Triple Strawberry Cheesecake

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

I really loved this challenge. Even though we made cheesecake for the cheesecake pops in a previous challenge, this allowed many more variations and it was so much fun seeing some many drastically different cheesecakes from all the other Daring Bakers.

A couple weeks, maybe months ago, I found this adorable cookbook collection called Sugar and Spice by Keda Black. It was languishing in the sale pile at Urban Outfitters and was calling out my name: 16 mini books each dedicated to one or two ingredients in recipes for candies, cookies, cakes and the like. Not only are the recipes inspired but the books are so incredibly cute! I think I might try to do one recipe out of each 16 books and post about it here. Any interest? Here's the first book:

The backside is dedicated to Yogurt!

Start by hulling and cutting 2/3 of 2lbs of strawberries. Don't worry about the math- you just want to save some of the strawberries for decoration at the end (the 3rd part of this TRIPLE strawberry cheesecake)

Blitz it all together with 2tblsp sugar.

Next, break up the graham crackers and run them through a food processor until you have crumbs. Make sure you use pulse the graham crackers intermittently and not continually for about 30 seconds or you will end up with cracker dust and a couple chunky bits.

Then you add in good stuff like melted butter and vanilla extract and smoosh it into a spring form pan.

Mix up your cheesecake ingredients and finish the filling off by folding in half of the strawberry puree without blending it until it's homogeneous- so much prettier this way!

Once it's out of the oven, let it cool completely (or just put it in the fridge overnight) then spread the rest of the strawberry puree on top.

Finish it off with some sliced strawberries.

The verdict? The cheesecake was excellent- The best I've ever made, that's for sure. And the recipe wasn't really difficult at all. I did this early in the month and had plans to try other flavours, but ran out of time. But I know I will revisit this recipe again- plus the variation based on Keda Black's book was so simple and effective. I can't wait to try this with every other berry this summer!

Abbey's Infamous Cheesecake

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

DIRECTIONS:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (Gas Mark 4 = 180C = Moderate heat). Begin to boil a large pot of water for the water bath.

2. Mix together the crust ingredients and press into your preferred pan. 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, vanilla, lemon juice, 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, it is ready to serve.


Triple Strawberry Cheesecake variation:

From Strawberry + Yogurt by Keda Black

Wash and hull 2lb strawberries. Puree two third of them with 2 tblsp sugar.

Continue with recipe as written then fold in half of the strawberry puree, without trying to obtain an even mixture. Pour into the cake pan. Bake as directed above.

Turn out the tin and and store in the refrigerator until the next day. Slice the remaining strawberries. Cover the cheesecake with the remaining strawberry puree and add the sliced strawberries.

Try not to eat it all in one sitting!