Daring Bakers April 09 Cheesecake Centerpiece

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

Truth be told, I've struggled over the past few months with whether I should continue with Daring Bakers. Don't get me wrong--love the group and love the challenges. Ending up with outrageous amounts of dessert that never get eaten in this single girl's house, well it just seems so wasteful. I go back and forth on wanting to participate, and then finishing a challenge and having endless amounts of dessert. Then we'll do a savory challenge and I think I can't leave...and then, now, I have copious amounts of cheesecake in this house. I can take it to work, but that's just a lot of effort for something that goes to my coworkers 80% of the time.....

That being said, of course this challenge was fabulous: cheesecake. Many of us have made cheesecake a million times before, but this challenge was all in the flavors we added. With a short month because of my vacation, I brainstormed and decided based entirely upon what was in my refrigerator already, which just happened to be outrageous amounts of lemon. I cleaned out my fridge prior to leaving, but couldn't seem to bring myself to toss the 5 lb bag of lemons. I grabbed some of those Debbie Meyer green bags, and I don't know what's in them except magic pixie powder because 5 weeks after purchasing them, my lemons are still perfect. I'm so fascinated by this. I also happened to have most of the limoncello I'd made on whim last year as well as some leftover italian amarretti cookies for the crust. It's like this Italian coast inspired cheesecake was just destined to happen.


I only made half the recipe below and still ended up with four of these individual size cheesecakes...

Abbey's Infamous Cheesecake

crust:

2 cups / 180 g graham cracker crumbs I used amaretti cookie 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 sugar3 large eggs

1 cup / 8 oz heavy cream1 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 I used Limoncello
zest of 1 lemon

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, lemon zest 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.

6. To candy lemons I sliced a lemon in thin slices and added to a small saucepan that was half sugar and half water(simple syrup) and boiled gently for 10 mins.