It's Not All Technical: The Million Dollar Raspberry Cheesecake with Chocolate Chip Crust

I went on a BBQ this weekend and baked a cheesecake for the event. I took a look at a couple recipe's online then went crazy and just sort of whipped up something on my own I thought would be good and it turned out to be tremendous so I thought I would share it with our engineering community here in case anyone also has a sweet tooth for a cheesecake. So good it tastes like a million bucks!

Ingredients:

1.5 cups of sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 8oz packages of cream cheese
3 eggs
4 oz heavy whipping cream
1 cup of dark chocolate chips
1 lb chocolate chip cookie dough
3 6oz packages of fresh raspberries
1 package of gelatin (optional)

Directions: Preheat oven to 350.

The Crust
In a greased 9" springform pan ($10 at local wal-mart) take your 1lb of cookie dough and using your hand smash it flat into the bottom of the pan, spread evenly. Place it in the oven at 350 for 15 minutes. The cookie dough will be still gooey when it comes out and this is OK. Let it cool for 30 minutes, or put it in the fridge to cool for 15.

The Filling
In a mixing bowl add 1 cup of sugar and the 3 packages of cream cheese. Stir together while adding 1 egg at a time making sure each egg is stirred well into the cream cheese before adding the next one. Add the vanilla and heavy cream and continue to stir until it starts looking lusciously smooth.

The Topping
Add 12oz of raspberries (2 of the 3 packages) to a blender with the remaining 1/2 cup of sugar and liquefy into a puree.

Optional
You can mix up a packet of plain gelatin in 1 cup boiling water and put 1/2 in the cheescake batter and 1/2 in the raspberry puree. It helps makes the cheesecake more firm.

Assembly
Pour 1/2 of the creamcheese batter into the springform pan. Then add the 1 cup of dark chocolate chocolate chips spread around pretty good. Then add the remaining creamcheese over the chips.

Pour some of the raspberry topping on top of the cheesecake. Not too much, perhaps 1/4 cup, dripping around the top of the cheesecake and use a knife or something to swirl it into the top of the cheesecake (a chopstick or skewer works well too).

Put the rest of the raspberry puree sauce into a bowl or plastic container and throw it in the fridge to chill.

Pop the cheesecake in the oven at 350 for 60 minutes. After you take it out run a knife around the edges and then let it cool for at least an hour. Place the cheesecake in the fridge and let it cool for at least 4 hours.

Serving
To serve the cheesecake take it out of the springform pan and remove it from bottom plate using a plastic spatula (so as not to damage the pan) it should pop right off but be careful and work around the edges. Put the cheesecake on a serving dish and ring the remaning packet of raspberries around the cheesecake.

Take out the remaining raspberry puree sauce and when you plate a slice of cheesecake put 1-2 spoonfools of puree on top and 1-2 more around the cheesecake.

Conclusions
Deliciousness...fattening too, but totally worth it :) the special thing is the cookie dough crust which really makes it one of the best deserts ever.

Sorry no pictures, the cheesecake was eaten before I thought to blog about it. But it would look something like this except with raspberries.

Parallel Development With Plastic SCM

Over the years I have worked with many SCM tools and they all say they support parallel development but they all do it in very different ways with all kinds of strategies and best practices that vary not only from system to system but also from situation to situation. This is one of the reasons why the Appleton/Berczuk book on branching patterns is so important, so that SCM admins can determine how best to implement a branching strategy to support their ideal development needs in the given enviroment.

With that in mind I've put together a 30 minute video to detail how we recommend doing things with Plastic. The first 15 minute talks in general about parallel development and what some of the pro's and con's are while the second 15 minutes is an example demonstrate of how we recommend using Plastic SCM to implement a simple yet effective parallel development environment. I focus on workflow and best practices while also incorporating some additional useful tools like CruiseControl, NUnit, TestComplete and Jira to help facilitate the process.

Here is the agenda for the video:

1. Define the problems of serial development
2. Benefits of parallel versus serial development
3. Problems with parallel development
4. How to eliminate or lessen the problems
5. Keys to effectiveness
6. Demonstration of key points in action

I've also added a link to the PPT I created for the presentation.

Link to video: http://www.plasticscm.com/demos/paralleldevmovie/Bparalleldev.htm
Link to PPT: http://www.plasticscm.com/demos/paralleldevmovie/BetterDevThroughBranching.ppt