Three Cheesecake

Just as we were starting to lose faith in Martha.

Ingredients

For the crust:

• cooking spray
• 1 & 1/3 cups crushed cinnamon graham crackers
• 2 tbsp unsalted butter, melted
  

For the filling:

• 1 cup sour cream, room temperature
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 4 oz mascarpone cheese, room temp
• 4 oz cream cheese, room temp
• 2 oz soft goat cheese, room temp
• 3/4 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/4 tsp lemon zest
• 1 cup heavy cream

Make the crust the way you normally would. Coat a 9" springform pan with cooking spray and line the bottom with parchment paper. Crush the graham crackers in a food processor, adding the butter slowly. Press the mixture into the bottom of the pan. Refrigerate while you make the filling.
Beat the sour cream, 1/3 cup of the sugar, the cheeses, vanilla, and lemon with an egg-beater on medium speed until very smooth, about 4 minutes. DO NOT pass through a sieve at this step. MARTHA. Add the heavy cream and the other 1/3 cup sugar and beat on medium until medium peaks form.
Spread evenly over the crust. Smooth top and freeze until firm, about 2 hours. Move to the refrigerator for about 45 minutes about serving.
Can be topped with fruit compote of your choosing.

Thoughts: Hot damn. This is the best cheesecake I have eaten. Dan agrees. The goat cheese really does good things here. The only thing I would do differently is add more butter to the crust. There wasn't nearly enough to make the crust adhere properly, so it sort of crumbled away when you cut a slice. But that's easily remediable. We would maybe double the amount of butter in the crust to 4 tbsp. It's also a little tricky to move the cake from the freezer to the fridge, and then back to the freezer. You have to remember to let it thaw a little before you eat it, otherwise it just sort of tastes like the freezer. But I don't think you can just leave it in the fridge 24/7, because it's no-bake and it might de-constitute itself or something. All in all, this is hella easy to make and hella delicious.

Disaster Index: 1/10, even with the imperfect crust

Chocolate banana icebox cake

Ingredients

• 15 oz chocolate chips -- we did a mixture of milk and semi-sweet
• 5 large egg yolks
• salt
• 3 cups heavy whipping cream
• graham crackers -- just buy a box of them. We used the cinnamon ones.
  
• 4-5 ripe bananas, sliced in half widthwise, then sliced lengthwise a few times
• whipped cream, for garnish

Place chocolate chips in a heatproof bowl.
Place egg yolks and pinch of salt in another heatproof bowl.
Bring the cream to a simmer in a medium saucepan. Temper the yolks, then slowly incorporate, whisking constantly. You will probably scramble the eggs a little. Don't worry about it.
Return mixture to saucepan over low heat. Cook, stirring constantly, until mixture is thick enough to coat the back of a wooden spoon (about 8 minutes). Do not let mixture come to a boil.
Strain mixture through a fine sieve to remove the bits of egg that you scrambled.
Stir mixture into chocolate until the chocolate fully melts, incorporates, and is smooth.
Refrigerate, stirring occasionally to break up the skin, until the chocolate is thick (about 4 hours -- our fridge is much colder than normal fridges, so we did it for maybe 2. Just do it until it's pretty stiff).
Line a 5x10 loaf pan with plastic wrap. Use about twice as much as you need, since you'll be covering the top of the loaf pan with it when you're done.
Spread 1 cup chocolate evenly into bottom of loaf pan. Top with a layer of graham crackers. You may have to break some of them to fit.
Spread 1/2 cup chocolate over the crackers, and top that layer with bananas. Get as many banana slices as you can onto each layer.
Spread another 1/2 cup chocolate over bananas, and top with more graham crackers.
Repeat this step until you get toward the top. The final layer should be a layer of graham crackers. This will be the bottom crust, since you'll be inverting it to serve.
Cover the top with plastic wrap, and refrigerate overnight.
To serve, uncover and turn out onto serving platter. The crackers will have softened to cake-like consistency from the chocolate. It will be delicious.
Serve with whipped cream, if y'all want.

Thoughts: We were not at all sure that this would work out, but it totally did and it was totally awesome. The original recipe called for all milk chocolate, which didn't sit right with us (what is the point of milk chocolate anyway) so we mixed in some semi-sweet, but in the future I think we would just use 100% semi-sweet. The chocolate flavor was not as pronounced as we would have liked. We also would have added more banana. The recipe calls for 4-5 bananas, but we could only fit 3. We probably didn't space them efficiently enough. But we will next time. This was totally delicious. And hella easy. And seriously, who wants to actually bake when it's so hot out? Not us.

Disaster Index:1/10

Pumpkin Cheesecake

Cleaning off my desk before moving, I found this recipe we made a while ago. I need a break from taping boxes, so I thought I'd blog this. It's my mother's recipe, though I think I modified it when I actually made it.

Ingredients

• 1/4lb ginger snaps or graham crackers
  
• 1/2 stick of butter
  
• 1lb cream cheese (the real stuff)
  
• 1 can pumpkin (12 or 14oz or so - whatever it is)
  
• 3 eggs
  
• .75c dark brown sugar
  
• .75c white sugar
  
• 1.5tsp cinnamon
  
• .5tsp ginger
  
• .5tsp nutmeg
  
• or in place of the ginger and nutmeg, use 1tsp "baking spice", which also has anise and probably cloves, I'd imagine.
  

Crush the ginger snaps or gram crackers, then melt the butter and combine thoroughly. Press into the bottom of a 9-10" springform and chill for 1 hour.

Meanwhile, beat the cream cheese in a mixer, then add eggs and then everything else. Make sure the cream cheese and eggs are at room temperature when you begin, otherwise the cream cheese gets lumpy. We had this problem - if it happens, mix everything together, then set up a double boiler and stir the mixture thoroughly until the cream cheese is more or less combined.

About 15 minutes before the crust is done chilling, preheat the oven to 350 and put pan of water on the bottom rack of the oven.

Pour the mixture into the crust and bake at 350 for about 45 minutes on a middle rack, until just jiggly in the middle (about 3/4 of the way in) but mostly set everywhere else. Cool on a cooling rack (or a stove burner cover) to about room temperature, then cover and chill in the fridge for at least 2 hours. Serve!


Thoughts: Very similar to a pumpkin pie, but... well... better. The tangy bite of the cream cheese really helps combat the frequent dullness of the pumpkin pie filling. I don't have too much negative to say about it. Claire didn't love it as much - she's not a huge fan of pumpkin, but I think that for thanksgiving, this gives the original a run for its money.

Disaster Index: 1/10

Key Lime Cheesecake

Incredibly successful
Ingredients

• Crust:
  
  
  
  • 12 graham crackers
    
  • 1/2 tsp salt
    
  • 1 stick butter
    
  
  
• Filling:
  
  
  
  • 16oz neufchatel cream cheese (2 packages)
    
  • heaping 2/3c granulated sugar
    
  • 2 eggs
    
  • 3tbsp key lime juice plus a little more to taste
    
  • 1tbsp lime zest plus more to taste (we used a lot)
    
  
  

Preheat the oven to 350. Crush the graham crackers with the salt. When they're ground fairly finely (we used a cuisinart) add the melted butter. Spread evenly and then press into the bottom of an 8.5" springform pan. Make sure the crust is really good and compacted. Bake for about 5 minutes or until set.

Meanwhile, just beat all of the other ingredients together. We used a whisk and did it by hand, though a kitchenaid would do wonders at this. Pour filling into cooled crust. In a separate pan with deep sides, add some water. Put it in the oven on a low rack and let it sit (oven closed) about five minutes to create a humid chamber. Now add the cheesecake onto an upper rack. Bake until the filling is set but still jiggles a little in the middle when you shake it, about 45 minutes. Let it cool completely and then cover with foil and refrigerate at least three hours before serving. Overnight is better. Serve!

Thoughts:This turned out great. The crust didn't release very well from the first slice, but I think there are ways to work around that. Otherwise, I would say this was just the ideal cheesecake. I just hope I transcribed the recipe correctly (we didn't write it down and it was sort of made up and cobbled together from a few recipes).

Disaster Index: 1/10