Daring Baker Cheesecake

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

If you can't tell from the photo, this cheesecake was not my best creation ever. I decided to make it a strawberry cheesecake since Ridley's has had strawberries on sale and I had a ton of them. To the batter I add 1 c. of pureed strawberries and mixed it in. It was the prettiest shade of pink as it went into the oven but it came out a less than pretty shade of brown. It isn't a pretty cheesecake, but adding a lot of cream and a beautiful fresh berry helped. It won't win a beauty contest. It tastes good though. The kids loved it, and the piece in the photograph above was my breakfast this morning, and a lovely breakfast it was. Also instead of graham crackers for the crust I used Biscoff cookies. Yum, yum, yum! They are the lovely little cinnamon cookie made famous on any Delta flight. I fly Delta just for the cookies dang it! (And because one of my favorite aunties is a flight attendant there too:) My Macey's grocery store sells Biscoff cookies, so if you can't find them in your area give me a call and I'll get you some:) Cheesecake is Emma's birthday cake of choice so we have made a lot of them around here. My favorite is still a good chocolate cheesecake with an Oreo crust, but strawberry was a nice change. This is a good simple recipe that can be adapted how you like. I didn't do the water bath. I didn't want a soggy crust. And lastly don't use a whole stick of butter in the crust. I have nothing against butter, but a whole cube was a bit much. The crust was quite greasy. Maybe only go 2/3 of a cube. Good luck!

Abbey's Infamous Cheesecake:

crust:
2 cups / 180 g graham cracker crumbs
1 stick / 4 oz butter, melted (go less here. 4 oz was too much)
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) ( I used almond extract. Good choice)
1 tbsp liqueur, optional, but choose what will work well with your cheesecake (didn't use any)

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.