Homemade cheesecake requires patience and planning
Around Thanksgiving, my dad and I watched a Food Network special
in which the Barefoot Contessa Ina Garten made a cheesecake from
scratch. My dad watched it, and then backed up the Tivo to make my
mom watch it, too. So I promised him I would make a cheesecake from
scratch for our Christmas Eve buffet.
Homemade cheesecake requires patience and planning
Around Thanksgiving, my dad and I watched a Food Network special in which the Barefoot Contessa Ina Garten made a cheesecake from scratch. My dad watched it, and then backed up the Tivo to make my mom watch it, too. So I promised him I would make a cheesecake from scratch for our Christmas Eve buffet.
I looked at a few cheesecake recipes in magazines and online. The options seemed endless. There was a peppermint cheesecake, a caramel toffee cheesecake, a pumpkin cheesecake, and on and on. Last weekend I selected a recipe and added the ingredients to my shopping list for Christmas Eve. It included eggs, sour cream and cream cheese. But then as the Wednesday before Christmas drew near, I realized I couldn’t remember which cheesecake recipe I had selected. I looked at a few in the magazine and a few online and none of them seemed to match up. Finally I found an Alton Brown recipe that almost matched up – luckily we had some extra sour cream in the refrigerator.
By the time I found the recipe, I also realized that cheesecake is a bit more complicated than I had anticipated. I knew I had to bake the cake on Wednesday because the cake needs to be refrigerated overnight to finish setting. The Alton Brown recipe I selected calls for baking the crust before adding in the cheesecake mixture. Then the cake is baked for an hour in a water bath before the oven is turned off and opened for one minute. Then the cake is left in the oven for another hour before it is pulled out to be refrigerated for at least six hours. By the time the dessert came out it was well past 9 p.m. Things might have gone even more awry when I realized the spring form pan I used for the cheesecake isn’t exactly watertight (so a tiny bit of water got in around the crust).
The finishing touches were put on the next morning – a border of homemade whipped cream and a cherry topping made from canned Bing cherries. The work was well worth it since most of the cake went on Christmas Eve, and a few guests requested to-go plates. The only downside is that there was left than half a slice left to enjoy on Christmas Day.
Sour cream cheesecake
Recipe courtesy of Alton Brown
Crust:
33 graham cracker squares, crumbled
4 oz. (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted, plus additional, for brushing the pan
1 tbsp. sugar
Filling:
20 oz. cream cheese
1 1/4 c. sour cream
1 c. sugar
1 tbsp. vanilla extract
2 eggs
3 yolks
1/3 c. heavy cream
Preheat oven to 300 degrees F. Brush some of the melted butter around a 9-by-3-inch cake pan. Adhere parchment to the bottom and the sides.
In a small bowl, combine crumbled graham crackers, the remaining melted butter, and 1 tablespoon of sugar. Press 2/3 of the mixture into the bottom of the parchment-lined pan. Place remaining crumbs on a sheet pan and bake both the crust and the remaining mixture for 10 minutes. Cool. Reserve additional crumb mixture for sides.
In a mixer with a paddle attachment, beat sour cream for 10 seconds. Add the cream cheese and sugar and mix on low for 30 seconds and then turn up to medium. Scrape the bowl.
In a separate container, combine vanilla, eggs, yolks, and heavy cream. With the mixer on medium, slowly pour the liquid mixture in. When half of it is incorporated, stop and scrape. Continue adding the mixture until the rest of the ingredients are incorporated. Once completely combined, pour into the cooled crust.
Lower oven temperature to 250 degrees F. Place cheesecake into a preheated water bath, in the oven for 1 hour. Turn the oven off and open the door for one minute. Close the door for one more hour. Remove the cheesecake from the water bath and place in the refrigerator for 6 hours to completely cool before serving.
When ready to serve, place the entire cake pan into a hot water bath for about 15 seconds. Unmold onto a cake round or serving dish. Take the remaining graham cracker mixture and press into the sides of the cake.
To slice, place your knife into a hot water bath and wipe dry each time you make a pass through the cake.
Cherry topping
1 can Oregon bing cherries
¼ c. sugar, or to taste
2 tbsp. corn syrup
Drain the cherry syrup into a medium saucepan. Add in sugar and corn syrup until the mixture begins to thicken. Add in the cherries and turn off the heat. Allow the topping to cool well before putting on top of the cheesecake.
Stabilized whipped cream for dessert decorator
½ c. heavy whipping cream
2 tbsp. confectioner’s sugar
2 tbsp. piping gel
1 tsp. vanilla extract
Mix the heavy cream and sugar in a mixer until it reaches soft peaks. Add in piping gel and vanilla extract. Mix until whipped cream forms hard peaks. Scoop into the dessert decorator with a spoon, and selected a tip that will form a nice border for the cheesecake. The whipped cream will keep the cherry topping from falling drizzling down the sides of the cake.
