Daring Bakers: Cheesecake!

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

Yikes! My inaugural Daring Bakers challenge, and I'm posting a day late. I actually joined the DB back in February, but with the switch to the new website, I didn't register in time to join the March challenge. I didn't realize this until after I made the yummy Lasagna of Emilia-Romagna. Hubs helped with the lasanga - I prepped the ragu, and tried to make the spinach noodles. The noodles were a big, fat fail. So hubs made the bechemal, cooked store-bought noodles, and assembled the lasagna. It was heavenly, even without homemade noodles.

But onto the cheesecake....This cake came out perfectly, although I think I ruined my favorite baking pan by using it for the hot water bath.

I made a beautiful blood orange reduction sauce to serve with the cake. Unfortunately, hubs ate the last piece before I had a chance to take pretty pictures of it. Oh well, that's what I get for procrastinating.



Abbey's Infamous Cheesecake

Crust:
2 c graham cracker crumbs
4 oz butter, melted
2 Tbs sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract

Mix together crust ingredients and press into your preferred pan. Set aside.

Cheesecake:
3--8 oz blocks of cream cheese
1 c sugar
3 large eggs
1 c heavy cream
1 Tbs lemon juice
1 Tbs vanilla extract
1 Tbs liqueur, optional


Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Begin to boil a large pot of water for a water bath.Combine cream cheese and sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer, and cream until smooth. Add eggs, one at a time, fully incorporating each before adding the next. Scrape down the sides of the bowl between adding eggs. Add heavy cream, vanilla, lemon juice, and alochol and blend until smooth and creamy.

Pour batter into prepared crust and tap the pan gently on the counter a few times to bring all the 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.Bake 55 minutes, until 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. Close the oven door, turn off the heat, and let cake rest in the cooling oven for 1 hour.

Remove cheesecake from the oven and lift carefully out of the water bath. Let cool on the counter; cover and put in the fridge to chill.