Steps in my perilous cheesecake journey. It was a bumpy ride and the crack made me cry but it recovered well.
I decided to bake a cheesecake for Christmas dinner over at Elaine and Kenny’s after being inspired by my monthly Cook’s Illustrated magazine. I mean, it was even called Foolproof New York Cheesecake. How could I possibly go wrong?!?
Well, I discovered that cheesecake is a tricky bitch. I followed all of their steps to a tee, but the one point that I was completely helpless on, which is a huge step btw, was the tempreature of my oven. The recipe calls for a 200 degree (F) oven for 3-3 1/2 hours. Turns out that my oven never goes below 250 degrees. I never knew this because I had never used an oven thermometer previously. It was basically watching a slow moving train wreck happen in my oven.
When I finally removed the cheesecake from the over heated oven – 30 minutes earlier than anticipated – it looked lovely. For about 5 minutes. Then a crack the size of San Andreas Fault began to appear in the center. Wah!
Thank goodness for the internets. I did some research and found a few ways to fix a crack. Only problem was that I would have to wait overnight for the cake to cool before I could try any of these methods which meant that for the entire evening I was convinced that my cheesecake was ruined and Christmas was going to be cancelled.
Fast forward to Christmas morning. I unmold the cake and apart from the giant crack it looks pretty amazing. I set to work on method #1 of fixing the crack which didn’t work for shit. Moved on to method #2 – a sour cream topping baked onto it – and this worked perfectly. It actually added a wonderful flavor to the cheesecake.
Christmas was saved and the cheesecake was served with raspberries on top. It was delicious. Actually quite perfect.
But will I ever make cheesecake again? It might be awhile before that happens after my PTSD from this one.
