Banana Pecan Praline Cheesecake

I have never tried to make a cheesecake before but my wonderful boyfriend loves them and whilst visiting Mum's over Easter I thought it might be a perfect time to try one. I found this recipe in the April 2011 edition of Delicious magazine and have tweaked it slightly to suit my tastes (I am a bit of a caramel nut). The photo is also of the initial way I made the cheesecake, however I have changed the way I would assemble it for further attempts as per the recipe. If you dont like banana you can omit it from the recipe to make a Pecan Praline Cheesecake.

Note: This is a recipe you need to plan for, it is best started a day ahead.

Devil's Food Cake

I will be the first to admit that I am not a huge fan of chocolate cake. People either tend to make them too dry, or add so much chocolate to them that one bite fulfills your sugar quota for a month and puts you into a sugar coma. I have two very good chocolate cake recipe's for the inevitable request for one. This is a more sophisticated grown up cake, as I like to call it. Four layers of a delicate crumb cake layered with a beautifully rich, but not overly sweet, dark chocolate ganache. I highly recommend that if you are going to make this cake use the highest grade dark chocolate you can get your hands on for the ganache as possible. I tend to use a Lindt dark chocolate and I have found that you can now by it in the supermarket. I would make this cake if I was going over to a friends place, having an afternoon tea, etc. Due to the dark chocolate it is not really a kids cake, although my 3 year old niece did polish off her slice quiet fast.