Abbey’s Infamous Cheesecake – Daring Baker’s April 2009

This month’s Daring Baker’s challenge was care of the lovely Jenny of Jenny Bakes chose Abbey’s Infamous Cheesecake!

I have never made a cheesecake before, so I was really looking forward to giving this a go.  The rules were very lenient this month, so we could be as creative as we wanted..

Now I love me some lime, especially Key lime, so I couldn’t help myself.  It had to be a Key lime cheesecake. But did I stop at one Key lime cheesecake?  Heck no!  I tried two.  The first is a Key lime-coconut and the second is a Key lime pomegranate.

Key Lime Coconut Cheesecake

crust:
2 cups / 180 g graham cracker crumbs
1 stick / 4 oz butter, melted
2 tbsp. / 24 g sugar
1 tsp. vanilla extract

½ cup shredded sweetened coconut

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. lime zest, grated
2/3 c key lime juice
1 tbsp liqueur, optional, but choose what will work well with your cheesecake

topping:

1 1/2 cups shredded sweetened coconut

1 14-ounce can sweetened condensed milk

DIRECTIONS:
1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Begin to boil a large pot of water for the water bath.

2. Mix together the crust ingredients and press into your preferred pan (8 or 9 inch. I used a Springform). 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, zest, key lime juice, and alcohol (if using) 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. Next, make the coconut cream.

6. Put the cream and 1 cup of the coconut in a small saucepan and bring it to a boil over medium-low heat, stirring almost constantly.  Continue to cook and stir until the cream is reduced by half and the mixture is slightly thickened. Allow to cool then spread onto the top of the cheese cake, and put in the fridge to chill. Once fully chilled, it is ready to serve.

Key Lime Pomegranate Cheesecake

crust:
2 cups graham cracker crumbs
1 stick / 4 oz butter, melted
2 tbsp.
1 tsp. vanilla extract

cheesecake:
3 sticks of cream cheese, 8 oz each (total of 24 oz) room temperature
1 cup
3 large eggs
1 cup / 8 oz heavy cream
1 tbsp. lime zest, grated

1/3 c key lime juice
1 tbsp pomegranate-flavored Pama liqueur

Pomegranate seeds for garnish

DIRECTIONS:
1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Begin to boil a large pot of water for the water bath.

2. Mix together the crust ingredients and press into your preferred pan (8 or 9 inch. I used a Springform). 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, zest, key lime juice, Pama 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, garnish with pomegranate seeds and it is ready to serve.

Easter Cake Pops!

Well, my first foray into baking post-babies was to try out the Cake Pops from Bake-rella‘s lovely blog.  You can find the recipe and lots of examples there. She creates the cutest little pops for all kinds of occasions and I (and Beth) thought we’d try out her Easter concoctions!

We started out rolling all the cake mixture into balls.  Boy was that messy, but tasty!

You have to rinse your hands periodically or the cake just sticks to you rather than forming a ball.

We neglected to read the part in the recipe ahead of time that mentioned the need for refrigeration… So we opted for the freezer method… Unfortunately, many of our pops cracked, we figure from the contrast of super cold inside versus warm dipping medium.

Some needed “stiches”…

We dubbed him “Franken-chick”

We made chicks, bunnies, easter eggs, cup cakes, white sheep, and black sheep.

Though I must say, I think our black sheep looked more like porcupines.  What do you think?

Well, pretty or not.  Cracked or not.  Black sheep or Porcupines.  They were fun to make and darn tasty too!  I’ve had requests for turkeys at Thanksgiving, so we’ll see how that goes!