Well I'm a hair late on this, but here is my Daring Bakers challenge for April. I was assuming the post date was the end of the month, but oops! And here I was so proud of the fact I had baked this early. Sometimes I wonder about myself...
But anyways, on to the food. This challenge what a simple cheesecake that we were allowed to spruce up as we saw fit. I was feeling highly indecisive, so I split up the batter into three flavors. *Edited to let the world know, the crust is made from homemade graham crackers. Hell yeah. I'll be posting about that soon.
First I present, the LOL cake (if you aren't familiar/in love with LOL cats, my apologies. I'm a hopeless addict). On a rather long car trip I came up with the idea of having a bakery based on the lolz, with flavors such as Walnut Toffee Fudge, Orange Mango Guava, and Lemon Orange Lime. If none of this makes sense or seems funny, don't worry. I'm just a dork.The layers weren't brightly coloured enough to show up well, but each section was flavored by zest and juice of the three fruits. For the orange layer I used some concentrated orange juice for a little extra punch. It was baked in a standard 6" cake pan.
I saw some lovely kumquats at ye ol' trader Joes, so I made a little candied kumquat to top a plain 4"cake. This was my favorite of the three. The kumquats were delicious! I candied them a bit too long, so the syrup got a bit to tacky, but otherwise a win.Simply cook the sliced fruits in a two to one mixture of sugar and water, simmering for about four minutes.
I had high hopes for pomegranate, but I was somewhat disappointed. It tasted fine, just not as fresh and yummy as hoped. There were no whole fruits to be found, and I couldn't even track down a bottle of POM or Odwalla pomegranate juice (they use to be everywhere, what gives? Was it a passing fad?), so I had to settle for some from concentrate juice that tasted less than amazing. I made a curd based on my honey lemon curd recipe and substituted most of the lemon juice with the pomegranate (there needed to be some lemon for it to set up). The end result was passable, but not as exciting as hoped. It was also a revolting brown pink colour, which means what you see here is full of food colouring.I made two of these that I baked in ramekins that are 4ish inches. They baked fantastically in these, and came out fairly easily.
All in all I enjoyed the excuse to bake cheesecake. Even if my husband keeps complaining that I ate the last mini cake :) Here is the recipe, posted straight from the Daring Baker's page. I hope you check out some of the other fantastic variations people came up with.
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!
