Raspberry Lemon Cheesecake Daring Bakers April 2009

The April 2009 challenge is hosted by Jenny from Jenny Bakes. She has chosen Abbey's Infamous Cheesecake as the challenge. When I saw that this was this months challenge, I was very excited! I LOVE CHEESECAKE, the husband, not so much! Meaning, I don't make cheesecake that often because I would eat the entire thing! The real challenge this month is to take this basic recipe and play with it. Make it unique. Make a showstopper of a dessert. Add flavor, sauces, decorations – dress it up and show it off. So, I thought of all the variations that I could do and jotted them down on paper. I decided that since I have freezer full of raspberries, I could do something with them. As I read the recipe it called for lemon juice and I then remembered just purchasing about6 lemons at the store about a week ago! So, Raspberry Lemon Cheesecake was what I was about to make. Here is the recipe that we were to follow.

Abbey's Infamous Cheesecake:
Crust:
2 cups graham cracker crumbs
1 stick butter, melted
2 tbsp. sugar
1 tsp. vanilla extract

Filling:
3 (8 oz.) cream cheese, room temperature
1 cup sugar
3 large eggs
1 cup 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

CHANGES THAT I MADE:

I used 2 cups of chocolate animal crackers instead of graham crackers
2 Tablespoons fresh squeezed lemon juice
1 Teaspoon fresh lemon zest
Raspberry sauce - I made this by boiling down some raspberries and then straining them from their seeds. I then again simmered them to make them thicker.
Omitted the liqueur

DIRECTIONS:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. 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. I prepared the 8 inch spring form pan by lining the bottom with 2 layers of plastic wrap and bringing it up the sides of the pan then covered the plastic wrap with heavy duty aluminum foil and brought the foil to the top of the pan. This prevented the water bath from leaking into the pan and making the crust soggy!

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. This is when I swirled the raspberry syrup onto the top of the cheesecake. Next time I am going to pour half of the cheesecake mixture into the pan, spread raspberry syrup and then top with remaining cheesecake mixture. 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.

I then swirled my raspberry syrup on the top!

5. Bake 45 to 55 minutes, until it is almost done -I baked for 65 minutes and would probably bake for 70-75 minutes next time, 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. Then dig in and enjoy! It was so yummy that I think that I will be making this for G1's First Communion this weekend!