27 april 2009

Daring Bakers' cheesecake (April 2009)

(Scroll naar beneden voor Nederlandse tekst.)
Just before Easter I read the new Daring Bakers' challenge: make a cheesecake and be creative. We had to use a basic recipe, but we could add any flavour we wished. I must admit: I wasn't very thrilled. Cheesecake. In Holland it's not common, but doesn't every American woman make a cheesecake now and then?
But we needed some sweet cake for Easter still, for our family-moment after church, and why not use this recipe. So here is the official announcement:

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

This is the basic recipe:
crust:
2 cups / 180 g graham cracker 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 sugar
3 large eggs
1 cup / 8 oz heavy cream
1 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

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F
Begin to boil a large pot of water for the water bath.
Mix together the crust ingredients and press into your preferred pan.
Combine cream cheese and sugar in the bowl of a stand-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, and alcohol and blend until smooth and creamy.
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.
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.

And this is what I did:
I split the batter in two: to one I added melted chocolate, to the other advocat. Advocat is a dutch smooth yellow liqueur, made from a blend of unpasteurised egg yolks, sugar, aromatic brandy, and a hint of vanilla. And it combines very well with chocolate.
Then I tried to make two smooth layers of the batter, but that was a mistake :-) Had I done it brown-first yellow-after, I might have succeeded, for the brown was thicker. But I didn't, and a charming mess of colors was the result. And I wasn't disappointed after all, for the taste, the color and the looks were nice. And it was very "Easterish"!

So, thank you, Jenny, for this challenge. Looking forward to next!

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In april hebben de Daring Bakers een cheesecake gemaakt. Dat was niet erg uitdagend maar het resultaat was lekker. Ik heb het voorgeschreven recept gebruikt, en vervolgens door de ene helft gesmolten chocola geroerd, en door de andere helft advocaat. Ik heb geprobeerd daar lagen van te maken maar dat mislukte jammerlijk, vandaar deze schattige rommelboel :-) We hebben de cheesecake met smaak gegeten op paaszondag na de kerk, en nu mag ik het resultaat eindelijk op mijn blog zetten.

Dit is een samenvattende vertaling van het basisrecept:

Nodig voor bodem:
180 gram verkruimelde koekjes
110 gram boter, gesmolten
24 gram suiker
1 theelepel vanille-extract

Voor de cheesecake:
Ongeveer 600 a 700 gram roomkaas (wat een hoeveelheid he!! Een goedkoop merk als dat van de Aldi voldoet prima.)
210 gram suiker
3 grote eieren
bekertje slagroom (250 ml)
theelepels smaakmaker naar smaak, citroensap, likeur, verzin maar iets.

Oven op 180 graden celsius.
Kook water.
Meng bodemingredienten en druk die uit in je vorm. Een flinke, waterdichte vorm is nodig.
Meng roomkaas en suiker met een mixer tot het glad is.
Voeg eieren een voor een toe en wacht tot de vorige volledig opgenomen is.
Voeg smaakmakers en slagroom toe en mix nog even.
Giet beslag op de bodem, tik er even mee op het aanrecht, zet de vorm in een waterbad dat tot de halve hoogte komt en bak 45 tot 55 minuten.
Hij is gaar als de randen stevig worden maar het midden nog beweegt als je de vorm beweegt.
Laat een uur afkoelen in de uitgeschakelde oven.
Haal dan uit het waterbad en laat op het aanrecht verder afkoelen.
Laat hem tenslotte een nacht in de koelkast staan, en dan is hij klaar om te serveren.

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Eerdere uitdagingen die ik aanging / prior challenges completed:



(cheesecake pops, opera cake, danish braid, filbert gateau, chocolate eclairs, lavash crackers, pizza, caramel cake, yule log, tuilles, chocolate valentino, lasagna Emilia Romagna)

7 opmerkingen:

Unknown zei

It does have a very pretty look to it since the colors swirled! I love your combo of flavors. Great job!

Sara zei

Looks yummy! The combination of flavors sounds fantastic. :)

Angela @ A Spoonful of Sugar zei

It looks delicious! I love advocaat so this would be the perfect cheesecake for me!

Stacie zei

Nice job on the cheesecake. That ingredient you added to the 'non-chocolate' batter sounds great!
www.katskitchen.wordpress.com

Lauren zei

Your cheesecake looks amazing!! Awesome job on this challenge =D.

Chantal zei

Advocat, sounds intriguing. Good job!

Unknown zei

Advocat sounds like an interesting flavor, and I bet it was marvelous with the cheesecake. Thanks for being a part of this month's challenge!

Jenny of JennyBakes