Daring Bakers Present Cheese Cake

Dear readers of my blog. I apologize for not posting very often these days… I don’t know where time goes. I have been so busy these past few months I haven’t been able to do much baking. I did manage to get this months Daring Bakers Challenge finished, but this post is a last minute thing and is being rushed since I have a bunch of other things to do before going to bed for the night… I promise next months post will be better and hopefully I will get at least one other post done in the meantime (fingers crossed!)

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

** I am having a hard time getting my pictures up… hubby recent switched operating systems and this one apparently hates me! So I will have to get him to help me out… and hopefully I will get some up soon!! Pictures have been added!! yay!! Thats sweetie!!

When I first read the challenge was cheese cake I had mixed feelings. I was hoping for something that would be a bit more daring and exciting. I had never made cheese cake before. I just never felt like it was something I wanted to make. I do love to eat cheesecake… but its not really my thing to make. But I figured I would give it a try.

We were given the green light to do any flavour combinations we wanted. After much though and consultation with my husband. I decided on a coffee flavoured cheese cake with a chocolate ganache topping. I stuck with the regular graham cracker crust. It was delicious! This cheese cake was not nearly as rich as I had expected, since all of the cheese cake I have ever eat had been quite rich.

I would make this cheese cake again (maybe try a different flavour combo.. a lot of the other Daring Bakers have absolutely scrumptious looking cheese cakes!), but its not on my list of things to make again in the near future. Making cheese cake just wasn’t really my thing… but if it is your I would highly recommend this recipe!!!

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 (I left the lemon juice out)
1 tbsp. vanilla extract (or the innards of a vanilla bean)
1 tbsp liqueur, optional, but choose what will work well with your cheesecake (I also left this out)
I added about 3-4 tbsp of strong brewed coffee

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. (Since I do not own a spring form pan, and I wanted my cheese cake to not be in a pan when I served it I had to build my own pan haha. I used the bottom of an aluminum pie plate and some tin foil… presto chango… a cheese cake pan lol!)

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. (At this point I added the coffee)

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. (I have mentioned before that my oven is possessed and no matter what I set the temperature to it always gives me a hard time baking… the tops of my cheese cakes ended up being golden… I’m not 100% sure but I don’t think that was what we were going for. Nonetheless, it tasted fine and with the chocolate on top no one knew!)

Topped off with some delicious chocolate ganache, this dessert was perfect!!

~ by mixbyhand on April 27, 2009.