Daring Bakers: Cheesecake with Roasted Rum Pineapple and Pineapple Flowers

The April 2009 challenge is hosted by Jenny from Jenny Bakes.  She has chosen Abbe's Infamous Cheesecake as the challenge.

For this month's Daring Baker's challenge,  we were supposed to make cheesecake, but do something different and wonderful to it.  I've always wanted to make these pineapple flowers and thought about a roasted pineapple and rum topping I had made a while back for a cheesecake.  So I put the two items together and it made a beautiful cheesecake.  Jenny's recipe didn't call for sour cream or creme fraiche in the recipe, but I do believe it gives a cheesecake a special flavor and I always add it.  

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Roasted Pepper and Mozzarella Bites

Boy, talk about an easy appetizer. How about using just two ingredients (three if you want to add the chopped basil) for a pretty, delicious dish of bite sized morsels? Roasting the peppers is an easy thing to do and if you've never done this yourself, start now. You will have another great technique in your cooking arsenal that will come in very handy. You can use this method to make Peperonata or to roast peppers for a sauce or side dish.

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Happy Easter

I'm on vacation this week with my family (at a place that has free wireless in the lobby - always a plus) but I wanted to post something for Easter.  I obviously won't be cooking this week, but I would like to steer you to a post I wrote last year,  showing how to make the traditional Italian Easter Bread.  It's a sweet, soft and really delicious bread that I think you will love.  If you're going to someone's house for Easter, take along a few of these and they will be a hit.

Italian Easter Bread

And if you still want to make some more fun treats for Easter, hop on over to the Queen of Fabulous Treats, Bakerella, and check out her Easter Bunny Cake Pops and her Easter Chicks Cake Pops.  Both absolutely adorable.

Buona Pasqua!