Clayton's cheesecake

[gregcarman]

I bought this dessert from my local supermarket a few nights ago, assuming it was lemon cheesecake in a foil-sealed opaque pot.

Note the way it is described on my receipt, and the graphic of a slice of cheesecake on the label.

Of course, if I did not need reading glasses to read the final line of the product description in its tiny type, I might have had pause to think otherwise, but even then…

It turns out to be a pot of yoghurt, vaguely lemon-cheesecake flavoured, and with an inset container of crumble topping vaguely reminiscent of cheesecake crust.

Am I an idiot to have been so easily misled?

[mark_m]

@gregcarman

Am I an idiot to have been so easily misled?

Perhaps not.
They got me with the 5 star health rating.
Not to mention the 100% ocean bound plastic. What ever that means. Could be it’s bound for the ocean upon disposal to add to the plethora of other plastics out there, somewhere?

Definitely not cheesecake. Assume it was stocked anlongside other yogurts and not the cheese cakes?

[gregcarman]

@mark_m

Assume it was stocked anlongside other yogurts and not the cheese cakes?

Indeed, although in my defence there was a great deal of open shelving between the pot and the neighbouring yoghurts – it was on special, and what I now assume may have been a number of other flavourings (on either side) had sold out.

And it was right above the milk, which is what I had popped into the convenience store to buy on my way home from something or other.

[phb]

@gregcarman

Am I an idiot to have been so easily misled?

No, it no different to other yoghurt flavour such as strawberry where the flavour text is bigger than the word yoghurt. One doesn’t expect the container to contain strawberries only.

Yes the wording ‘yoghurt crumble pot’ is smaller than ‘lemon cheesecake’, but it is still clearly shown on the front label next to each other. This is unlike some flavoured yoghurts where the word yoghurt isn’t used on the front label.

If the wording ‘yoghurt crumble pot’ was on the side or back label of the container, then possibly an argument could be mounted the labelling was deceptive.

[Gaby]

@gregcarman

Am I an idiot to have been so easily misled?

No, I think you’re a normal shopper who’s looking at the bigger size font first to identify a product which in the case of the tub should have been ‘yogurt’ not ‘lemon cheesecake’.
But…shopping has become a bit of a jungle with a ‘survival of the fittest’ system in place. In this case the tub is in the dairy section, whereas a cheesecake being a dessert should be found in the chilled cakes section or in the freezers.

I often struggle with odd items like dehydrated peas to find the right aisle to look for, haven’t given in to the aisle list app yet

[Gregr]

I think if I was looking for a cheese cake, and I know what one looks like, and encountering one in the yoghurt section in a pot, my expectations would be pretty low.

But give it a try if one is guided by the wording, no matter how incongruous a cheese cake in a yoghurt pot seems to be. Now you know. You won’t be sucked in again, presumably.

We should start up the ‘pack shot, food images vs reality’ topic again.

The little image of the slice of cheese cake on this product container vs what was actually in it.

[Gaby]

Looking at the ads of the Moo Pro the tub is actually a ‘ready to be assembled’ cheesecake as it contains Crumble (flour, butter, etc) and the yoghurt filler (yoghurt plus ingredients to give it a lemon flavour).
Just needs to be assembled into a (little?) pie dish and placed in the fridge.

Something like this can easily be done at home with our favourite biscuits crumble and a yoghurt based filler and maybe pieces of fresh fruit on top

@mark_m

the 100% ocean bound plastic. What ever that means.

It’s just a fancy way to say they’ve used recycled plastic (before it gets in the ocean).

[phb]

@Gaby

It’s just a fancy way to say they’ve used recycled plastic (before it gets in the ocean)

They got into trouble from the ACCC about this:

MOO Premium Foods gives undertaking after ACCC investigates 'ocean plastic'...

The claims don’t stacked up to what the wording indicates.

@Gaby

ready to be assembled’ cheesecake

Thanks for the photo of the container with the lid. It is now obvious that it isn’t cheesecake in container. The lid in itself would suggest that the contents aren’t cheesecake…but something in which crumble are added.

[mark_m]

@Gaby

Just needs to be assembled into a (little?) pie dish and placed in the fridge.

Problem solved.

At some point new ideas can miss the ‘mark’ or appear to be a trick/gimmick. Whether a semi-prepared cheesecake mix product can catch on? It might just be a forerunner to a whole line of make at home products with a premixed chilled wet base plus dry ingredients all in the one multi pack. The easy way to make that perfect bake at home cake, biscuit, brownie etc without all the tricky measuring.

Interesting:
“Ocean bound” an unusual way of suggesting the plastic is recycled. “Ocean saved” might not have had the same allure for the marketing team over the Friday lunchtime pub session.

Whether the plastic and foil packaging used for the product avoids a watery fate in its next cycle it is largely outside the hands of the product.

[Gaby]

@mark_m

Ocean bound” an unusual way of suggesting the plastic is recycled

The original claim was ‘100% ocean plastic’. As in the @phb link, the ACCC investigation revealed that the plastic was ‘collected from coastal areas in Malaysia and not directly from the ocean’.

[PhilT]

I may be the odd one out (please do not go there!) but this seems to be a clue

Yogurt flavours are not so different from flavoured crisps. Chicken? Hot Chilli Squid? So many more. I buy crisps to taste like crisps but seem to be in a smaller majority (even if) every week as there seems ever more shelf space allocated to every flavour but.

[gregcarman]

With my legendary ability to be wise after the event, I know I should have got out my reading glasses (or my phone-camera on zoom) before I impulse-bought this dessert.

I still claimed to have been misled, your honour!

[gregcarman]

If I had wanted something I made myself, I would have got the ingredients for my legendary no-bake lemon cheesecake.

Some of my best inventions have been from that proverbial mother of invention, necessity. Or at least a perceived need to use up surplus produce from the garden (for which my legendary vegetarian Bolognese sauce is probably the best example) and/or the pantry and/or the fridge.

My recipe for a no-bake cheesecake was a product of my need to use up most of a litre of commercial custard on its use-by date, ditto packet of shredded wheatmeal biscuits, and a shopping bag full of bush lemons from the tree in the backyard, back in the days when I was living and working in the western suburbs of Sydney and I needed to make a contribution to a pot-luck dinner for the staff at the health-food warehouse I was managing.

I had a wildly-witty title for the dish which now escapes me, but given where I started this rant…

Ingredients:
120g butter
4 tbsp of honey
2/3rds of a packet of shredded wheatmeal biscuits
600ml commercial vanilla custard
600ml bush-lemon juice

Method:
No need to grease your roughly 23cm loose-bottomed tart tin – note quantity of butter above! (And for those expecting me to make the obvious joke about loose-bottomed tarts, this is a family recipe!!) Melt the butter and stir in the honey.

Crush the biscuits thoroughly with a rolling pin and put the crumbs in a mixing bowl. Stir in the butter-and-honey mixture and press the resulting mix firmly into the base of the tin with a chilled heavy glass or similar, making sure it comes as high up the sides as possible. Put in the fridge to set.

When the crust has set, beat the custard and the lemon juice together with a pair of electric beaters until it has the consistency of curdled custard. Pour into the chilled base, decorate with a little lemon zest and return to the fridge until set.

This recipe is not really original – it’s essentially a variant on my mother’s own no-baking-at-all cheesecake recipe (which I also don’t remember). She used arrowroot biscuits and caster sugar rather than shredded wheatmeal and honey for the crust – and a lot less butter to bind it all together – and the filling was Philadelphia cream cheese and something else rather than custard, and with just a little bit of lemon juice to tart it up.

[grahroll]

Condensed milk was the other part of the cheesecake filling. Lemon juice is both for the flavour and it helps set the filling, one can of condensed milk to one 250g cream cheese.

[wallacethree]

No. But does it taste nice?sounds like it’s sortof cheesecake only better for you​:heart_eyes:

[gregcarman]

Modesty forbids me mentioning what a huge hit my culinary invention was at the office party, not to mention being pressed for the recipe by at least two of the crew!

As for being better for your heart, did I mention how much butter is involved?

[wallacethree]

Ummm. Nope

[gregcarman]

Ah, so you knew my mother!

I remember her telling me, when training me how to make jam from surplus produce from the garden, how important lemon juice was to getting jam to set, so it makes sense it would have the same role in her (and my) no-bake cheesecake.

[grahroll]

The acid in the lemon curdles/sets the milk and cream mixture, not really the pectin which is useful in jam setting, for jam purposes it is best to put the seeds in a small muslin or similar cloth bag and boil it with the other ingredients in the jam mix. This boiling will release the most pectin, and just remove the bag after the boiling process. Or a cook could just buy either jam setting sugar which has some pectin added or another product called jamsetta (Jamsetta) which is basically pectin in powder form and ready to add to the mix…these are probably a more consistent outcome than boiling the seeds.

For some cheesecakes added gelatin or agar (if vegetarian or vegan) or similar seaweed derived gelling agents carrageenan or alginate are used rather than using an acid based setter (think chocolate, coffee, banana, vanilla and similar flavours which you don’t want overwhelmed by the acid flavours e.g. lemon, orange…).

[gregcarman]

You did know my mother!

She showed me the trick with the seeds in the muslin bag (hooked over the side of the pot the jam was boiling in).

And she did have a packet of Jamsetta in the cupboard for emergencies where the jam was refusing to pass the wave test on the testing saucer – it was one of those packets that was really just an envelope, and needed to be stuffed into a recycled jar with a good seal under the lid for storage of the ample remainder after opening.