This week’s Cooking Eorzea column took longer than expected to write up because I was in Canada last week covering Distant Worlds: Music from FINAL FANTASY with a focus on the music from FINAL FANTASY XIV Online and FINAL FANTASY XVI by Masayoshi Soken.
Canada is a very cold place in January, and I ended up getting sick during my trip there. I still have a lingering cough, in fact, and I have been out of action for the most part since I got back from the concert. When I made the rolanberry cheesecake, I knew I wouldn’t be getting it published until after I was back from Toronto, and so I ended up using a Soken-autographed CD for decoration with the final dish for that reason.
While you will have to check out my full review to see what I thought of the concert, you can just know that Distant Worlds is probably my favorite FINAL FANTASY music experience, and it is clear that seeing a show that has been fine-tuned over the years under the careful hands of Arnie and Eric Roth has turned it into something that cannot be missed.
Go see it if you can.
If you’ve missed an installment of Cooking Eorzea, you can check out all the prior recipes here.
Recipe of the Week
The 65th recipe comes with a difficulty rating of ‘hard,’ and it hails from the La Noscea region of Eorzea. I have never made cheesecake before, and this will be my first time doing so. The dish as a whole doesn’t look hard to do as long as I follow the instructions given and I take my time with it. I am pretty excited!
Here is what Rolanberry Cheesecake looks like in the hands of a professional:
Featured Ingredient of the Week
Graham crackers came out of the temperance movement in the 1800s in the United States. They’re made out of graham flour and often uses honey or cinnamon for flavor, and they’re a personal favorite type of cracker for me. I don’t ever buy boxes of it for my home though, because I will sit there and just eat them in a few days if I can.
This is the first time that I’ve ever used graham crackers as part of a recipe, and so it was a natural fit for my featured ingredient of the week!
My Cooking Attempt
What surprised me the most about this week’s Cooking Eorzea ingredients was the fact I have worked with almost all of them before:
First, I prepped the rolanberry sauce! I hulled out the strawberries and then chopped them up until I had three-fourths of a cup of them ready to go.
I then chopped up a half-cup of fresh raspberries!
I added the strawberries and raspberries to the blender, and I added in three-fourths a cup of frozen cherries on top of it, followed by another half-cup of sugar.
Finally, I added in two tablespoons of lemon juice.
I then blended all of the berries, sugar, and lemon juice together until it was smooth.
Once that was accomplished, I strained it through a mesh strainer into a saucepan. I ended up having to use a silicone spatula to scrape all the liquid through, since it was draining through incredibly slowly.
You can see how much fiber was left over after the straining process was over here:
I went ahead and preheated the oven at this point to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
While the oven was preheating, I brought the saucepan up to a simmer, and I let the sauce simmer for five minutes and then I poured it into an airtight container.
I then placed the container into the refrigerator until I knew I would need it for later in the recipe!
I then got out my graham crackers, and I pulsed them inside of a food processor until they were smooth. It took a lot longer than I expected, and I was careful to do it in bursts so I wouldn’t burn the motor out on it.
I took six tablespoons of butter and then melted them in the microwave. I was careful to not burn myself this time while doing it.
I added the melted butter and the sugar into the pulsated graham crackers.
I then pulsated the ingredients together until they were well-blended and combined together. I kept having to stop and move the ingredients around inside the processor so that everything would be blended up.
For this week’s Cooking Eorzea recipe, I bought an even larger aluminum foil roll to wrap my springform pan with than I did last time. I double-walled the springform pan with aluminum foil, and you can see the first layer was done here. I did it all the way up specifically to prevent liquid leaks into the springform pan while it baked in the oven.
I emptied out the graham cracker blend into the springform pan, and I pressed it down into a solid crust.
I baked the crust for 10 minutes inside of the oven. While it was baking, I got out the vanilla bean, and I scraped the caviar out from inside.
Once the crust was done, I pulled it out of the oven, set it aside, and then reset the oven to preheat it to 325 degrees Fahrenheit.
I then turned to make the cheesecake itself. I first got out the 24 ounces of cream cheese I let get to room temperature, and I stirred it all in a large bowl until it was smooth and fluffy.
I then stirred in first the sugar and salt.
I followed that up with the vanilla caviar and the vanilla extract!
I stirred it all together until it was combined.
I then added the sour cream and the heavy cream into the mixture.
I then blended in the sour cream and heavy cream until it was all well-combined.
I took one egg, cracked it into the bowl, and then blended it into the mixture.
I cracked the second egg in and blended it in. This time was slightly harder as the mixture was definitely wetter from the first egg.
I finally added in the third egg and blended it all together. This was nearly impossible as it was so liquid I kept having to work the mixture to blend the final egg in fully together.
I poured the cheesecake mixture onto the graham cracker crust.
Once the cheesecake mixture had flatted out some, I used a dropper to grab some of the chilled rolanberry sauce out of the container, and I dropped a drop onto the cheesecake and used a toothpick to drag it into a swirl pattern. When I ran out of the sauce, I would place another droplet to continue the line until I was swirled in at the middle. I finally went and added a few more outer lines to the cheesecake to make sure as much as possible cheesecake was covered up.
I placed the springform pan inside of a deep baking dish, and I filled it up halfway with hot water.
I baked it in the oven for 70 minutes at 325 degrees Fahrenheit.
When the timer was up, I turned off the oven, and I let the cheesecake rest in the fading heat for another 30 minutes.
Finally, I pulled it out entirely and I let the cheesecake cool completely on the wire rack.
I then let the cheesecake rest overnight in the refrigerator.
The next day, I used a knife to gently separate the cheesecake from the sides of the springform pan before unlocking the buckle so I could take it off.
Unfortunately, when I cut out a slice, most of the graham cracker crust stayed behind on the pan. Some did come away with the cheesecake on the slices, however, so it wasn’t a complete failure.
Finally, I topped the dish with the rolanberry sauce.
And here is this week’s Cooking Eorzea final dish!
The rolanberry cheesecake was quite good! It was definitely a bit tart thanks to all the fruit in the rolanberry sauce, but the cheesecake aspect was delicious. It was also quite a dense dish, but that isn’t surprising considering how much cheese and other ingredients I packed into the cheesecake mixture. It was also incredibly rich to eat, and I definitely struggled to eat that single slice by itself as I simply do not eat that many sweets in my daily life!
Afterword
If I was to make this dish again, I would probably use a liner at the bottom of the graham cracker crust so I could have a much easier time separating it from the springform pan bottom. The dish turned out pretty much how I expected it to, and it was quite delicious to eat. I just cannot eat very much of it at any given time due to how rich it was!
Let’s dive into the ‘thank you’ section. First off, I want to thank Victoria Rosenthal for writing The Ultimate FINAL FANTASY XIV Online Cookbook– both volume one and volume two. I also want to thank everyone over at Insight Editions for giving me permission to use the photos from their book to show how these recipes look when a professional makes the dish. I next owe Brandon Rose a thank you for creating the logo for Cooking Eorzea on short notice. You should check him and his works out over on X.
Finally, as always, I want to thank Hiromichi Tanaka and Naoki Yoshida for producing FINAL FANTASY XIV Online in both iterations of the game. This series wouldn’t exist without their hard work directing the game.
Next Week
Next week, I will be completing the final dessert dish in The Official FINAL FANTASY XIV Online Cookbook Volume I with the Sesame Cookies recipe! It comes from Dravania, and I think it will go pretty darn well since it doesn’t look too complicated to make.
Please be sure to tune in for it!
Have you been to Distant Worlds: Music from FINAL FANTASY?
What has your experiences been like making cheesecake before?
Let us know in the comments below!
