Chocolate and cheesecake. What else do you need?

We spent the weekend in a mini hibernation, hiding away from the cold. It was great, but as usual went way too fast.

At the beginning of the month I bought some cream cheese with the intention of baking a cheesecake, but I always forgot to pick up the biscuits for the base. I needed to make something before they went out of date and wasting them on crackers is just out of the question!
I found a lovely recipe in my bookmarks, for a chocolate cheesecake. The girl had taken the recipe and made it into mini cupcakes, so I went to the original site and baked the actual cake.

I was quite worried at first as my uncooked cake looked nothing like hers. Mine seemed to have too much cheese mixture on top. And with my ancient cooker I was pretty nervous that it would cook unevenly. When the time was up and it still seemed unready, I turned off the heat and let it sit in there and cook slowly. Which seemed to work out.
It turned out fine, just a different balancing out of the cheese and chocolate mixture in mine. The texture of the cake is like a muffin and has a nice creamy texture from the cheesecake mixture.

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The cocoa powder I used, I had just bought in Te og Kaffi the other day. It's a Belgian brand and so delicious.

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In China We Trust

The economic crisis almost cost me and possibly thousands of Icelanders the highlight of their year.

What is that you may ask? Well the New Years Eve fireworks of course. Our banks are still unable to process foreign payments/transfers, so the importer of the fireworks is unable to pay the Chinese company! Luckily for us they have a good relationship after years of business together and seeing as the profits from the fireworks go to a good cause, the Chinese company have agreed to give the remaining items on credit. YAY

Landsbjörg are the people involved in importing most of the fireworks into Iceland. They are an association of volunteer search and rescue teams. They receive most of their income from the sale of the fireworks.

Lets hope we can all still afford to buy them and end this tumultuous year with many a big happy BANG!

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In other news I am very unmotivated to make any crafts. I have begun a design for my father's xmas gift, which looks good so far. Other than that I have no ideas!

There has been lots of snow and sleet over the last few days, so it's mostly gone now. Winter is officially here :D

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Frozen Assets

It's finally here, the crisis they were denying as far back as a year ago. The economic crash has happened, the big bad banks have collapsed and left us with an angry British government(and others) breathing down our necks for their citizens cash. Meanwhile us little folks on this icy rock cannot transfer money abroad, we have to show a valid plane ticket to obtain any foreign currency. We have food store managers telling us to stock up on canned food as they will run out soon, due to their lack of payments to their suppliers!
The streets are occupied by foreign Tv crews and journalists eager for a quote, only yesterday Stephen and I were approached by a Japanese Tv crew to answer some questions on the economy!(we said no).
We are lucky in that we have no savings here, we don't have a mortgage or kids to send to school and feed, so we can cut back and sacrifice where needed. One big cut back this year will be online shopping. No more bargains from the US, for our xmas presents. This year it will be an even more crafty christmas.
Also this will be the first ever christmas day in work for both of us. Not an exciting prospect, but on the good side we are on holidays the day after for a week ;) For us though, once we can celebrate New Years as usual that is fine by us. You have not had a New Years eve until you have watched the fireworks from Perlan!
This is New Years Eve 2005, there is some mild swearing ;)