Sugar and cream, and desserts of dreams

I have been nibbling (ok, ok, feasting!) on desserts this week. What bliss!

First up was chocolate cheesecake. Baked at home, by yours truly. :)
As exams come clser and closer, all my creative instincts flare up - be it culinary or literary or musical. And I cook, write, sing rather than study.(Anything than studying!)

So 2 days before the finals, I got down our old, temperamental oven ("temperature controls - what are they?")from the loft and set out all the ingredients for Nigella Lawson's chocolate cheesecake. [There was a tub of labneh (Turkish/Lebanese cream cheese) lying in the fridge ever since I bought it on the Qatar trip waiting to be used. Ditto a pack of semisweet chocolate chips. But lets leave that for now]

So after a bit of subsitution in the recipe (What are graham crackers?!), I shoved the pan with the cheesecake batter into the oven. And nearly had a heart attack!
The oven, which had, under protest, heated up for the pre-heating, now gave up. The heating coils were a depressing, cold grey rather than luminescent orange. Despair clutched at my heart (and I clutched the table edge)What ws I to do with a panfull of uncooked chcolatey, eggy, creamy batter?!!

But the tide turned - Lady luck deigned to smile - and after a bit of tinkering by Dad, the oven toed the line. Whew! But this harrowing experience had me all jittery till the cheesecake was done, covered with chocolate sauce, garnished with cream and pushed into the fridge.

Luckily, my nervous sytem is directly linked to my tummy, and so just a bite of the thick, rich chocolatey cheesecake was enough to soothe my ruffled nerves. :)
Thank god for "comfort" food.