Daring Bakers Cheesecake

It’s Daring Bakers time! I missed March’s delicious-looking spinach lasagne, but I’m back in the swing of things for what I hope will be the rest of this year.

The April 2009 challenge is hosted by Jenny from Jenny Bakes. She has chosen Abbey’s Infamous Cheesecake as the challenge.

For this challenge, Jenny gave us tons of culinary creativity. She encouraged us to experiment with a variety of flavors. After sorting through the many ideas floating around in my head  (nilla wafer crust, cassis, fresh raspberry sauce…. or chocolate wafer crust, espresso flavored cheesecake, chocolate sauce… or chocolate wafer crust, nutella swirl, frangelico, chopped hazelnuts…the possibilities were endless) I settled on what, looking back, was a rather surprising choice given my own personal tastes. How could I not have remembered that I really don’t care for caramel? I blame this on the fact that I was still reeling from the completion of my boards and was trying to make this cheesecake for a work gathering scheduled for a date only a few days after the dust had settled.

So ultimately, I ended up with a gingersnap crust, an amaretto laced cheesecake, a caramel sauce on top, and crumbled heath bar to garnish. It sounded good on paper, right? I was too full that night to have a slice and came down with a cold the next day, so perhaps my tastebuds were impaired, but I just wasn’t happy with the small slice I was able to stomach. The cheesecake was delicious: creamy, dense, decadent, but the caramel on top was not my favorite. I used a recipe for a quick caramel sauce I had (cream, butter, sugar, etc. all boiled together for a bit) and it was waaaay too sweet. I highly recommend the cheesecake recipe and will definitely go back to it sometime soon. This time though, I’ll try one of my other flavor combinations.

Abbey’s Infamous Cheesecake

crust:
2 cups / 180 g graham cracker crumbs
1 stick / 4 oz butter, melted
2 tbsp. / 24 g sugar
1 tsp. vanilla extract

cheesecake:
3 sticks of cream cheese, 8 oz each (total of 24 oz) room temperature
1 cup / 210 g sugar
3 large eggs
1 cup / 8 oz heavy cream
1 tbsp. lemon juice
1 tbsp. vanilla extract (or the innards of a vanilla bean)
1 tbsp liqueur, optional, but choose what will work well with your cheesecake

DIRECTIONS:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (Gas Mark 4 = 180C = Moderate heat). Begin to boil a large pot of water for the water bath.

2. Mix together the crust ingredients and press into your preferred pan. You can press the crust just into the bottom, or up the sides of the pan too – baker’s choice. Set crust aside.

3. Combine cream cheese and sugar in the bowl of a stand-mixer (or in a large bowl if using a hand-mixer) and cream together until smooth. Add eggs, one at a time, fully incorporating each before adding the next. Make sure to scrape down the bowl in between each egg. Add heavy cream, vanilla, lemon juice, and alcohol and blend until smooth and creamy.

4. Pour batter into prepared crust and tap the pan on the counter a few times to bring all air bubbles to the surface. Place pan into a larger pan and pour boiling water into the larger pan until halfway up the side of the cheesecake pan. If cheesecake pan is not airtight, cover bottom securely with foil before adding water.

5. Bake 45 to 55 minutes, until it is almost done – this can be hard to judge, but you’re looking for the cake to hold together, but still have a lot of jiggle to it in the center. You don’t want it to be completely firm at this stage. Close the oven door, turn the heat off, and let rest in the cooling oven for one hour. This lets the cake finish cooking and cool down gently enough so that it won’t crack on the top. After one hour, remove cheesecake from oven and lift carefully out of water bath. Let it finish cooling on the counter, and then cover and put in the fridge to chill. Once fully chilled, it is ready to serve.

Pan note: The creator of this recipe used to use a springform pan, but no matter how well she wrapped the thing in tin foil, water would always seep in and make the crust soggy. Now she uses one of those 1-use foil “casserole” shaped pans from the grocery store. They’re 8 or 9 inches wide and really deep, and best of all, water-tight. When it comes time to serve, just cut the foil away.

Prep notes: While the actual making of this cheesecake is a minimal time commitment, it does need to bake for almost an hour, cool in the oven for an hour, and chill overnight before it is served. Please plan accordingly!