Mini Greek Yogurt "Cheese" Cakes and Salsa (the dancing kind)

Salsa: My Love for Dance

What does ANYTHING about baking has to do with salsa?

It doesn't really, so if you're not interested scroll down to the recipe below. For them curious folk read on =)

I've always loved dance from the first time I publicly hip hopped at my middle school dance and I got made fun of a little bit but I'll credit that to my friends being impressed ( maybe =S) It's an expression of self that feels natural to me. But after high school what opportunities do you really have to dance. I was never really into the whole clubbing scene. I LOVED the dancing, but the getting drunk and getting stared down or rubbed up on by some random guy (hot or not and most often not) wasn't so appealing.

So when university started, I jumped at the chance to learn salsa! It's a ballroom dance but I think it's one that's used most socially. I love the movement, the structure, the music. It pulses through me and when I dance, there are no other troubles in the world. No school, no family drama, I'm not tired, I just dance. But when school gets busy and personal burdens start to pile up, there's no time for dance. I didn't make time for it for about 2 years and I was always ITCHING to get back into it. Thanks to my salsa talented cuzzie, salsa, like baking, will hopefully never leave my life.



That's me in the green, back in university.


So enough of that. How does baking CURRENTLY relate to my baking. So salsa cuzzie introduced me to an amazing dance company called P.O.S.E. (Passion, Obsession, Salsa, Expression) and I had the great opportunity to meet the one and only Melyssa Moniz. She is the epitome of passion for dance and life. She really loves it and you can tell.

Here, I'll finally get to the point, Melyssa was having a pre-book lauch party for her book Live Your Passion (of course it would be named that). I told Melyssa about my passion for baking and she asked me if I'd like to bake some healthy treats for her party. WOW!!! My first gig? What an opportunity! I was so excited and right away thoughts of fruit tarts and greek yogurt and oats and whole wheat and honey came flooding into my mind and I came up with a Greek Yogurt Blueberry Tart with a Honey Oat Crust. They became "Cheesecakes" after they came out of the oven and the texture was like a cheesecake.

The Baking: Greek Yogurt Blueberry Cheese cakes with a Honey Oat Crust. 

The Inspiration

So I wanted to used an oat crust, because, going along the healthy strain, I knew oats were a high fiber ingredient and Greek Yogurt, which is quickly gaining popularity was high in protein. I also subbed in half the sugar for honey, for a more natural sweetness and more moisture. Don't overestimate me, healthy and baking aren't always things that go well together and to be honest, I'm not the most health conscious person but I think I did pretty well.

Let me take this opportunity to let you guys know my new philosophy on sharing recipes. I believe that having a good recipe is only half of it. How you interpret the recipe and you own personal experience and equipment make up the other half. So you really can give the same recipe to 10 different people and get 10 different variations of the item.

That being said. If I find a recipe online, I will be more than happy to share it with all of you. If a recipe has been given to me, and it's my Baking Advisor's Nonna's Recipe, that's just a piece of love and history that's not mine to share, unless I have expressed permission. I hope you guys can appreciate this.

So in this case, I went online to see what's been done with greek yogurt and oat crusts. So here's the recipes I used.

The Recipe

This will make 24 mini cakes

The Crust

Unfortunately I couldn't find the original website I got this from but here was my adaptation:

1/2 cup of oats, not instant oatmeal, large rolled oats should be fine

1/8 cup of chopped almonds and 1/8 cup of roasted unsalted sunflower seeds*

1/4 cup of 12 grain flour (or whole wheat)*

1/4 cup of pastry flour* ( you can also used 1/2 cup of all purpose flour if you don't want to go buy all these different flours)

1/8 cup of brown sugar

1/8 cup of granulated sugar

1/8 teaspoon of salt

1/4 cup of 1/2 tablespoon of honey

1/2 stick of softened butter.

*Notes: 

1/4 cup of any kind of chopped nuts should be fine.

If you don't want to go buy all these different flours, I'm sure 1/2 cup of all purpose flour should be fine. Please let me know how this goes by the way.

1/8 cup is really just about 1 tablespoon and 1/8 a teaspoon is like a pinch. 

The Filling 

Original recipe from Epicuricloud

3 cups of low fat Greek yogurt

4 eggs

2 egg yolks

2/3 cups of granulated sugar

2 teaspoons of lemon zest

2 teaspoons of vanilla extract. 

The Toppings

Fresh Blueberries and mint leaves, washed and dried

Making the crust:

1. Toast the oats. I just popped them in the toaster oven for 10 minutes on broil but keep an eye on them. You can also toast them in your oven at 350°F. I added the chopped almonds in about half way as they toast quicker and the sunflower seeds I bought were already roasted. You should be able to get a nice toasted smell to them. Pour them onto a plate to cool.

2. Make the granola crust. In a food processor/stand mixer with a paddle attachment/mixing bowl, mix the flours, sugars and salt together until combined. You can do this with a whisk if you're doing it in a mixing bowl, a hand mixer will send flour everywhere! Add the butter, if it's cold, cut it into cubes and microwave them in 5 to 10 second intervals until it's soft BUT NOT MELTED! Add the honey, toasted oats and nuts and pulse/mix until it clumps together.

3.Butter the pan. I have a neat trick for this, once you use you butter and it was at room temperature, the wrapper will have bits of butter stuck to it. I use this to wipe the mini cup cake tray keeping my hands clean.

4. Take about 1 teaspoon and fill the bottom of each cup with the crust. Use your teaspoon to flatten the crust into the bottom. I used to hate it when recipes said "about", but I say "about" cause I actually used a teaspoon to fill my tray. Cool your crust in the fridge and preheat your oven to 350°F. 

In the mean time, make your filling....

Making the filling:

1. In a bowl/stand mixer, whisk together all the ingredients add them one at a time as listed above. 

Well that was easy!

Putting it together:

1. Bake the crust. Once you take the crust out of the fridge, prick the crust with a fork and bake it for 12 minutes or slightly browned. Take them out of the oven and leave them to cool back to room temperature. Once they are cool, they'll harden and feel like a granola bar, if you should be so inclined to taste test one... If you do, fill the missing cup with water before you put it back in to bake. My baking adviser advises that it helps prevent the tray from warping.

2. Fill the crust. Take about a tablespoon of filling to fill each up. Again I say a "tablespoon" because that's what I used. Once the tray is full, bang the tray against your counter to release some of the air bubbles from the filling. If you don't, the tops of your cake will look a little weird a bubbly. Also If your cake rises while baking, they fall and look sad after you take them out to cool. You'll see air bubbles come out. You don't have to get them all, they continue to rise and be released as it bakes.

3. Bake the cakes for 12 minutes or when slightly yellow and set on the edges. What I mean by this is that when you take the tray out and wiggle it the middles may still be a little jiggly but the edges should not move, like a cheesecake when it's done baking. Leave them out to cool.

4. Heat half a cup of honey to evaporate some of the water and make it slightly thicker. You can doing this on high heat for about 5-7 minutes. You don't want' it so thick that it becomes hard and sticky when it cools and you can always put it back on the heat to thicken it some more if needed. Pour your honey out into a small bowl to cool a bit. 

5. Take a fresh mint leaf, dip it in the honey and place it on your cake, covering most of the top. Take 3 blueberries, dip them in some honey and place them on top of the mint leaf. 

Ta Da, you're done!

Enjoy your hard earned creation and let me tell you, it takes a lot of work to make these things so be proud of them. I taste tested them on my classmates and they loved them though some people might be so happy to see a green leaf on their dessert. Trust me, the mint makes a world of a difference but there are still delicious without it. The event went well, I met lots of amazing new positive people who loved my little treats (yay!)

HUGE GIGANTIC MILLIONS of thanks to my friend Farzad for the photographs, you can find more of his work at Photos by Farzad and on facebook here. And thanks to Melyssa Moniz for giving me this opportunity to share my passion.