By kyuyoun0702
I honestly can’t believe its already midterms. My friends at Yonsei aren’t even done with their vacation, and here I am, studying so hard (not really) for my mid-terms. Heavy workload and my intrinsic laziness combined has resulted in this synergic outcome called ’screwed-for-exam’ phenomenon. Even though I am less pressured than the GWU students are to receive amazing grades, I’ve been too much stress from studying.
During the weekend, I attended a forum hosted by Center for Strategic International Studies on North Korean human rights issue, and on my way home, I went to the mall with my dad to do some grocery shopping.
Everything except studying for the exam was intriguing to me, so I scrutinized the mall as carefully as I can, and I noticed that there’s a whole section on the ingredients for homemade cookies, tarts, bars, cupcakes and breads!
I’ve been living by myself during my entire college life, but I have never cooked nor baked for myself due to lack of cooking utensils and again, my innate tendency to be lazy. I thought this was a great opportunity for me to learn how to make food in the future, and also considered it to be a great stress reliever for my exam as well. So, why not get the ingredients?
I decided to try making a no bake nutella cheesecake. The ingredients are nutella, butter, whip cream, oreo and cream cheese. Due to my lack of experience, I was a bit afraid to try making food that required usage of oven that could literally burn me.
First, I tried to make a crust with the oreos. I took out 24 oreos from a big pack which was on sale, but…how do you crush it? I put it in a glass bowl but I had no idea how to start crushing it. What if I crush the bowl as well? So I put them in a ziplock, hit them as hard as I could, and put them back on the bowl as if nothing had happened. Then, I mixed these crusts with a 1/3 bar of melted butter in order to prevent the crust from falling apart.
Next, I mixed nutella with creamcheese and whipped cream that failed to whip itself. However, whipping the cream was inevitable for me because the cheesecake had to have a whipped cream on its top. So, I tried again, and fortunately, I was able to plaster the whipped cream on nutella base.
On the top, I put five oreos that represented each member of our family (mom, dad, younger sister, younger brother and me :)) It’s not that they were the only remaining oreos! (they were)
I was supposed to refrigerate the cake for four hours, but I misread the instruction and froze it. Stupid me!
But I guess it turned out to be a success because my family thought it was pretty good even though no one finished the entire piece. It was symbolic enough though that it was the first cooking attempt I have done in about 2 years.
Thanks to this cheesecake, I was able to get rid of the stress I’ve been receiving, at least for that moment:) I hope midterm ends soon so that I can take a break from studying during the spring break!