I was excited by this month's challenge, chosen by our lovely hosts, Deborah of Taste and Tell and Elle of FME, especially because my husband loves NY style cheesecake. But I've only made cheesecake three or four times in the last seven years, it's always seemed a little complicated and time-consuming!
Well, I actually started on the challenge yesterday. Things got off to a great start, the batter looked, and tasted, divine. I took the recipe down by 1/5th as I happened to only have 32 oz of cream cheese. I still got a lot of batter! I filled one 7-inch springform tin almost full, and had more than enough for a mini 4-inch cake with crust for hubby dear.
The scooping needless to say was not easy. As you can see they weren't so smooth!
The white center should have been clue no. 1
The cake appeared done in about an hour, it wasn't jiggling and I let it cool for a while, but i think here is where I made mistake No. 1, I popped it into the fridge while still warm before I headed to work, because I didn't trust the other adult in the house to remember to. Anyway, I come home about 9 hours later, ready to scoop out, and I found that the top and sides were fine, but the center was liquidy! Panic set in. I managed to scoop out the liquidy bit and then make about 12 with the firm parts. I plan to use the liquid part to make individual cakes as shown here. I'm not sure whether this is because I overfilled the pan, whether the water bath somehow retarded the cooking (the parts done were mostly the ones above the water) and of course the genius of refrigerating the cake while still warm.
The scooping needless to say was not easy. As you can see they weren't so smooth!
Anyway, this afternoon I took them out of the freezer and finished them up. My husband needless to say loved it. My 4-year-old liked the chocolate and sprinkles, but wasn't too keen on the cheesecake... she's very fussy.
Well, I think I might try this again, when I have a larger freezer, and my husband has more self-control!
