candy coating. It was heaven-sent, as I also had 3 packets of Oreos sitting in my kitchen cupboard (they were Oreo cheesecakes you see). You crush 2 packets of Oreos and mix with 250g cream cheese, roll them up into balls and dip into melted candy coating. I modified the recipe a bit. I beat sugar into the cheese, because I find cream cheese a bit too salty. Added the Oreos and rolled them in chocolate rice and 'hundreds and thousands', because I have no idea where to find candy coating.
It's good that it needed no baking so the kids could help and it didn't matter if some were marbles and others golf balls! They also turned out to be pretty yummy in fact! The diet issue was set aside for a while; getting rid of the cream cheese was more important!
Finally, I am now left with 1/2kg of cream cheese in my fridge. I see green mould in my crystal ball and predict cream cheese in the dustbin, in the not-too-distant future. But for now, it has a season parking spot in my fridge. At least it's smaller and not so 'in-your-face' anymore! So if anyone needs cream cheese, feel free to drop by!
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