De Baking Psychopath

This was a dessert created out of necessity but turned out quite delicious in its own right. The task was to come up with something that was dairy free and gluten free. A flash of memory reminded me of the faux cheesecake a high school teacher of mine came up with when she had just moved to Taiwan many years ago and could not get any American cream cheese. So instead, she used fresh tofu. It ended up being a lighter and healthier version of the classic dessert that was so enjoyed by her family and guests, that even after she gained access to cream cheese again, she would substitute half the cream cheese with tofu. So to achieve my goal, I paired an all-tofu version of the recipe with a nut crust and homemade blueberry jam for a very respectable fancy dessert! For even less calories, you can substitute the sugar with Splenda. The softer and silkier your tofu, the less prominent the taste of the tofu will be; I used firm tofu one of the two times and it ended up much firmer and ...

Today I made some more Cook's Illustrated Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies, but instead of regular Domino's Dark Brown Sugar, I used the dark brown sugar I got from the Korean grocery H-Mart in Washington, DC awhile back. The shade of brown of that brown sugar is akin to the color of coffee grounds, which is very very much darker than the Domino's version. I really love the flavor and the larger grain of this sugar, and so I am eagerly awaiting another opportunity to stock up. However, despite my great appreciation for the different qualities between the two brands, the decision to use the Korean brown sugar instead of Domino's was a spur-of-the-moment one, or in other words, not thought out. So I was very surprised halfway through making the cookies to find that I ended up with a deep, chocolate-colored batter instead of the normal all-American chocolate chip cookie color, as seen below in the finished products (normal cookie from last batch on left, Korean dark brow...