of Oreo cheesecakes and the cooking goddess in my life

Jenna is legal from yesterday onwards. so happy birthday, Jenna!! and so to commemorate this milestone of limitless opportunities and responsibilities, i decided to bake a Oreo Non-Bake Cheesecake!! what else to show the TLC and spread it around ey??

and Phey Yee dearest wants the recipe so here you go, girl:

1 package Oreo cookies, divided
1/4 cup butter, melted
4 packages Philadelphia Cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 container Cool Whip Topping, thawed

1. Line a 9x13 inch pan with foil extending over sides of pan.
2. Coarsely chop 15 of the cookies; set aside.
3. Finely crush remaining cookies; mix with butter. Press firmly onto bottom of prepared pan. (but to add more oomph or flavor or the missing ingredient that chefs always talk about, i put a layer of blueberries! cooking is all about improvisation in the right amounts)
4. Refrigerate while preparing filling.
5. Beat cream cheese, sugar, and vanilla in large bowl with mixer on medium until well blended. (seeing as i had no mixer, Kelvin and me took turns to hand-stir the miture till soft. now i have well-defined biceps!!)
6. Gently stir in whipped topping and chopped cookies.
7. Spoon over crust; cover.
8. Refrigerate 4 hours or until firm.

and voila!! a really awesome cheesecake that requires no baking and no burnt crusts and no half-cooked insides. and i remember this recipe was first given to me by my best friend, Sheau Shiuh and she was a kitchen goddess at that time and still is i suspect. she can do the most amazing things with normal everyday ingredients. and when we were neighbours (we used to live around teh corner from each other until her dad cruelly moved them to a much further suburb.), her mum used to cook this Hakka delicacy which had green tea and all sorts of yummy veggies in it and i would always go over and have second and third helpings. until this day, i love that dish and try to eat it at hawker centres but it will never taste the same as her mum's.

and when i went over, she would just let me in and i would find my way around the house, beaching myself on the couch. and we used to have sleepovers even though i could very well go back to my house which was less than a few steps away to sleep. and she used to have this very flat pillow of hers that she would let me sleep on and which i found difficult to sleep on on the 1st night but after that, it became MY pilow. until this day, i think she stil has it.

and the extra special bond was the fact that we born on the same day, in the same ward, same hospital and delivered by the same doctor. only she was older than me by 2 hours. and her mum remembered seeing my mum being wheeled into the ward taht she was in 19 years ago. and we used to think that i was the older twin until years later, we whipped out our birth certs and lo and behold, i became the younger twin and the always-blur her remembered the wrong time of birth!! and she became my older sister. but i think i was the protective one, i was the outspoken one. so anyone who bullied her faced my wrath. but she was the gentle one, the calm one, so she kept me in check, not letting me go overboard with my gung-ho instincts.

she's doing her STPM now and she's busy as ever and she has grown so much more and i am proud of her. even though we've probably had our own different group of friends now, she will always be part of my life and she will always be the older twin and my non-biological sister.