Oreo Chocolate Cheesecake -Daring Baker's Challenge

This is my very first daring baker's challenge~! I'm so excited!

For April 2009 challenge is hosted by Jenny from Jenny Bakes. She has chosen Abbey's Infamous Cheesecake as the challenge. Yummy Yummy cheesecake. We are allowed to make some changes to the recipe and i've decided to use Oreo biscuits as the base instead of Graham crackers. 

MMMmmmMMM i love Oreo 

*twist lick and dip!* <----Oreo's slogan

When i read about the challenge about a couple of weeks ago and it was cheesecake i was like "yes!". I love making cheese cakes.

This reminds me of when i first started out baking, back in high school, my first couple of cheesecake attempt was a BIG failure= BURNT Cheesecakes. This is was because i didn't use 

the water bath method. Only when i started to read the recipe notes "carefully", i found out we were suppose to use the :steam oven: method! I felt really really silly for not reading it carefully *slaps my head* Well, i guess lesson well learnt! :)

Abbey's Infamous Cheesecake:

Ingredients List:

Crust:

2 cups / 180 g Oreo cookies (crushed)

1 stick / 4 oz butter, melted

Cheesecake Batter:

3 sticks of cream cheese, 8 oz each (total of 24 oz) room temperature

1 cup / 210 g sugar

3 large eggs

1 cup / 8 oz 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

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 180C = Moderate heat). 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.

Remove the cream from the cookies. Anyone up for Oreo cream?

Melt Butter

Mix butter with crushed Oreo biscuits

It will then look like this

Oh yes! Not to forget, line the pan before you do anything else!

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. The batter should then look like this.

4. Pour batter into prepared crust and tap the pan on the counter a few times to bring all air bubbles to the surface. 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.

Secure bottom with foil

5. Bake 45 to 55 minutes, until it is almost done - 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.

Pan note: The creator of this recipe used to use a springform pan, but no matter how well she wrapped the thing in tin foil, water would always seep in and make the crust soggy. Now she uses one of those 1-use foil "casserole" shaped pans from the grocery store. They're 8 or 9 inches wide and really deep, and best of all, water-tight. When it comes time to serve, just cut the foil away.

Prep notes: While the actual making of this cheesecake is a minimal time commitment, it does need to bake for almost an hour, cool in the oven for an hour, and chill overnight before it is served. 

While its baking in the oven, i melted some chocolate for the decoration.

After a long 45 mins, the cake's ready!

I covered the entire cake with ganache (not a very good job here)

The end result!

Doesn't it just look yum? 

Now, who wants to be a cake tester?? anyone??

Toodles~

Lilia