The First Skype Non-Bake Bake-Off!

Joe had heard about a friend of his in a long-distance relationship who had come up with the perfect idea for long-distance dates: simultaneous movie-viewing! This friend of his was in America, and her beau, in Canada. Luckily for them, they shared a timezone, so they were able to go and see movies at the same time in their different cities, experience it at the same time, and talk about it afterward - just like a real date, sans the physical aspect. This was recognised by us to be a terrific idea, but unfortunately, our timezones are not too flexible when it comes to movie viewing. At the moment, we're fifteen hours apart. We were fourteen hours apart, but then Australia moved into Daylight Savings Time. Soon, America will fall back out of Daylight Savings Time, so we'll be sixteen hours apart! Argh! Not conducive to being able to view a movie at the same time. If I went to a 9:30pm showing of a film, it'd be 6:30am at Joe's house.

My lovely Joe had a brainwave. Let's have a baking date! Previously, I had sent him a recipe book published by an Australian company, one in a series of cookbooks released by The Australian Women's Weekly magazine (which is a women's mag, as every good Aussie knows, that is released monthly). I agreed that this was a terrific idea. What we'd do is both follow the same recipe at the same time, sharing the experience together via Skype. Joe leafed through the recipe book until we settled on doing the very first recipe in the book: lemon cheesecake!





Date: Sunday 17 October 2010
Time: 2330 AEST (DST)/0830 EST
Activity: Non-Bake Bake-off! No. 1: Lemon Cheesecake

So, I waited for Joe to wake up. I had spent the afternoon with Pippa, trawling around town for new clothes and a coffee plunger, while Joe ate "emergency chicken" and slept. Just as I worked out that I should probably get started on the biscuit base of the cheesecake by using the food processor in my room so that I wouldn't wake my slumbering housemates, Joe came online! And so the Great Skype Non-Bake Bake-Off began.

Ingredients required:

Crushed, sweet, plain biscuits

First hurdle. "Sweet plain biscuits?" Joe enquired. Of course, Americans don't have biscuits! Well, they do, but what they call biscuits, we call scones. And what we call biscuits, they call cookies or crackers. I assumed that cookies were sweet, and crackers were savoury, but no, Joe educated me about "Honey Graham Crackers", which are apparently sweet! I have yet to try these, of course, but it can be added to the List of Things Pam Must Eat When She Gets to America.

Melted butter

I melted it over a low heat for a change so it melted slowly. Amazing. It didn't burn this time. Wow. Maybe I should do more things in life slowly?? Also, turns out that the cheap butter is exactly the same as the expensive butter. WHO woulda thunk it? (Apart from my mother, who informed me that "the home brands are just as good as the expensive brands" back in 2003.)

Philadelphia Cream Cheese

I had a stroke of genius mid-evening and left it out for four hours to "soften". Easiest cheese to mix with beaters ever.

Sweetened Condensed Milk

Is it wrong that I wanted to stick my tongue in the almost-empty tin and just DRINK it?

Grated lemon rind

I scraped the lemon abrasively against the grater and had my 2 tsps' worth in less than a minute. Joe persevered slowly and carefully, and, after about ten minutes, had netted a result of attractive-looking rind with no lumpy bits. (Pam, take note.)

Lemon juice

Bottled. Yeah, so we both had lemons we could've squeezed. What of it?

Gelatine

Neither of us had made gelatine before. I stared blankly at the instructions. Joe figured it out, and then helped me. So I made a "paste" of gelatine in a bowl, then put the bowl over a pot of steaming hot water to dissolve it properly. Success! What would I do without him?

Result: Two fabulous cheesecakes.

What we learned in today's non-bake bake-off:

- Pam has a slap-dash, approximate, "she'll be right" attitude toward measurements, beating times and methods of preparation.

- Joe measures and beats exactly, yielding a better result than Pam.

- Pam's "method" is faster; however:

- Joe method looks (and probably tastes) a helluva lot better.

- Cheesecake batter is delicious!

Verdict: Great idea for a Skype date! I loved it. The only downside was not being able to hear each other during the beating and food-processing. We were both so distracted by what we were doing; the process would be greatly enhanced if we both had state-of-the-art technology in the way of gigantic plasma screens and perfect sound quality and could see larger-than-lifesize versions of each other, but alas. Nobody has rung up and offered me this yet, so I persevere with my two-and-a-half-year-old ASUS laptop, while Joe uses his brand new MacBook Pro (which I have dutifully nicknamed "Glossy John").

Taste Report: OHMIGOD AMAZING.

'Til the next date, folks!

With a salute to olive juice,
and much love to Joe,

Pammy