Monday, April 27, 2009

April Daring Bakers! - Cheesecake


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

I have not been blogging my challenges with the Daring Baker's, and I think that it is time for that to change! :-)

This month,the challenge is Cheesecake. I was inspired to do a layered chocolate/plain cheesecake, something that I had admired but never really tried. The reality is I have only ever made 1 cheesecake and I was intimated by this challenge, which is why I put it off until the last weekend. Imagine my surprise when this was so easy and so tasty!!! Definitely a keeper and lots of possibilities with this recipe!

As is plainly visible, I got a huge split! This photo was taken right out of the oven. As the cake cooled, the split got bigger and bigger! :-( I wonder if it was caused by overbaking or if it was caused by what I used for the chocolate layer. I had Hershey's Special Dark Kisses hanging around, I took 6, melted them with a small amount of heavy cream, and added that to half of the cheesecake batter. Perhaps the chocolate seized? I also used tea bisquits for the crust, and cut the butter in half after seeing that a few bakers had problems with the butter leaking out. The bisquits crust definitely got hard enough.



I cut the cake after 5 hours, since I was not serving it to company. It was so light and airy, it reminded me more of cheesepie than cheesecake. The texture was so overwhelming that the flavor got lost. After storing the rest of the cheesecake overnight, it definitely solidified for a more traditional cheesecake texture and the chocolate flavor started to come through. Definitely a keeper!