Goats-Gruff cheese cake and cranberry snow

Goat’s milk makes great cheese!

Why goat cheese?

Goat cheese is my go-to cheese on a daily basis. I love it because of its creamy texture and crisp, tart taste. It’s perfect in my omelets and on top of my leafy greens at lunch.

But it’s also packed with great nutrition. When it comes to fat and calories, goat cheese has the advantage over cheese made from cow’s milk.

Soft goat cheese clocks in at 80 calories and 6 grams of fat per ounce, compared to cow’s milk cheese, which generally has around 100 calories and 10 g of fat per ounce. And its shorter-chain fatty acids are easier to digest. This means goat cheese is the better choice for staying fit and healthy. Here’s just a few more reasons to choose soft goat cheese:

• 5 grams protein in a single ounce and 4% the daily recommended value for calcium, great for strong bones and muscles.
• 25% more riboflavin (vitamin B2) and 33% more thiamin (vitamin B1) than cow’s, essential for efficient metabolism.
• vitamin A is 47% higher in goat’s milk, too! Great for your eyesight.
• Goat’s milk also contains 27 percent more of the antioxidant selenium than cow’s milk.
• Plus it’s a good source of tryptophan, an amino acid that helps us stay happy!
• Finally, it provides probiotics to keep our gut and digestion systems healthy.

The cake

With more of the good stuff and less of the bad, goat is my first choice in cheese. That’s why I was drawn to a recipe I saw in Stefan’s Gourmet Blog for a lemony goat-cheese cake. I thought how well it would go with  cranberry troll cream, which I published earlier with a Scandinavian story about three gruff goats. I’ve renamed it here Cranberry Snow for my winter’s gourmet dinner, Frozen in Ottawa.

I also added to my dessert plate one of my Readers Earl Grey Teabag Cookies, the recipe for which I’ve also published previously. Many thanks to Stefan for his cake recipe, which I followed faithfully. The only difference was: I used a hand mixer and he used a stand mixer. I had no trouble with the low-tech option. Do check out Stefan’s version of events, which comes with a lot of good photos.

Goat-cheese cake with cranberry snow
Serves 6 to 8 (8-inch pan)

• 2 tablespoons flour
• butter for greasing the pan
• 100 grams (1/2 cup) caster sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice
• 1 teaspoon lemon zest
• 4 eggs, separated
• 225 grams (8 oz) soft goat cheese, at room temperature

• 1 bag fresh or frozen cranberries
• 2 or 3 tablespoons caster sugar
• 1  egg white

• 8 teabag cookies

1. Beat the egg whites with a clean balloon whisk in a clean bowl until they resemble snow.
2. Preheat the oven to 175ºC/350ºF.
3. Butter a 20 cm (8 inch) cake pan and coat it with sugar (take the sugar from the sugar to be used for the cake).
4. Combine the goat cheese, lemon zest, lemon juice, vanilla extract, and sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer. Mix (with the balloon whisk or the paddle) until creamy (I used a regular hand-mixer).
5. Add the egg yolks.
6. Continue to mix, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed.
7. Add the flour.
8. Continue to mix until the flour has been incorporated.
9. Carefully fold in the beaten egg white in three additions with a rubber spatula, working from below. Try to keep the mixture as airy as possible.
10. Keep folding until the egg whites have been incorporated completely.
11. Transfer the batter to the prepared pan.
12. Bake at 350ºF until the cake has set but still slightly jiggles in the center, about 20 minutes.
13. Allow to cool on a wire rack.

To serve

My cake didn’t rise as much as I would have liked. And I wasn’t happy with my chocolatey cake decoration, which melted into the surface for an unpleasant-looking effect. But the plated servings with the cookie and the cranberry snow looked better (I forgot to take a picture of the cake with my cranberries turned to snow!). The lemony infusion was delicious, and the cake went well with the tart sweetness of the cranberries.

This brings me to the satisfying end of my series on our annual gourmet dinner, an event that has been running for 29 years! Where has the time gone?

Until next year, Bon appétit!

Related – Our Frozen dinner theme to date

• Frozen Blues: Cocktail of the hour – Capture the sky of the Dominican Republic within Canada’s icy cold winters… blue curaçao flavors this drink, designed to introduce perfectly a dinner themed Frozen in Ottawa.
• BeaverTails deconstructed – These nutritious tidbits come with all the fixings of a good BeaverTail, without the deep-frying. A pretty hors d’oeuvre!
• My mandolin’s iceberg  salad, starring kohlrabi – Crunchy, juicy and with more vitamin C than an orange, kohlrabi is great in my mandolin salad with its fabulous sesame seed dressing.
• Hasenpfeffer – A rich rabbity stew from Germany.
• 15 steps to making red and green pierogis – Christmas pierogis are possible without resorting to artificial food dyes.
• Roasted cipollini onions – chosen for their shape but loved for their flavor!