Howdy Kitchen: Cheesecake Woes!

Happy, sunny, lovely temps Tuesday!

What a great day it would be to be spending it outside, where the sun is shining, the weather is fantabulous, and I could get a little color on my skin.  But, instead, I have the privilege of {sitting inside, in a library, in a small room, with no windows to see the real outside}assisting students (today they are sophomores) with making their college dreams a reality.  I do love doing this.  But when the weather is just lovely out, I really makes me want to be back at the farm!  {Don't worry, I am working on this post when no students are present.}

Anyway, on with the post....

Sunday after playing with 22 babies in the nursery and then attending the next service, I headed to Aldi's to do some quick shopping before I headed back the other direction towards home.  What was I going after?  Cheesecake and cupcake ingredients.

As I left Aldi, I walked out of there 12 blocks of cream cheese, 2 white cake mixes, 2 vanilla puddings, 2 orange jellos, and some other things 'richer'.  

I have grand plans for the cake mix, pudding, and jello.  Maybe I'll get to make them this afternoon. 

What I did make, was a blueberry swirl {white chocolate} cheesecake and a peanut butter cup cheesecake.  Both of these were requests for birthdays present and past.

The blueberry swirl {white chocolate} cheesecake was a first for me making this one.  It tasted delicious!  I need to find a better way to incorporate white chocolate than trying shave a white chocolate bar.  Too much work when running short on time!  I'm thinking mini white chocolate chips would be pretty tasty in that recipe.  

When the blueberry cheesecake was completed, I whipped up the filling for the peanut butter cup cheesecake.  I put it in the oven.  Then forgot about it.....literally!  I was hanging out at my friend/neighbor/rodeo watchin' buddy Amy's place.  Somewhere well over an hour and a half to 2 hours later, I remembered I had a cheesecake in the oven, then took off running up the stairs.  I was scared for what I was going to find.  

Low and behold, it wasn't all the bad.  Yes, the top and sides were well done, but I was able to cut off the really bad parts.  I wasn't too worried about the top, since I was going to put chocolate ganache on top of it. 

When I delivered that cheesecake Monday afternoon, after taking it with me to work to keep cold and not being able to eat a piece of it, I informed Christy that it might not meet her expectations....and to not get her hopes up.  But....I was more than pleased to receive a text from her that said 'Cheesecake is a huge hit!'.  That just calmed my fears of my failures.

Monday while at work, I made the decision that I NEED to get myself a timer.  I can't have that happen again.  Next time, I might not be so lucky!

I went online to Amazon.com, and found myself this cute little KitchenAid red timer.  I figured, since my mixer is red, I might as well get a red timer! 

If you haven't heard about SwagBucks yet, please let me know!  I 'bought' this timer with 4 Amazon $5 gift cards I earned through SwagBucks.  I knew I had $20 in Amazon.com gift cards waiting to be used.  What I didn't realize, I also had another $10 in Amazon.com gift cards sitting there, still not used!  What?  How could I forget?!  It was a nice surprise.  To top off getting a free KitchenAid timer, I still have about $10 left in Amazon.com gift cards!  Wahoo!!

Hope you all are enjoying this lovely weather as well!