Cheesecake!

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



I needed to do something for our work party anyway... so thanks to the suggestion of my friend when I put her on the spot about what sort of cheesecake she'd like to have, we have a Cookies and Cream cheesecake.




Crust:
2 c. Chocolate cookie crumbs - I used store brand double stuffed oreos that I scraped the cream filling out of.
1 stick butter.

(The recipe calles for sugar and vanilla here, but I chose to make my own distinction here, in the efforts to make sure that the crust wouldn't be overly sweet. I also then baked the crust - mixing the crumbs and melted butter together before pressing it into the springform pan... baked at 350 degrees for 8 minutes...)

Filling:

3 packages cream cheese

1 C. sugar

3 eggs

1 C. heavy cream

2 tsp vanilla

1 tsp grand marnier

2 C crumbled chocolate sandwich cookies.

DIRECTIONS:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F

2. 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, and alcohol and blend until smooth and creamy. Once blended, fold in cookie pieces.

3. 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.

4. 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 garnish.

In the interest of time... I chose to garnish my cheesecake with 1/2 a bottle of hot fudge sundae topping - heated so that it would pour, spread out on the top of the cheesecake until it began to drip over the side. And then as I needed something that would stand up to being set out for most of the day at work... rosettes of Dream Whip were piped onto the cake and mini Oreo sandwich cookies pressed into the rosettes- if I did it again for myself, I'd use whipped cream.

All in all, it was a very successful cheesecake and the only dessert that was completely consumed at the end of the day.