OK, over in the pit Rico was whining about spending $30 for a cheesecake. Several people weighed in that $30 bucks wasn’t so bad for a kick ass cheesecake. Quite a few of you went so far as to describe (sans recipe 
) their wonderous creations. Fine.
But I have a deep dark secret to admit. ::: Hangs head in shame::: even though I have been cooking for almost 50 years, I have never made a cheesecake.
Now you guys have got me wanting to create, and I need those kick ass recipies.
So get off your duffs and start posting.
Pretty please?
It’s funny… I was going to post and ask what the difference between a “normal” cheesecake and a New York-style cheesecake is. I haven’t been able to figure it out…
In my quest, I did come across Cooking for Engineers’ cheesecake recipe and was thinking of giving it a try. I also had a sugar-free cheesecake recipe that was pretty good (using Splenda?), but I haven’t made it for years after going off SugarBusters.
The recipe I posted in the other thread, for Cordon Rose Cheesecake, is the best I’ve ever tried. Note that the temperature should be 180 Celsius, not 1800; I’ll let someone less lazy than me convert that to Fahrenheit.
Daniel
Thanks to the Pit thread, I found this very simple, yet delicious cheesecake recipe. It’s very basic (no chocolate, flavored swirls, mousse, etc…), but it’s easy to add whatever you’d like.
PUMPKIN CHEESECAKE
Crust:
6 T butter, melted
1 C ginger snap crumbs
1/2 C chopped hazelnuts
1/4 C brown sugar
1 t nutmeg
Filling:
3 eggs
8 oz cream cheese
2/3 C sugar
2 t cinnamon
1 t ground ginger
1/4 t ground cloves
2 C pumpkin puree (1 can)
Topping:
1 1/2 C sour cream
1/4 C powdered sugar
2 T Frangelico (hazelnut liqueur)
To make crust: Mix the ginger snap crumbs, nuts, sugar, and nutmeg together. Drizzle the melted butter over the mixture and stir until moistened. Cover the bottom of a greased 10" springform pan and press with your fingers or a spoon.
To make filling: Beat the eggs. Add cream cheese and beat until smooth. Add remaining ingredients and blend well. Pour into pan on top of the crust, shaking gently to even out the batter. Bake at 350F for 30-35 minutes. Prepare topping while the filling is baking.
To make topping: Mix ingredients together in a bowl. Spread over the hot cheesecake and bake at 450F (note temperature difference!) for an additional 5-7 minutes.
Cool before serving. Cheesecakes generally taste better if you let them sit overnight, so the flavors can blend better. Can be garnished with more chopped nuts, if you like.
You can vary the nuts in the crust, just choose a liqueur for the topping to match, or just use vanilla extract as a sort of neutral flavor.
Here is my Sour Cream Cheescake, for which I have won prizes in baking contests. It is chaste and unadorned, but can be tricked out in various ways.
Crust:
1 pkg graham crackers, crushed(one of the inner packages from the box)
1/2 stick butter
3 Tablespoons white sugar.
Filling:
24 ounces cream cheese (can use “light” but not fat free)
3 eggs
1 cup sugar
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1/2 tsp. salt
Topping:
16 ounces sour cream
3 Tabespoons sugar
1/8 tsp. salt (ok, just a dash)
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
Method:
Heat oven to 375 degrees F.
Mix crust ingredients well, and press on bottom and push a bit up on the side of a 12 inch springform pan, just to cover the junction between side and bottom. set aside.
In large bowl, mix softened cream cheese and sugar. Beat eggs and other ingredients in well, but remember, you **aren’t ** trying to get it light and fluffy. Pour gently over graham cracker crust. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes. Center will not be entirely set. Remove from oven and let cool to room temperature.
When the first layer has cooled, increase oven temperature to 425 degress F. Mix topping ingredients. Pour gently on first layer and smooth top. Bake for 5 minutes to lightly glaze top. Cool to room temperature and refrigerate 6 to 12 hours before serving. Serves 12.
This is the one I usually use if I’m cooking English and have the dried elderflowers. I’ve almost run out, so soon I’ll find out if elderflower cordial has the same effect:
Sambocade.
Take and make a crust in a trap & take cruddes and wryng out þe wheyze and drawe hem þurgh a straynour and put hit in þe crust. Do þerto sugar the þridde part, & somdel whyte of ayren, & shake þerin blomes of elren; & bake it vp with eurose, & messe it forth.
Redaction is left as an exercise for the reader.
I’ll say.
Daniel
My SIL makes a kick-ass cheescake. She is in NYC at the moment, probably eating one (or several). Bitch.
I will ask her for her recipe when she gets back…
I made this Jack Daniel’s Upside Down Double Chocolate Cheesecake with my mom a few years ago.
It was heavenly, and you can always play the one-shot-for-you-one-shot-for-me game with the bowl of ingredients while you’re making it.
Hey now, young fella - drinking and baking don’t mix. Not if you want edible product, anyway. 
“Cheese? Cake??” (Peter Kay’s dad)
Exploding Kitchen needs to come through with the recipe she was talking about in the $30 outrage thread. Seriously. Orgasm? Count me in!
Wow! That is the basically the recipe I use too except I bake the crust before putting the filling in. Makes one of the best cheescakes I have ever had. You can substitute Splenda but follow the substitution recommendation on the box so it won’t be too sweet. My recipe comes form Ladies Home Journal Cookbook that has been in my family for about 40 years.
Take one scantilly clothed woman. Photograph.
All right…you can thank Idlewild for this, since her begging via IM finally broke me down.
Remember, the better quality of the chocolate (and all of the ingredients), the better the cheesecake turns out. I use Ghiradelli’s.
An electric egg beater helps a lot with this recipe.
Jill’s Orgasm-Inducing Zebra Chocolate Cheesecake
Ingredients:
1.5c crushed chocolate cookies (Oreos with the white stuff removed works the best)
3T melted butter
0.5c semi-sweet chocolate chips
4 8oz packages of cream cheese (softened)
1.25c sugar
2t vanilla (real, not imitation)
3T cornstarch
1.5c whipping cream
0.25t salt
12oz semi-sweet chocolate squares
5 large eggs
8oz sour cream
8oz white chocolate
Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a 9" by 3" springform pan. Mix cookie crumbs and butter, then press mixture into the bottom of the pan. Bake for 12-15 minutes. Remove pan from oven, then sprinkle the chocolate chips over the mixture. Let it sit until the chocolate chips are soft, then spread them over the mixture.
Get out a large mixing bowl, then dump the cream cheese in it. Beat the cream cheese until it’s light and fluffy. Mix the sugar, cornstarch, and salt, then add it to the cream cheese and beat until nice and blended. Switch beater to low speed. While still beating the cream cheese mixture, add eggs, sour cream, vanilla, and 1c whipping cream. Keep beating it until the batter is smooth.
Divide the batter into two bowls. Melt the white chocolate and 8oz of the semi-sweet separately. Once the chocolates are melted, add the white stuff to one bowl, and the semi-sweet into the other bowl. Get out that egg beater again, and on low, mix until it’s…well…mixed in good.
All right. So at this point, you should have two bowls of batter, one dark, one light, and a pan with a cookie crust that has a chocolate layer over it. Pour half the dark batter into the pan. Now, hold the bowl with the light batter at least two feet above the pan, and pour half of it into the center. Repeat this process (from two feet) switching off each bowl, and using half the batter until it’s not feasible to half it again (usually, this is three times each). The top of the cake should look sorta like a big bullseye.
Bake for 30 minutes at 350. Turn oven down to 225, then bake for another hour and 45 minutes. Turn off the oven, but leave the cake in there for an hour.
After that hour’s up, remove the cake from the oven. The top should be pretty close to golden brown. Run a thin knife around the edge of the pan to loosen the cake, then cool it on a wire rack. Once cooled, chill the cake for 6 hours.
Now, you should still have a half cup of the whipping cream, and 4oz of semi-sweet. Crumble the semisweet. An hour before serving the cheesecake, heat the cream until small bubbles start to form. At that point, stir in the semi-sweet until it’s melted and the mixture is smooth. Let it cool for 5-10 minutes. This is your glaze.
While the glaze is cooling, remove the cake from it’s pan and put it on a cake plate. Spread or drizzle the cooled glaze over the top and sides of the cheesecake, then chill the cake for 45 minutes so the glaze sets.
Cut, serve, orgasm.
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