Cheesecake

Note, this isn't a food blog. But once in a while I make things and actually write the process up.
See the Caribbean Black Cake, and how Bread Bowls should not be feared.

I really like cheesecake. I love to bake. But I've never baked a cheesecake.

I borrowed a set of springform pans from a coworker recently. I wanted to bake with Jess while they were here but it didn't work out timing wise. I also wanted to give this a try before I actually buy pans, or a pan, because I don't like the idea of buying things I may use just once and never again.

Figured it was time to give it a go. After making some epic french onion soup earlier in the day on Saturday,  I kept the cooking ball rolling.

I did my preparation.

I watched an Alton Brown cheesecake recipe video. I looked at a number of different cheesecake recipes from plain to berry mix to oreo. I read arguments pro and con for water baths. I was ready.

Decided to make an Oreo cheesecake because I thought Geoff would like that for his birthday week. I planned poorly, using in my memory for Alton's recipe which called for 2 boxes or so of cream cheese, and this one called for 4 blocks, so I had to go to the market. Got a very late start in the preparations so we could not enjoy this last night.

For the first time ever, I wish I had a food processor. I crushed and used a rolling pin and mashed and squished oreos to make the crust. No matter what, the cookies didn't get crumb-like enough for my liking. They were large clods, and that disappointed me. 

Kind of feel it was a failure but after baking the crust it holds together nicely and looks alright. Good enough to put some mix in. 

Making the mix was easy enough, I crushed 6 extra oreos to put in the cake mix, and it all spread nicely into the baked crust in the springform pan.

One of the things I opted not to do was  something Alton does -  a water bath on the bake. Several people said not to do that, but instead to put a pan of water into the oven on the shelf below the cake, to keep moisture in, but prevent any moisture from leaking into the springform pan. 

Because I didn't think I had a really solid foil wrapping job, I wanted to go for the moisture but not the soaking of the pan. 

I put a baking sheet on the lower shelf with a 9x9 glass pan on it, filled with water. Set the cake in the oven on the shelf directly above it, and let it bake!

The cake bakes for 90 minutes and then you open the oven door a crack and turn the heat off.  Several people wrote about how they opened the oven all the way and that ruined the cake. I figured that would be bad, and was happy to discover our new oven has the ability to stay open a crack, instead of full half way.

The center of the cake is supposed to be jiggly a bit, but mine was pretty solid upon finish, and the cake was brown on top, appearing slightly over cooked to me. I was rather worried about it at this point. Would this be a fail?

Instructions said to put the cake in the fridge for an hour, or, cool overnight. I wrapped the tin foil from the bottom over the top and set it out in our back porch as it is cold enough overnight (and the fridge is super full so now is the time of year to use our natural surroundings.

This morning, not able to wait until say dinner time (or even lunch) I made whipped cream from scratch (why put cool whip or spray can whipped cream on top of something so carefully homemade!).

I always use very little confectioners' sugar, far less than the recipe calls for, and a lot more vanilla. I love making whipped cream, and love how it comes out! I wished that I had some powdered cocoa to toss in to make for a nice contrast to the cake, if the top of the cake had come out white. As is, the white whipped cream ended up looking fine against the finished product.

I was worried about taking the springform pan side off, worried that the cake would be completely stuck and all would be ruined, but everything came off nicely, with just a little pull off the cake in the end. Nothing major!

Cutting the cheesecake open, it was dense and heavy, the crust a lot thicker than I expected.  The cake part was not as thick as I'd expected, but it all held together beautifully and the extra Oreos in the mix looked wonderful. Broke them up into the just right size!

I suppose if I'd made an attempt to smoosh the crust  up the side of the pan a little bit it may have been a nice side lip of crust. But all told, this was alright in the end.

The pan that I used was rather huge I think, partly how the mix was so "short" in the pan. The slices are gigantic. But. Look at that cake.

A few other notes... The non-water bath approach seemed to work fine. I will butter the sides of the springform pan before filling the the pan with the mix. Next time, I'm going to make graham crackers and use Alton's recipe  (it calls for 20 oz of cream cheese and heavy cream, instead of the 4 boxes of cream cheese that the Oreo recipe called for). I'll mix in a little strawberry cream cheese to the mix and see how that goes, and make a strawberry reduction sauce to drizzle on top.


And, here is the boy, turning 23 this week. The one I made this all for. Should have cleaned the lens on my phone a little because this looks blurry to me... and he does look a little ... messy. But Sunday Geoff sleeps in and eats cheesecake for breakfast!

Verdict: It's a success!