Sunayna Prasad's Cooking

  During quarantine, I missed a lot of my favorite commercial foods. One of those included white chocolate raspberry cheesecake from the Barnes & Noble café. It was super-delicious—both that and the one I made. There is a lot involved, though. You have to make raspberry preserves, crush Oreos and bake them as a crust, and melt white chocolate as well as prepare the actual cheesecake. While this particular “error” worked out in the end, I melted white chocolate chips instead of using the special kind the recipe recommended since I did not have it. However, that substitute was technically incorrect, and would have messed up the final creation. Luckily, though, my mom taught me a trick to avoid a bad cheesecake. That was to add milk to the white chocolate, but a little at a time. And guess what? It resulted in a great dessert. I would eat the cheesecake pretty much every day. Aside from the white chocolate thing, the raspberry preserves, Oreos, and cheesecake were no problems prep...

  I’ve been baking and cooking since I was 12. I’ve also learned to decorate cakes and other baked goods around that age. Of course, I struggled several times, especially in the early days. However, I’ve been making a lot of my own occasion cakes in recent years, because one of my friends is allergic to peanuts. Unfortunately, many bakeries aren’t nut-free, including near where I live. In fact, although I reside outside New York City, allergy-friendly bakeries are rare. Nevertheless, I still enjoy my homemade cakes and cupcakes. The interest worked out very, very well. So, without further ado, here are the techniques I am thankful for learning. 1: Crumb-coating This is when you put a plain layer of buttercream all over the cake and put it in the refrigerator to cool. That way, you don’t end up with crumbs in your icing. That is when you put the next layer over it and you can be free to do what you want. This might not work for whipped cream frosting, though. 2: Whipped buttercream ...