Yesterday was my sister's birthday. I was going to bake the cheesecake in phyllo cups (I don't really know the name for it) but there were guests due to a departing party. So I munched on pizzas while watching The Equilibrium with friends. And I've never enjoyed watching a commentary of a movie before like I did last night.

Baking is totally new to me. I've seen Bambino and baking is definitely way different from cooking. I've learned from watching Bambino, Yakitate!! Japan, and Antique Bakery that precision is very important in bakery. I did nothing like that today. I lost count to how many layers of phyllo doughs there should be in a cup. I didn't know how much Ricotta cheese and creamcheese I should mix depending on the number of cups I want to make. I had an idea that the ratio between creamcheese and ricotta is two to one, but I ended up having more ricotta than creamcheese. I also used evaporated milk instead of condense milk. Who knew they'd be different! I mean, if you evaporate milk, shouldn't that make the milk more condense??!  My mom wanted me to throw away the batch I mixed but that would be such a waste. So I added two mountain teaspoons of sugar instead of putting down the drain.

The outcome of the cheese was really white. I wanted to leave it in the oven longer but the cups would have been burnt bad. The cheese tasted all right, in my opinion. But it wasn't cooked enough, or at all. I feel the effect of the rawness in my stomach. Things I learned from my mistakes today:

1) When not using the phyllo dough, leave it in the fridge. They dry up fast as you try make the little cups.
2) Don't make the cups too thick. I think that was the reason the filling remained raw and the thickness made the dough taste stand out too much. Makes your mouth really dry.
3) Find shallower trays so the cups wouldn't be too deep. Or put less filling. I still need to experiment on this...
4) Condense milk cans actually mention that they are condense milk.
5) Creamcheese > ricotta.

I think I did fine on layering the phyllo doughs. It was a lot of time consuming more than I have imagined. I need to figure out how to cook the cheese filling on these batches so they won't go to waste...