She has arrived!

She has arrived! Huh? What? Who's She? Tigris has arrived! Yes! She's here! She's mine! Who exactly is Tigris? Hint: I went to Petco today. Okay, now you now.

Anyway, here's the 2nd cheesecake recipe.

Wait! You can't guess who Tigris is? Wow.

She's a betta! Tigris will be the female use for the practice breeding. She looks healthy. After breeding, (if she lives that long :oP) I will auction her off to her fans!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Just kidding. Most likely, I will end up keeping her unless someone wants her, then they'll get her, but not without heavy counseling on how to take care of her. She may be a $3.99 crowntail betta from Petco, but I want her to have a good home loving owners...

sniff! excuse me.

Sorry. I don't usually get emotional when talking about bettas. Not even with Archie, May he R.I.P.

Oh, I see! You want a picture of this beautiful, stunningly beautiful, amazingly stunningly beautiful, crowntail female from petco! Stop laughing!! Yes, I know! Any petstore betta will give the seasoned betta-breeder chills and nightmares for ten days! But Petco's bettas might bring that down to nine days and blah blah blah...

Here's the picture.

And now, the recipe.

Chocolate Irish Cream Cheesecake
12 oreos, crushed
3 T. butter, melted
18 oz. cream cheese, softened
2/3 cup sugar 5 eggs
2/3 cup whipping cream
3/4 c. Irish cream liqueur
1 1/4 tsp. instant coffee crystals
12 0z. semi-sweet chocolate, melted
Powdered sugar for garnish
1 tsp. vanilla extract
To make crust:
In a small bowl, stir together crushed oreos and butter till well combined. Press crumb mixture evenly onto the bottom of a 9" springform pan.
To make filling:
In a large bowl, combine cream cheese and sugar. Beat with an electric mixture until smooth. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in whipping cream, then add Irish cream liquer and vanilla extract. Stir together hot water and instant coffee. Stir into cream cheese mixture. Stir in melted chocolate. Pour cream cheese mixture over crust.
Bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes. Lower temperature to 200 degrees and bake for 1 hour and 10 minutes or until center no longer looks wet or shiny. Remove cake from oven and run a
thin-blade sharp knife around the inside edge of the pan. Turn oven off, and return the cake to the oven for two hours. Chill uncovered overnight. Place a decorative stencil, such as a doily, over the top of the cheesecake. Sift powdered sugar over the stencil. Carefully remove stencil. Chill until serving time, then let temper about 1/2 hour.
Note: The original recipe suprisingly did not contain measurements for vanilla or hot water! I think we used approx. 2 cups hot water (a mugfull), and we automatically used 1 tsp. vanilla because that's about the only way vanilla is measured! You must try this awesome cheesecake!

Correction

I am sorry to report the mistake in the last post. I have decided it would be unwise to breed Oceanes and/or Larcon, for private reasons. This information was confirmed last night, so I thought I would correct it in a separate post instead of just editing it out of the last post. My plans are unstable at the moment, but my thoughts right now are to buy my own set from the pet store, and practice with those, get rid of the young and get a high-quality pair from the Internet, and start again. Since this is a shorter correction post, I will not post the next cheesecake recipe, but stay tuned! It should come up within the next week!

Here's pictures of Larcon and Oceanes. Pictures taken on our kitchen table!

Hi!

I am happy to say that we are possibly going to move soon! The basement of our new house should be ready to move into in 1-2 weeks! In reality, it may still be 20 years. But this info is extremely cool for bettas!
What does moving into the basement of a half-finished house have to do with bettas?
1. Moving will give me enough room to start breeding bettas.
2. My birthday's coming up, and that will give me a boost on dough so I can start.
3. I want to breed bettas in this house! :oP
I am planning to use Oceanes/Larcon for a practice breeding, then I'm going to set up a website and do some higher-quality breeding! I hope to get Oceanes/Larcon's line crossed into the higher-quality line, but I am going to consult some experts before proceeding. I will be shipping only in the U.S., and will be selling fish off this blog, as well as other places on the internet. This blog will be used for my spawn logs, so keep watch during that time! To see what my spawn logs will be like, go to www.bettysplendens.com and click on "spawn log" on the left side of the page. I will probably get bettas for my high-quality line from that site.
My plan for the first spawn is to cross Oceanes to a female, and Larcon to another and then cross their young and try to enhance the strain with plakats, halfmoons, and crowntails to produce half suns with strong rays and a lot of branching. The half suns will then be crossed into my higher-quality strain. The goal: A show-worthy, lemon meringue half sun betta that has won an award at an IBC show.
Now, about cooking! I have compiled a cheesecake treasury of the best cheesecake recipes. All have been tasted and approved. The treasury is now worthy of publishing, so I will start by doing one recipe on each post. The first:

White Chocolate Cheesecake with White Chocolate Brandy Sauce

4 (1 ounce) squares white chocolate
3 (8 ounce) packages cream cheese
3/4 cup white sugar
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
3 eggs
1 1/2 cups heavy whipping cream
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups finely chopped white chocolate
2 fluid ounces brandy

Preheat oven to 300 degrees F (150 degrees C). Wrap the outside of a 10 inch springform pan with foil. Grease the inside of the pan. Place the cream cheese, sugar, and flour in a mixing bowl and cream until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Scrape bowl. Melt 4 ounces of the white chocolate. With an electric mixer on low speed, mix melted white chocolate into cream cheese mixture. Keeping electric mixer on low, slowly beat in the vanilla and 1/2 cup of heavy cream. Blend well. Pour mixture into the prepared springform pan. Place cheesecake pan in a water bath filled with warm water. Bake at 300 degrees F
(150 degrees C) for 50 to 60 minutes, or until center of the cheesecake is just firm. Cool at room temperature for 1 hour. Refrigerate until set before removing from pan.

To make White Chocolate Brandy Sauce (optional, but very good!): Place 1 cup heavy cream in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Watch carefully so it doesn't boil over. Pour hot cream over 2 cups of finely chopped white chocolate and stir with a wooden spoon until melted. Add brandy and continue stirring until incorporated. Pour over chilled cheesecake and serve.

You'll love it! The sauce adds the greatest touch! I had it for my 12 birthday, and we served it with whipped cream and a mint leaf.

Still not in

We're still not in our new house yet, and I'm $60.00 behind in my $375.00 goal. Oh! Didn't talk about that much did I? Well as I mentioned in the last post, I am hoping to start breeding bettas once moved in. My "business" will be King's Creatures. Nathanael pointed out that the name does not refer directly to bettas, so in the future (years) I'm thinking about also breeding fancy goldfish, angelfish, bristlenose plecos, etc.
I was wrong, Anne's pet shop is after all a bit more expensive than I thought. The sinking pellets are still a great price. Liveaquaria is better, Kribensis cichlids for $4.99. (Don't forget $30.00 shipping though) because of the gigantic shipping costs, I may stick to Anne's Pet shoppe. With a kuhli loach and a pleco in the tank, I am sad to report I have seen zero baby fry in over two-and-a-half weeks! (They hatch in approx. 36 hrs.) :o{
I spent a few hours reading, while simultaneously watching birds outside on the feeder. A chipmunk kept coming and stuffing itself with what seeds fell on the ground, until it started eating our strawberries. I immediately scared it away from my, er... our strawberries. Boy, those are good! I don't blame the chipmunk for trying to eat my, er, our strawberries.
Back to bettas. I'm thinking about breeding crowntails or plakats (pronounced
pluh-COT). I don't know why, but, after all, it is Thai). I couldn't decide, so I decided to breed a crowntail female to one of my friend's bettas, than breeding a plakat male to one of the female offspring. I also want a strain of yellow cambodian color, in any tail form except plakat and veiltail. Well, I'll be going now. Bye! :oP