Precursor Goodbyes w/ Baby Cheesecakes: Plain and Jelly

I cannot believe it is already my last week in Boston. This summer could not have gone by any faster. If life keeps going at this rate, I'll be seeing gray hairs before I know it (all the more reason for yolo-fish? I think YES). As summer reaches an end, I am feeling that familiar ambivalence of being sad and excited. I'm sad that I am going to be finding myself spending many hours in the library again. Being stressed out. Trying not to fail school/have an aneurysm. And the beginning of the year always means buying books, trying to get into wait listed classes, and just in general all things not fun.

At the same time, the beginning of the year means reuniting with friends, back-to-school parties and being back in California. And I'll be living much closer to all my friends, and can cook for them! These are things that excite me. I am also a semester (only one semester!) away from studying abroad, which really really excites me.

Again, it is a back and forth feeling. Being away from school for so long always makes it feel like a foreign entity that I am going back to, now that I'm accustomed to my working-life routine here. But I know that, within 48 hours back in Berkeley, it will be like I never left at all.

The saddest part about leaving is always saying good bye, and in this circumstance it is no different. I am notoriously bad at saying good byes, bringing with it my very classic Jennifer-awkwardness. All the friends that I have met this summer have been so incredibly fabulous to me, I only wish I could pack them in my suitcase and bring them to school with me. They will just have to be my home away from home I suppose.

One more notable good bye I have to make though is with my parents. And despite the jokes, and even the rough patches we face, I love no one in the world more than them. So each good bye I make with them is always taken a little bitterly.

Which is why this week I decided to sweeten it up with some cheesecake, since it is the Mom's favorite thing to eat. (I used the yogurt cup recipe from last time)

First, I tried to make a plain one with a lemon spread on top. Let me just show you how that went:

uhhh, what? Filtering out butter chunks that refused to melt? Oh jeez...

Err, yeah. I think that is burned.

Who knew it was possible to burn lemon curd? I didn't. Until now.

I don't think I need to elaborate much further except to say that it didn't go as planned, and we just had our cheesecake plain.

We were so impatient to eat it that we didn't let it refrigerate for long enough, but it was still yums.

I also forgot to put oil in the crust so it was really hard, oops.

This cheesecake was just a big hot ishfest.

Then I decided to make a cheesecake and try my hand at mah-belling. Marbeling jelly looks so. cool and I figured if I can frost cupcakes, then this would be a piece of cake (pun thoroughly intended and enjoyed). 

Turns out marbeling isn't as easy as it looks. 

Only afterwards did I realize I could have just youtube-ed how to do it. Womp...next time!

At least I remembered to add oil and made a normal crust.

To solve the problem of impatience, I put the cakes in the freezer first, then took them out an hour or so later and refrigerated them. By the time women's gymnastics was on the Olympics, these cakes were ready to be eaten. Which was perfect, because I definitely needed something to munch on to counteract the intense drama that is women's gymnastics (and the terribleness that is NBC commentators).

In the end, I hope the Mom sees these cheesecakes as my way of saying, it ain't that easy saying good bye.

post baked...this didn't look that pretty

But after refrigeration it still tasted REALLY good and formed quite well. You will just have to trust me on this one.