Daring Bakers' Challenge #1- cheesecake

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

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!


This was my first Daring Bakers Challenge and I wish I had had more time to do something superfancy. There also wasn't any specific occasion to bake for, which in my mind can make choosing the variation an easier job. I therefore decided to stay fairly plain and went citrus. To the basic recipe I added finely grated rind of two lemons and one orange. For the topping I caramelized (kinda) finely sliced orange with some sugar, rum and some lemon juice.

I wanted to do some mini ones so roughly guessed amounts and spread out the base between eight cupcake paper cups and put the rest in a foil-lined small round casserole sigh we had. (I lined it with foil so that I could pull it out of the dish later). Of course the small ones cooked sooner than the large one so I couldn't cool them in the oven. Thank goodness it's warm in Brisbane! Also with this many things in the oven, I couldn't do a proper water bath so just put a pan in the bottom of the oven. It worked a charm- no cracks. This recipe is amazingly forgiving. The larger cheesecake ended up being quite deep so I was worried it wouldn't cook properly in the middle. As soon as it started browning on top, I covered it lightly in foil and that did the trick.

I will without a doubt be making this recipe again. In fact I'm pretty sure it's my new permanent always-use-it-cheesecake-recipe. I really want to try out variations that have been posted by other bakers.