The April 2009 challenge is hosted by Jenny from Jenny Bakes. She has chosen Abbey's Infamous Cheesecake as the challenge.
This month's challenge was to get creative with a basic cheesecake recipe. I've been busy and didn't know what I was going to make. All I knew was that we didn't need a huge cheesecake hanging around so I was going to cut the recipe and use my mini cheesecake pans. My daughter missed the local walleye festival and was craving a caramel apple and so that's what prompted the caramel apple cheesecake theme. The crust is a mixture of graham crackers and chopped peanuts. The cheesecake itself is the basic recipe featured below. The caramel topping is homemade and I just put half an apple with a stick for looks. She ate it up! Delish.
Here's the recipe if you feel the need for cheesecake. My thighs don't need it this time of year, that's for sure!
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!
Some variations from the recipe creator:
** Lavender-scented cheesecake w/ blueberries - heat the cup of
heavy cream in the microwave or a saucepan until hot but not boiling.
Add 2 tbsp of lavender flowers and stir. Let lavender steep in the
cream for about 10-15 minutes, then strain the flowers out. Add
strained cream to cheesecake batter as normal. Top with fresh
blueberries, or make a quick stovetop blueberry sauce (splash of orange
juice, blueberries, a little bit of sugar, and a dash of cinnamon -
cook until berries burst, then cool)
** Cafe au lait cheesecake with caramel - take 1/4 cup of the heavy
cream and heat it in the microwave for a short amount of time until
very hot. Add 1-2 tbsp. instant espresso or instant coffee; stir to
dissolve. Add this to the remainder of cream and use as normal. Top
cheesecake with homemade caramel sauce (I usually find one on the food
network website - just make sure it has heavy cream in it. You can use
store-bought in a pinch, but the flavor is just not the same since its
usually just sugar and corn syrup with no dairy).
** Tropical – add about a half cup of chopped macadamias to the
crust, then top the cake with a mango-raspberry-mandarin orange puree.
** Mexican Turtle - add a bar of melted dark chocolate (between 3
and 5 oz., to taste) to the batter, along with a teaspoon of cinnamon
and a dash of cayenne pepper (about 1/8 tsp.). Top it with pecan halves
and a homemade caramel sauce.
** Honey-cinnamon with port-pomegranate poached pears – replace 1/2
cup of the sugar with 1/2 cup of honey, add about a teaspoon or more
(to taste) of cinnamon. Take 2 pears (any variety you like or whatever
is in season), peeled and cored, and poach them in a boiling poaching
liquid of port wine, pomegranate juice/seeds, a couple of "coins" of
fresh ginger, a cinnamon stick, and about a 1/4 cup of sugar. Poach
them until tender, then let cool. Strain the poaching liquid and simmer
until reduced to a syrupy-glaze consistency, then cool. Thinly slice
the cooled pears and fan them out atop the cooled cheesecake. Pour the
cooled poaching syrup over the pears, then sprinkle the top with
chopped walnuts and fresh pomegranate seeds.
