Daring Bakers: Cheesecake

The April 2009 challenge is hosted by Jenny from Jenny Bakes. She has chosen Abbey’s Infamous Cheesecake as the challenge.
When I was in my first year of college, I spent a lot of my food budget on Philadelphia cream cheese. I spread it on bagels, on toast, mixed it into my pasta and mashed potatoes and added it to my baked goods. I couldn’t get enough of the stuff.

Moving to France meant giving up on my bagels, not to mention my Philadelphia. But when the Daring Bakers announced that this month’s challenge would be cheesecake, I went searching.

I went to every store I could think of, and the closest thing I came up with was Philadelphia light, imported from Switzerland and extremely expensive. But it had never even crossed my mind to sit this challenge out: I love cheesecake, and so I did a little bit of subsituting.

I was nervous to make a plain cheesecake: on the one hand, there are very strong opinions on cheesecake–opinions that I share–that state that any cheesecake that’s worthwhile can stand on its own. On the other hand, if I wasn’t going to be using the same base ingredient: cream cheese, how could I expect it to turn out right?

I had tried a more expensive version of this fromage à tartiner that I found at Monoprix, but I had never tried this version before. Because I didn’t want it to be an expensive mistake if, in fact, making cheesecake without the appropriate cheese turned out to be a mistake, I went with this version and added a container of mascarpone cheese, because really, when in doubt, more cheese is always the way to go.

Before mixing the ingredients together, I tasted the fromage à tartiner: it wasn’t quite as cheesy as Philadelphia is, so I made sure to add the lemon juice as expressed in the recipe.

All good… right? Well… not quite.

The other requisite part of cheesecake is the crust, which is usually made out of graham crackers. Guess what? No graham crackers in France. I decided to use speculoos, a Belgian spice cookie, instead.

To mirror the flavors in the cookie (and to cover up any mistakes I might make), I decided to make two sauces: one was simply strawberries mascerated in sugar with fresh basil, and the other was a chocolate ganache infused with cinnamon and cayenne pepper. Both were tasty, but the strawberries ended up pairing better with the cheesecake. The chocolate, I will save for later adventures.

OK, good. So there’s cheesecake and there’s crust. I’m making mini cheesecakes because I have a fear of large cakes. I put the pan in the oven, wait for it to bake (I baked for about 20 minutes), then wait for it to cool in the oven, then, finally… it’s time to take them out…

*BOOM*

Cheesecake on the floor. Under the oven. On the oven. On my foot. In the vaccuum cleaner tube. I let off a string of words that sent Alex into the living room to hide from me. I would directly quote myself, but sometimes my mom reads this blog, and I do have some shame.

Luckily, the taste didn’t suffer. I served up the two that had been injured the most in the fall (put them out of their misery and whatnot), and as the second batch baked up, we finished off the first. Alex and I decided that French cheese, speculoos, and a death-defying drop from the oven does not a ruined cheesecake make.

Abbey’s Infamous Cheesecake

I’ve included my changes in parentheses next to the original recipe. Please note that the baking instructions are for a full-sized cake. For mini cheesecakes, bake 20 minutes and allow to cool for about half an hour in the oven before finishing cooling on the tabletop and then removing from the pan.
crust:
2 cups / 180 g graham cracker crumbs (I used speculoos)
1 stick / 4 oz butter, melted
2 tbsp. / 24 g sugar (I did not add the extra sugar)
1 tsp. vanilla extract (I did not add the vanilla)

cheesecake:
24 oz. (680 g.) cream cheese (I used 450 g. of fromage à tartiner and 200 g. of mascarpone)
1 cup / 210 g sugar (I used 3/4 cup)
3 large eggs
1 cup / 8 oz heavy cream (I used crème fraîche… it’s cheaper here than liquid cream)
1 tbsp. lemon juice
1 tbsp. vanilla extract (or the innards of a vanilla bean)

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.