cheesecake

White Chocolate Cheesecake

December 18, 2017

Cheesecake is a holiday favorite in my family. My mom has been making it for holiday parties longer than I can remember.

For my office holiday party this year, I kept the family tradition alive and made my own version of mom’s cheesecake by adding a little bit of white chocolate.

Not only is there white chocolate IN the cheesecake, but there is also white chocolate ON the cheesecake. The white chocolate in the cheesecake is very subtle so the extra chocolate on top helps boost that white chocolate flavor so people aren’t confused about what they are eating.

How I Made It

Let’s start with the crust, shall we? Because this is not your ordinary graham cracker crust. Although that would also be very nice. This is a Biscoff cookie crust. You know the cookies Cookie Butter is made out of? The cookies have a nice cinnamon spice flavor to them which is perfect with the white chocolate.

Like a graham cracker crust, I first smashed them into bits with my handy food processor until the cookies resembled something between breadcrumbs and sand.

Then I mixed in some butter so that all the crumbs would stick together and poured them into the bottom of a springform pan.

To evenly distribute the crust around the bottom of the pan, I, first, used my hand to cover the bottom. Then I used the bottom of a heavy glass to tap them down into a smooth crust.

For the cheesecake itself, I first creamed together the cream cheese and the sugar until they were well combined.

Then I mixed in the melted white chocolate

Next came the eggs. Cheesecake requires lots of eggs, but I am too impatient to mix them in one at a time. So I just do three at a time.

Last, I added in vanilla (in this case, vanilla bean paste) and sour cream.

Finally, I poured the batter into the pan and evened out the top before popping it in the oven to bake.

Now, cheesecake takes a little while to bake, so this is typically where I clean up a bit, check email, browse Instagram, etc. until it’s done.

You will know your cheesecake is done when it is slightly brown around the edges but still has a little wobble in the middle. The center shouldn’t be “wet”, but it will still wobble.

If your cheesecake is browning too much around the edges, then cover it with foil and continue baking.

After the cheesecake baked, and while it was cooling, I prepared the white chocolate ganache topping.

I poured hot heavy cream over the white chocolate and let that sit for a bit to begin to melt.

After a few minutes, I stirred the ganache to make sure all the chocolate pieces had melted. Then I stirred in some butter.

Once the ganache had cooled to room temperature but was still liquid, I poured it over the cheesecake.

At this point, my cheesecake had already cooled to room temperature, so it was safe to cover and pop in the fridge.

You never want to put a warm cheesecake in the fridge, otherwise, the crust and the center will get really soggy and not set properly.

I let the cheesecake and ganache set overnight in the fridge so that it was ready the next day for the Christmas party.

To dress her up a bit, I added some rosemary, sugared cranberries, and mint around the outside for a holiday wreath look.

Actually, this look was just for photos. When I reassembled the cheesecake at work, I put the cranberries and mint right on top, like you can see here on Instagram.

Either way, I think it’s a beautiful holiday dessert and it’s delicious, too!

[yumprint-recipe id=’150′]

Winter Berry Cheesecake Tart

December 14, 2016

I have an quick and easy way to make any pie, tart, or cake look fancy:

Pile a bunch of berries on top!

That’s what makes this otherwise ordinary cheesecake tart much more sophisticated, let alone colorful! Even though berries are more of a Summer fruit, somehow they work perfectly for Winter when you roll cranberries in sugar to make them “frosty”. And with the addition of the mint leaves, it takes on a very Christmas-y look, don’t you think?

The foundation of this tart is a chocolate cookie crust. Sure, I could have made a plain old graham cracker crust, but chocolate seems so much more appropriate for the holidays. Plus, I am a sucker for chocolate and berries. It’s one of my favorite flavor combinations!

The next layer of the tart is my (aka my mom’s) classic cheesecake batter. Because this tart is much thinner than the New York style cheesecake that I usually make, I only made a third of my usual recipe.

What’s great about making cheesecake in a thin tart pan is that it bakes so much quicker. Cheesecake usually takes over an hour to bake. But this barely took 30 minutes. I made this just a few hours before I served it, which I would never do with my usual cheesecake recipe!

While the cheesecake baked, I worked on sugaring my berries (why does that sound dirty?). I have never sugared cranberries before, so I turned this really helpful post. Well, it would have been more helpful if I had followed direction. Of course, I like to think I know what I am doing all the time, but sometimes I really don’t. I skipped one pretty important step: letting the simple syrup dry before rolling them in the sugar. Whoops!

Then, once the tart had chilled and I had added a layer of sweetened sour cream, I just piled the raspberries and cranberries right on top. There wasn’t any rhyme or reason to it, clearly. But it still turned out so nice! I love the disorganized and rustic look of a pile of berries!

One slice of this tart is the perfect bite of chocolate crust, rich cheesecake, and fresh berries. All the flavors were there and complimented each other wonderfully! I also love the combination of the tart raspberries and crisp cranberries. Since the cranberries were soaked in simple syrup and rolled in sugar, they had a crunchy outer crust and were much sweeter than normal. They weren’t overly sweet, which made them a perfect pairing for the super sweet cheesecake!

You should probably make this cheesecake tart ASAP. It would be perfect for a holiday party. And you will want to make this while you can still easily get your hands on some fresh cranberries.

But, if you don’t want to make this now, you can make the same tart this Summer and pile on some strawberries, blueberries, or any one of your favorite fruits!

[amd-yrecipe-recipe:107]

Chocolate Dipped Cheesecake Bites

October 7, 2016

Do you have that one recipe that is your “signature” recipe? Like the recipe that you make when you really want to impress people. That recipe that you know by heart because you make it so often.

As someone who makes a lot of recipes, it was actually kind of difficult for me to come up with a signature recipe to make for an office bake-off. Sometimes I tend to bake things that are a little to experimental and not necessarily “bake-off” contenders. Not that they aren’t good, but to win a bake-off, you have to play to the crowd. It’s all about strategy folks!

After thinking about for a while I concluded that while I may not have a signature recipe, my mom does! So I made my mom’s cheesecake recipe (also seen here), which I knew would be a contender, if not the winner!

To make the cheesecake a bit easier to eat, I decided to make them into little bites (of course, I had to do something to make the recipe my own) and dip them in chocolate.

I started by baking the cheesecake in a square baking pan with a graham cracker crust. After the came out of the oven, I let them cool to room temperature, then chill in the refrigerator overnight. It’s always good to let cheesecake cool completely before serving, but this also made it a lot easier to cut into bite-sized pieces.

I then dipped the chilled pieces of cheesecake into melted chocolate, first dipping the tops and letting the chocolate harden, then dipping the bottom half of the cheesecake bite. I tried drizzling the chocolate and some other dipping techniques, but this way worked the best for me. You can do it however you like.

After all the bites were covered in chocolate, I popped them all back in the freezer to harden. I would also recommend dipping the bites in batches, and keeping the un-dipped ones in the freezer until you are ready. They are much easier to handle when they are practically frozen.

Well, I would love to tell you that these cheesecake bites won the bake-off. They actually came in second behind a surprisingly delicious banana cake. Seriously, if a banana cake can beat cheesecake, it’s got to be one damn good cake. Don’t worry, I got the recipe so I will have to make it and share it with you guys.

But second place it’s bad at all! I’ll take it!

PIN NOW, MAKE LATER

[amd-yrecipe-recipe:84]

Lemon Cheesecake

April 1, 2016

Lemon-Cheesecake-12b

This cheesecake, along with all that Easter candy, is the reason I am back to dieting this week. I know a lot of times I try to make my favorite treats a little healthier but cutting out the fat, sugar, and guilt. But this lemon cheesecake is not one of those times. This is full fat, full sugar, and oh so worth it! Sometimes you have to treat yourself with a decadent dessert, like on holidays… when calories don’t count. What? You haven’t heard that? 😉

I guess I should have anticipated this when I combined two of my favorite desserts in the world: my mom’s classic cheesecake and lemon meringue pie. My self control never stood a chance.

The foundation of my mom’s cheesecake is the sugar cookie crust. Many people have been skeptical of the sugar cookie crust, but once they try it they are converted. Not only is the sugar cookie so much better suited for all the lemon flavor going on in in this cheesecake, it is SO much easier than a graham cracker crust. We (my mom and I) just use the slice and bake sugar cookie dough you can find in your grocery store’s refrigerated section. To make the crust, I sliced the log of dough into discs then pressed them around the bottom and sides of a spring form pan.

After the crust was ready, I put it aside and got started on the cheesecake. It’s actually pretty simple and comes together very quickly. I creamed together the cream cheese and sugar, then I added in the eggs, Greek yogurt (my mom uses sour cream), and vanilla. Since I was making this a lemon cheesecake, I added the zest of of one lemon. When the batter was well mixed and smooth, I poured it into the crust.

Now my trick for baking the cheesecake is something I learned from Martha Stewart. She bakes her cheesecakes in a shallow pan of water so that the steam helps prevent the cheesecake from cracking. To keep the water from seeping into the cheesecake, I wrapped the pan in tin foil. I baked the cheesecake for 10 minutes at 450 degrees, then lowered the temperature to 325 and cooked for another 60 minutes, or until the cheesecake no longer jiggled in the center. It’s okay if it has a little wobble, but you don’t want it to look liquidy in the center.

While the cheesecake was baking, I went about making the lemon curd. I followed the same technique I used to make these lemon bars. While I find making lemon curd pretty easy, when I was telling my mom about this recipe she scoffed at the idea of making homemade lemon curd. She didn’t like the idea of separating the eggs. A woman who was a home economics major and working mother thinks separating eggs is too much trouble. Where did I go wrong with her? Anyways, if making your own lemon curd isn’t up your alley either (I actually do get it, I just like to give my mom a hard time), you can certainly buy a jar of it at the store. I would just recommend that you warm it up first to make it a little more spreadable.

So at this point I have made my lemon curd and let it cool just a bit. My cheesecake is fully cooked and also slightly cooled. I poured the warm curd over the cheesecake and used an offset spatula to evenly cover the cheesecake. I then let everything cool to room temperature, then put it in the fridge overnight to really set up.

Lemon Cheesecake-8

When I was ready to serve, I removed the outer ring of the spring form pan and dressed it up with some slices of meyer lemons since I used some meyer lemon juice in my lemon curd (not necessary, but it’s meyer lemon season).

This was the perfect dessert for Easter brunch. Rich and decadent, but still fresh and crisp! And it was a total hit with the group. I sent slices home and whatever was left over was quickly demolished at work the next day. This would be perfect to make for Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, or any Spring or Summer outing.

Lemon-Cheesecake-10b

[amd-yrecipe-recipe:14]

Spiced Cheesecake with Gingersnap Crust

December 11, 2013

My mom’s recipe for cheesecake has been widely request from friends and family over the years. It is her go-to dessert when she wants to impress. And it’s no surprise, because it is amazing!

This past weekend, when I volunteered to bring a dessert to our friends Christmas party, I knew this cheesecake would be perfect!

Instead of using sugar cookie dough, like my mom, I used gingersnap cookie crumbs for the crust to make it a little more “Christmas-y”. I also added some spices to the batter to compliment the crust.

One new thing I tried was baking the cheesecake in a shallow pan with a little water. This is a trick I learned from Martha Stewart to prevent the cake from cracking on the top, like it is prone to do.

The result is an extra creamy, and a tad bit spicy, cheesecake. And a little bit goes a long way! One small slice is perfectly decadent, so an 8 to 9 inch pan can serve well over 10 people.

Unless you are serving a large crowd of cheesecake lovers, in which case, you may want to make 2.

What is your go-to recipe for the holidays?