Week One - New York Style Cheesecake

Well, I figured I would start this adventure off with a bang...A classic.  A memory of my hometown.  My grandmother, who we called Mimi's absolute favorite.  Cheesecake.  It was actually Mike's (my husband!) suggestion.  We had had Christmas Eve dinner at my sister-in-law Melanie's house.  Her fiance's mother, Judy had made this cheesecake and it got rave reviews all around! So I decided to try it.

The recipe is actually a Betty Croker recipe and it sounded great.  Especially the part about the orange zest, which was my favorite part of the Christmas eve forkful that I had tasted.

The recipe can be found here: http://www.bettycrocker.com/recipes/new-york-cheesecake/0a4668cd-a8e0-4af7-ad07-8cfb8c6e0084

So I started out.

The crust: Took me two tries.  I first put an egg white in the crust instead of an egg yolk. Whoops. Close reading required!  I put the crust in the oven for the bottom and it burned more than I thought it would but not enough to scrap it...I didn't put the bottom plate on a baking pan as the recipe suggested and I think I had it on too high of a rack in the oven. Notes for next time.

So here's a confession. I am not a cheesecake fan as I cannot stand the smell of cream cheese.  So was kinda tough putting 5 packages of cream cheese in the bowl. I held my nose alot....

The zest however, was lovely. Both the lemon and the orange...loved it.

The baking process was a trial. I put the springform pan in by itself first and the crust started to burn again.  So I took one of the oven racks out and lowered the cake further away from heat source.  That seemed to help.  I also put the cake pan on a baking pan and that also helped. 

All in all I made it through the baking and it smelled great....But no trying yet. Had to cool and refrigerate...

So the next day after work, we finally ate it. And it was pretty good!!!!! The crust was not even that burned....And not that hard.  The time commitment was the biggest thing. but it was worth it!

Suggestions for next time: Make the crust recipe 1.5 times instead of one. I like a thicker crust.  The cheesecake amount in the receipe is so much that I feel like it needs more crust to stand up.  Judy had said she put orange zest in the crust and I would like to try that next time.  And of course, use the baking pan to reduce the burning...

Next up: Another American classic - Pumpkin Pie with gingersnap crust....