Everything Snoskred

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30% Off @ Spotlight

2 Comments Posted on March 17, 2015June 1, 2015 by Snoskred

So, yesterday, I was watching Judge Judy on Channel 10 at 3pm, as I sometimes do when it seems like the wait to 6pm double episodes of Judge Judy on Arena is too long to wait..

I should point out that I had my little cordless headset on, and I was actually in the kitchen trimming up 1kg of bacon which was purchased on the weekend. I guess that is more like listening to Judge Judy. I got 5 lovely packages of bacon bits, 1 package of bacon bits for dinner that night, and 2 packages of offcuts which we like to grill up in the oven till they are super crispy.

One of the downsides of not watching a lot of free to air tv is missing out on local ads. Sometimes they are not very interesting, but today I heard that Spotlight was having a 30% off sale. My little ears connected with my shopping brain, and the message I heard was THIS SALE SEEMS NICE!

I did some maths in my head, working out that 30% off takes $9 off a 29.95 candle. I should go to Spotlight and buy some Yankee Candles, I thought, as I drove to my 4pm appointment to see my amazing psychologist.

And a couple of hours later, I did go, because Spotlight were open till 8pm. They told me that in the ad too. I got a couple of the “medium” candles in Black Cherry and Vanilla Lime and 4 wax melts, 2 Mango Peach Salsa and 2 Pineapple Cilantro.

Apparently the 30% off is for Tuesday as well, in case you did not catch an ad and you want to go get yourself some Yankee Candle, or something else.. :)

Happy Snoskred, Home, shopping, yay

Isn’t It Ironic…

3 Comments Posted on March 13, 2015June 1, 2015 by Snoskred

…that a website called news.com.au should contain so little actual news. Seriously? Your headline article is about a shopping fail? On a day when an Australian young person exploded themselves, killing 10 people in Iraq?

That news – and if you want to read about it, click here – does not even rate being in the top 4 stories listed on the site, instead, something about private detectives paid to have sex in order to bust illegal brothels, something about a pair of pants, and Maureen McCormick is evicted from a teevee show?

Well, the last one I am a little bit sad about because I did get sucked into watching the show and I loved watching Maureen on it, however this is the last week of the show so it isn’t that big a deal. It certainly is not headline news!

But it gets even worse. Check this out.

Picture: web grab. Source – Snoskred – Life In The Country.

Web grab? Credit News Corp Australia? What the heck is up with that? So, we all can now go to any web site we like and grab a screenshot and then give credit to ourselves for taking it? I bet if I did that to a news.com.au photographer image, there would be threats of a lawsuit or something..

If the person who took the image happens upon this post, contact me with your name and I’ll give you *proper* credit.

I have long been thinking that news.com.au has jumped the shark and that it contained little news, but this is the day when I finally am giving up. I’m stating to you, out loud, that I intend to stop going there, foreverz.

Pretty please to hold me accountable on this statement. If I ever post here about news.com.au again, or link to a story on their site, I want you to slap me down hard in the comments section. SRSLY!

I don’t know how many more dress stories I can take, what with that blue or white dress last week, and now this. The only time I want to see clothes as a headline on a NEWS website would be if someone was killed by their outfit. A fashion site is a different story, of course.

So where can you get actual news now? Which sites do you go to?

Probably the only site I can think of is abc.net.au but if you have a decent news source, let me know. :)

Annoyed Snoskred, Aussie Culture, Fail Whale, In The News, Media

Plane Spotting

13 Comments Posted on March 9, 2015June 1, 2015 by Snoskred

This jumbo will NOT come to you as a surprise!

Ever since I was a baby, probably before I was even aware of it, I have been a plane spotter. I had grandparents who lived under the flight path in Adelaide, and the head office of the family business was also directly under the flight path – as in planes flying over so close you could almost touch them. My Nanna and Poppa were both crazy for planes and every single member of the family inherited this craziness.

There is just something special about a plane flying. The magical scientific mystery that it is even possible at all – that tonnes of metal can be lifted into the air – is awe inspiring and breath taking to watch.

So, Qantas were retiring the first 747-400, and they decided to donate it to a little known outfit known as HARS – or the Historical Aircraft Restoration Society – little known unless you are a plane spotter like me and thousands of other plane geeks in Australia to whom HARS is a well known awesome band of volunteers who have kept the Connie and many other planes flying or in tip top shape to be displayed to the public for many years now.

HARS have an excellent museum at the Illawarra Airport which will shortly be made all the greater for having the 747-400 VH-OJA “City of Canberra” on display.

This event was hyped up in the media and full respect to HARS because they deserve every single bit of media attention they can get.. but unfortunately, people are crazy and what happened was an example of sheer and utter lunacy.

It is not HARS fault, they had a plan. And they announced that plan very clearly in the days leading up to the event – where people could and could not be. However plans are just that, and there was no way in heck that anyone could have moved these people from the spots they had arrived at in the early hours of the morning.

We also had a plan, thinking that every man and his dog would want to be close to the end of the runway, we were going to the carpark of Hungry Jacks at Yallah. But when we got to the Yallah turn off? Gridlock. Nobody could go anywhere. The exit from the highway and the road that leads to Hungry Jacks was a carpark.

Though you cannot see it in the image, there were cars and people stopped on the bridge that goes across the highway there. It turned out that there were cars parked all through Haywards Bay – I bet the residents there were super pleased! People parked their cars and then walked off in search of what they thought was the best vantage spot.

Cars were just parking wherever they felt like it, including in the no stopping lane on the highway, or like this one we spotted as we were leaving – that black car there is parked, there is no owner with the vehicle. SRSLY?

I hate to be the one to tell these would be plane spotters – many of whom arrived at the airport this morning from 3am onwards in order to secure a decent vantage point – just one hour down the road in Sydney, large planes like this plus the A380 are landing all day every day, and you can get a lot closer and it is not nearly so crowded.

Anyway, we ended up next to a field in the middle of nowhere and yet not very far from the end of the runway, and we did get a couple of semi-decent shots.. though we had a lot of electrical wires to shoot around.

I’ve been flown over by all kinds of planes many times, so I was perfectly fine with not being right at the end of the runway for this one. We will go back to see the plane close up once they open it to the world. HARS estimates this will be in a month or so. I will be able to fulfill one of the items on my bucket list, which is to stand right next to a 747.

While we were there to see the plane fly over, my parents were at home expecting to be able to view this on news channels who had spoken about bringing the landing live to everyone – and when it came time for the landing? Nothing. They were airing a speech by Barack Obama instead. KTHX Obama, I know you are fascinating and all, but this was a special local moment which should have gone live to air.

Later on they discovered the landing was on Sky via the multichannel where you press red to see extra channels, and all you get is a tiny image and you can’t record it. Not cool, media people. Not cool at all.

Here is a video – they actually closed the highway for the landing and I think that was a good idea not for plane safety reasons but for people safety reasons, because there were just SO many people there.

It might be just me, but I still have great concerns about the apparent inability of people to enjoy a moment without having to use their phone, iPad, or various other means to capture it. And another video which gives you an idea of the large amount of people –

For other shots from the day –

This photo here sums up the absolute insanity of newbie plane spotters.

This is a great shot here.

HARS has a photo album online which you can view here.

Here is the HARS Facebook page – there are quite a few videos linked from there.

About Snoskred, country life, New South Wales, photography, photos, planes, Who Is Snoskred

Mr Darcy Says

Leave a comment Posted on March 6, 2015June 1, 2015 by Snoskred

books, Jane Austen, movies, Wordless Wednesday, yay

Some Days..

5 Comments Posted on March 5, 2015June 1, 2015 by Snoskred

Every morning, the first email account I check is the one associated with my Contact page. And this morning, among the regular multitude of I am being scammed what do I do now emails, I was presented with a doozy of an email.. It went like this –

I was lured into this Rockstar money scam, they sent me two checks for $2,300 each and I cashed the checks, I did not deposit them, they then asked to send 1,900 through money gram and I did and now I don’t know what to do! I’m scared! My parents will kill me when they find out! I’m only 16!

I replied right away asking the person to contact Moneygram and see if the money has been collected yet – if it has not, they can cancel the transfer and then they could potentially get the money back.

However, anyone who has watched some Judge Judy in their lifetime knows that a minor cannot enter into a contract. So in order to be able to advise this person I really need more info, eg how did they cash the checks, and how did they send the money via moneygram?

In any case, this young person is going to have to tell their parents. As difficult as that might seem, the parents are actually the people best placed to assist – they will likely have knowledge of the local laws and will know who to speak to in order to try and sort all this out.

Their child has been scammed, and they will be likely to react as a lion does, roaring and on the attack – not towards the child but towards the people who have scammed their child, and also the people who have assisted the scammers in this instance – the check cashing place, and the Moneygram office which allowed a minor to send money.

I do not know how a check cashing place cashes a check when being shown the ID of a person under 18. When they cashed the check their details would have been noted and/or their ID was photocopied. The check cashing place will be the first to find out the check is fraudulent and will probably involve the police, which is something both the young person and the parents will want to avoid.

So my best advice to this young person is to talk to their parents ASAP. Then let the parents take over – the parents may wish to seek legal advice regarding the best way to handle this situation. If the parents make good the money to the check cashing place or come to some kind of settlement with them, it may be possible to avoid the police being involved.

The Rockstar scam is an example of the Car Wrap scam – where the scammers want people to wrap their vehicles in advertising. I’m presently involved in scam baiting one of these scammers who had the hide to post their scam on a local community group that I am a member of. I’m going to post the initial email here in case anyone else is being scammed by these people –

Hello,

Wrap advertising is the marketing practice of completely or partially covering (wrapping) a vehicle in an advertisement or livery, thus turning it into a mobile billboard. This can be achieved by simply painting the vehicle surface, but it is becoming more common today to use large vinyl sheets as decals. These can be removed with relative ease, making it much less expensive to change from one advertisement to another. Vehicles with large, flat surfaces, such as buses and light-rail carriages, are fairly easy to work with, though smaller cars with curved surfaces can also be wrapped in this manner. Wrap advertising is available to anybody irrespective of the vehicle you drive.

We are currently seeking to employ individuals in the United States of America. How would you like to make money by simply driving your car or banner wrapped for PepsiCo. Drink®

How it works?
Here’s the basic premise of the “paid to drive” concept: PepsiCo. Drink® seek residents in the United States who are professional drivers to go about their normal routine as they usually do, only with a big advert for “PepsiCo. Drink®” plastered on your car. The ads are typically vinyl decals, also known as “auto wraps,”that almost seem to be painted on the vehicle, and which will cover any portion of your car’s exterior surface.

Don’t Have a Car?
If you don’t have a car, you can also participate if you have a bike.

What does the company get out of this type of ad strategy?
Lots of exposure and awareness. The auto wraps tend to be colorful, eye-catching and attract lots of attention. Plus, it’s a form of advertising with a captive audience,meaning people who are stuck in traffic can’t avoid seeing the wrapped car alongside them. This program will last for 3 months and the minimum you can participate is a month.

What is the Contract Duration?
Once the wrap has been installed, minimum term is 4 weeks and maximum is 12 weeks.

Would the wrap/decal damage the paint of my car?
The decal doesn’t damage the paint of car and will be removed by our representative once the contract expire. We will be responsible for installation and removal of the wrap.

You will be compensated with $300.00 per week which is essentially a “rental”payment for letting our company use the space and no fee is required from you. PepsiCo. Drink® shall provide experts that would handle the advert placing on your car. You will receive an upfront payment of $300.00 in form of a check via courier service for accepting to carry this advert on your car.

It is very easy and simple no application fees required. Get back with the following details if you are interested in this offer.

Applicant information:
Name :
Full Street Address(not PO BOX) :
APT #:
City,State,Zip Code:
Cell Phone Number:
Home Phone Number:
Age:

We shall be contacting you as soon as we receive this information.

Best Regards,
Roger Smith
Hiring Manager,
PepsiCo®
pepsi6973@gmail.com

A quick note of apology to my regular readers – my apologies for the recent postings in regards to scams. I know these may be somewhat boring to read.

These particular scams are huge at the moment and each and every day, hundreds of people find my website by searching for text contained in these emails or by searching for email addresses, names and contact numbers used by these scammers. For example, if you search on Google for one of the companies I posted about recently, this is what you get –

This is super awesome because it means anyone searching for that company will know it is a scam once they click through and read my post about it.

Many people view just that one page which gave them the search result, and then vanish without commenting or contacting me. So if you got here searching for Pepsico, please do not leave without contacting me or commenting below. You are not alone in being scammed, so let the others arriving here know they are not alone, too.

Internet Safety, job scams, scam victims are not stupid, scams, Worried Snoskred

The Package

9 Comments Posted on March 4, 2015June 1, 2015 by Snoskred

My excellent friend Sephyroth sent me an awesome package this week. Interestingly, it arrived just one day after I had been at the post office sending my own package – not to Sephyroth and on this occasion I would have much preferred to be sending it to him. I was sending a package to a very much loved Aunt, who has recently been diagnosed with cancer..

I had an idea that I could put together just a few things each week while she is having both radiation and chemotherapy. I can’t be there in person because she lives in Adelaide, but maybe I can put a small smile on her face each week and remind her that all the family here are thinking of her.

For the first package, I made sure to include a few ginger treats that another good friend of mine swore by during chemo. There was also some Chai tea, some pawpaw lotion, some amazing mango scented anti-bac hand sanitizer that smells exactly like you just rubbed an actual mango into your hands, and a few other bits and pieces. I have already picked up a couple of items for next weeks package.

So what was in the package Sephyroth sent to me? Let us take a look.

Some shower gel and handwash from my favourite Bath and Body Works.

Some cup-a-soup and some loom bands.

Many chocolates!

These things are SOOOOO tasty! I love wild cherry flavoured things. :)

Some wax melts – I bought Yankee Candle two wax melts for my next package to my Aunt.

A lovely Wisconsin calendar!

There are actually 2 bottles of 265 antacid tablets. These things do not taste like chalk like Australian Quick-eze does.

A shoe bargain which we chatted about on the Kakao Talk while Sephyroth was in the Adidas clearance store near him.

Another view of the shoes.

Some potato chips of awesomeness.

And my Guaifenesin. :)

Thank you many millions my excellent friend! I will organise a package for you soonest, I already have some stuff put aside to send. :)

Happy Snoskred, Sephyroth, Snoskred hearts, yay

More About Manheimy PTY LTD

8 Comments Posted on March 1, 2015June 1, 2015 by Snoskred

Thank you so much to the person who sent me more details. Since I posted about this the other day, a large amount of people have arrived here after searching for Manheimy PTY LTD reviews or company details or has anyone worked for Manheimy and even is Manheimy a scam..

As mentioned the other day, this Manheimy PTY LTD job is a scam.

There is a real and legitimate company named Manheim – the scammers sometimes will use a real company name just slightly changed.

They are using the email address – realonlinejobs@gmail.com

Here is the email they send to people.

——————————————————————-
Hi,
An online Home Based Worker position requires that you have a reliable computer with constant Internet access and capabilities, a valid E-mail account, basic Internet knowledge, and minimal typing skills.

You must also be able to conduct yourself in a professional manner. This includes having excellent grammar and spelling when communicating with clients via E-mail.

In addition to the above requirements, you MUST be able to follow /instructions closely and completely! You will do all contact via E-mail, so you will not be required to call anyone at anytime. This allows you to work whichever hours are most convenient for you (days, night, or weekends). You will be processing applications, as well as
filling out forms in specific company databases (this tends to be tedious at times, so please be sure that you have the patience to do so before proceeding.

This is why you will need to have basic Internet knowledge, though the training provided will give you step-by-step instructions on how to perform these tasks properly.

There are no “down-times” with this position, so you will have a constant flow of work to complete. THIS IS NOT A GET RICH QUICK SCHEME, so if that is what you are looking for please do not pursue this opportunity. You will be paid $50 for each application completed.

The amount of money you make each week is entirely up to you, and how much time and effort you are willing to put in with this position. The average person makes $2500-$12000 each week.

When you have been accepted as a Home Based employee, you are considered an Independent Contractor.

This means that your taxes will not be taken out; therefore, you will not be provided with any tax forms. THIS IS ENTIRELY YOUR RESPONSIBILITY. The training provided will go more in depth about what to do with your taxes.

You will receive your pay through PayPal or whichever online payment portal you choose. When an application is completed, $50 will be credited to your PayPal account, which can be withdrawn into your bank account at your leisure. You can read about the security policies https://paypal.com.

There is a one-time 60-days money back guarantee.fee for the training package in case you do not like the job. This also includes all the administration processing fees and training costs. We offer professional online support for as long as you may need us.

This is a one-time fee, and there will be no other charges to you. However, the fee must be received before you can gain access to the “Training Materials.

We must accept this fee to cover training costs, processing fees, as well as to ensure that only serious applicants apply. This is a /non-refundable fee, so be sure that you understand what you are doing before sending in your payment for the training Guides.

This fee will not be waived for anyone, and cannot be deducted from /your first pay. This is because if you do not process applications, you will not have a first pay, and we will have already taken the time to set you up, and train you. Once your payment is received, you will be given immediate access to your training Guides.

You will need a word processing program in order to perform this position successfully (MS Word, Works, Notepad, etc.) Once you have received the training materials, you can START working from home TODAY.

Most applicants typically complete the training within 24 hours or /less. However, you can do this at your leisure.

Keep in mind that the sooner you go through the training materials, the sooner you will START earning money. I will be able to be /contacted via E-mail at anytime after you have received your training materials to help you, or answer any questions you may have.

If you are serious about this position, meet all the requirements, and are responsible enough to work from home, then please contact me via E-mail and I will inform you of the cost of the training packet, and how to set up a PayPal account to send the fee (if you do not already have an account).

You seem like an excellent candidate for this position, and I hope that I hear from you again so I can get you STARTED right away!

Sincerely,

Ms Adrienne D. Evans

Human Resources
——————————————————————-

So, 2500 a week divided by 50 – you would have to process 50 applications. 12000 a week divided by 50 – you would have to process 240 applications. Seems legit, NOT!

Plus, in this very email – the fee you pay has a money back guarantee – and then it is not refundable. Hmm.

What Is The Scam?

In this case it seems like they are looking for people to pay them a fee in order to be “trained” – This is an excellent way to get a small amount of money from a large amount of people, and once a victim financially invests in a scam like this, they are much less likely to walk away from it.

My one hope with this scam is, not too many people will pay this upfront fee.

Paypal Scams –

They could also be looking to get your credit card details by sending you to a fake Paypal website. NEVER click on a Paypal link sent to you via email. Always type paypal.com into your location bar in your browser. In fact never click on a link sent to you in your email. Always type in the website yourself. :)

It is also possible that they may send fake checks to people in order to cover this “fee”. They might say that a client owes them money and could the job applicant process the check through their bank account.

Checks are also known as cheques or bank drafts, depending where you live, but we will call them checks for ease of calling them just one thing.

The check will at first clear. That is because the info on the check is legit, likely stolen from a company who put their details online. Later, and it could be up to a year later, the details will be found to be stolen and the company will ask the bank to reverse that check, and the scam victim will suddenly be without that money.

If you want to see some fake checks, visit this post – Snoskred made 5 MILLION DOLLARS online this year! – for more info on internet scams, see this post – Internet Safety & Scams – What You Need To Know.

Keep in mind the golden rule –

NO MONEY IS COMING TO YOU AS A SURPRISE VIA YOUR EMAIL INBOX.

I may update this post with further emails when I receive them. :)

What Should People Do Now?

If you are in contact with this company, stop emailing them. If they will not stop emailing you, try sending them this – just copy and paste it from here –

—————————
I am now aware that this is not a legitimate job and that you are trying to scam me.
Do not email me anymore – I have reported your emails to the local police and I will send any further emails directly to them. Do not mail me anything – I will not accept any deliveries that you send to me.

Leave me alone!
—————————

Be aware they may pass your email address onto other scammers, so you may see other scams coming to you via your inbox. There are so many different and varied scams, there is no way I can warn you about all the possibilities.

Just remember that golden rule above, and hit delete. If you think something might be legit, you can forward it on to me at snoskred {at} gmail {dot} com and I will check into it for you. If you receive too many scams, it might be worth changing your email account.

What If I Receive A Fake Check?

DO NOT BANK IT.

Please contact me in the event that this occurs, and I will advise you further. If possible I will ask you to send me a photo of the check so I can try and warn the company or people named on it, and I will contact the bank involved as well.

Please Leave A Comment!

Did you arrive here searching for Manheimy PTY LTD? Can you tell us how you found this company, or how they found you? Do you have any other emails from them?

Angry Snoskred, fake checks, Internet Safety, scam victims are not stupid, scams

Night Soil

3 Comments Posted on February 27, 2015June 2, 2015 by Snoskred

Would you fertilize your garden with human poop?

Neither would I. But in some countries, this is the done thing. They even have a name for it. They call it Night Soil. I first read about night soil a few months ago while reading Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell.

Rice has to be fertilized repeatedly, which is another art. Traditionally, farmers used “night soil” (human manure) and a combination of burned compost, river mud, bean cake, and hemp and they had to be careful, because too much fertilizer, or the right amount applied at the wrong time, could be as bad as too little.

And unfortunately some of those countries are now importing foods into Australia, and we are eating these foods sometimes without being aware of it due to poor food labelling laws.. How many times have you seen something like “Packed in Australia using imported products” – imported from where?

They don’t tell us.

That picture above is from the label of my favourite salad dressing. Why do they need to import ingredients? Everything they use in this product is available right here in Australia.

How has this happened to this great country we live in? A country that grows almost everything and could supply almost everything we need without having to import one single item?

How is it, that I now cannot buy a tin of grown in Australia Champignons? I’ve tried all the supermarkets. There are no champignons grown here anymore, not that I can find.

Check the label, and you will see –

I grew up in a household where we always used champignons on our homemade pizza. I grew up eating champignons right out of the tin. I can tell you how they tasted when they were grown in Australia – like someone took a huge bunch of mushrooms and removed their essence, their flavour, and packed it into each and every champignon. I actually preferred them to fresh mushrooms.

These Chinese champignons taste like nothing. There is *no* flavour. You might as well eat the paper on the tin.

And now, several Australians have contracted hepatitis A from frozen berries.

Could this be due to night soil? Nobody knows as yet. But you better believe I’m not buying any more products which are grown overseas. Why would we allow products from countries you need to get vaccinations to visit?

And why on earth would we allow product labelling that does not tell us where the food originates from?

Go to your food pantry, right now.

And take a good look at the labels. Do you have any products which say Product of Australia? Or does everything originate from locations you personally would not travel to, let alone eat food from!

Angry Snoskred, Aussie Culture, food, potential disaster, shopping

Truly Great Blogs #1

1 Comment Posted on February 23, 2015June 1, 2015 by Snoskred

From time to time, in my internet travels, I somehow stumble upon a blog that makes me laugh and cry at the same time. A blog that involves truly beautiful writing on a difficult subject. A blog that makes me start thinking. A blog that starts conversations with family and friends..

Today I will like to mention one of these blogs –

But Before You Click –

I will like to add a note that sometimes you will see images of the dead on the blog I am about to link to. They will not be gory images, at least thus far I have not experienced that at all. The images I have experienced have all been people at peace.

If you click through now, there may be images of the dead on the page you land on.

You have been warned!

It is up to you if you want to click through.

Confessions Of A Funeral Director.

Also, if you read the blog via a feed, you will not see images in the feed and you will usually be given plenty of warning that the post contains images, so you can choose whether or not to click through.

Sometimes I do click through if I see such a warning, sometimes I don’t. I like that it is my choice, unlike a recent Youtube incident where I suddenly found myself viewing very disturbing images of some of the Air Asia plane crash victims. Thanks so, SO much for that, Youtube, I will never unsee that no matter how hard I try.

This blog is thought provoking in a multitude of ways. I interviewed to be a funeral director once and I still feel a bit drawn to that area, though I am not sure how well I would deal with some of the sights and smells.

If you decided not to click through, here is an article on the blog which does not contain any images of the dead however it does contain one image of a couple in the process of dying – Couples that Died Together: Five Stories

(For what it is worth, I would just as strongly label and advise people if I were sending them off to view images of spiders, because that is something I cannot stand to look at, and I would never, ever, never, post an image of a spider on my blog!)

About Snoskred, death, Linkage, Snoskred Faves

No Bake Cheesecake

12 Comments Posted on February 16, 2015June 1, 2015 by Snoskred

My earliest no bake cheesecake attempt in 2015

Just secretly, behind the scenes, I set myself a few goals for 2015 which I did not share with you, because hello what if I fail? This recipe represents the first of these goals which I have achieved and am now ready to share with you. What was the goal?

Perfect a no-bake cheesecake recipe.

I started with a recipe from The Annoyed Thyroid – Kit Kat No-Bake Cheesecake – you’ll note there is no gelatin which is perfect for me because I am terrible at using it and once I found out what it actually was, I was not a big fan of using it in recipes anyway..

I tried that recipe with the following changes –

– no kit kat, because my other half is a bit allergic to chocolate

– I used scotch finger biscuits for the base

– I put in brown sugar rather than caster sugar

– I also added some cinnamon because I always do.

I took it to my parents for dinner and it was hugely popular. We ate it with tinned black cherries and said we thought tinned raspberries would work well with this too.. The one thing we all felt was that the cheesecake part was a little heavy.

Then I thought.. could I add more cream to lighten it and would it still set? And maybe I might like a little touch of gingernut biscuit in the base. So cheesecake #2 was created – this time I used 300mls of cream instead of 50mls, and a mix of gingernut and scotch finger in the base.

I made it just for us here at home, and it was delightful. It did set, though not quite as well as the first one. I thought maybe I was done tweaking, but never say you’re done, because you won’t be.

The next time I made it specifically because family was coming in from interstate, and I used 250g of regular cream cheese, 250g of light cream cheese, and still 300mls of cream. I also used a base purely of Anna’s Swedish Thins – which you should definitely try as a biscuit if you have not, and Ikea make a version almost identical which they call Pepparkakor – these biscuits are fantastic with cheese especially bitey vintage or blue cheese but they are even more fantastic as the base of a cheesecake.

This was totally the best version of this cheesecake yet. The ginger from the base seemed to transmute itself into the cheesecake itself, adding an amazing flavour. Done, perfected. I achieved my goal and ate several cheesecakes in the trying, which was awesome. Each shopping trip, I’ve added the ingredients for this cheesecake to our shopping list, and it makes enough that we have a small piece for dessert nearly every night.

But then, a happy accident happened when I went to recreate my perfected version. I’d seen this recipe over at Domesblissity – Mini Choc Hazelnut Cheesecake Cups – and I’d bought some spreadable cheesecake, intending to give this recipe a try and perfect it.

I was in the middle of making the no bake cheesecake while listening to The Celebrity Apprentice on my cordless headset – the base was complete and in the fridge – when I discovered all my cream was no good. Seriously, this happened on the 26th of January and *two* 600ml thickened cream tubs had use by dates into February. I suspect foul play of some kind and I definitely smelt sour cream. But I had this spreadable cream cheese (250g) in the fridge, and I thought.. ok, give that a try in place of the 300mls of cream.

Here now, I present to you, my final no-bake cheesecake recipe.

The base –

150g Anna’s Ginger Thin biscuits – 50g Butternut Snaps – ground into a fine crumb.
80g unsalted butter

Combine the biscuit crumbs with the butter in a bowl and then press into a baking paper lined baking pan – put this into the fridge to cool while making the base.

The Filling

250g regular cream cheese
250g light cream cheese
250g spreadable cream cheese
(I use Manhattan from Aldi)

90g brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Recipe Notes –

You can also add 50-300g thickened cream if you like to make it lighter, and the cheesecake will still set.
Leave the cream cheese out at room temperature for an hour before you begin mixing for the best results.

Make The Filling –

Mix the brown sugar and regular cream cheese first, until smooth.. Add in the vanilla and cinnamon during this stage.

While the mixer is going on a light speed, add in the spreadable cream cheese. Then cut the light cream cheese into small strips and add that in. Mix on high speed for a few minutes until perfectly smooth. If adding cream as well, add that in last.

The Density Of My Cheesecake Destiny

It is a density thing, why I say to mix the things in this order – the time I accidentally mixed the straight out of the fridge regular cream cheese with the cream, it was almost impossible to get that smooth. So learn from my mistake and mix things of a similar density with each other. :)

The Final Step!

Pour mixture into the lined baking pan with your base. Smoosh with spatula, until presentable. Cover with alfoil or glad wrap and then put this back in the fridge for a few hours, or overnight if you have the time and can resist the urge to eat it.

Can You Guess?

What my next cooking goal might possibly be? And do you like a cheesecake, will you give this recipe a try?

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