Oreo Cheesecake

 

The weather has been fantastic for baking the past 2 weeks, low 20’s Celsius and no humidity!

On Thursday my cousin Amy came out to bake, I love having someone to bake with.  Our plan was to make 2 different cheesecakes and share them, we each picked a flavour.  We started with Amy’s selection, Oreo Cheesecake.  This is one I had been wanting to try for a very long time.  We went with the original base I always use and just added to it.

We both commented on how we really don’t like Oreo’s, but liked them in things.  I would never buy a bag of Oreo’s just to eat, I find them very boring, but put them in something like, cheesecake or ice cream and they are great!    Well, to be fair I don’t buy any cookies, if I want a cookie I make them.

 

Chocolate Cookie Crumb Crust

1 1/4 cups Chocolate Cookie Crumbs
1/4 cup butter, melted
3 tbsp sugar

Combine crumbs, sugar and melted butter and press into a spring-form pan.

Bake the crust at 350º F for approx 10 minutes.   Set aside to cool.

*** Now is a good time to waterproof your spring from pan for the water bath.

This picture is from a previous cheesecake.  This time I bought heavy duty wide foil, leak proof!

I have made some small changes (not noted, somethings just have to be a secret) over the years to make it just right for me, but I still basically follow the recipe I got way back when I started with the Daring Bakers

 

Cheesecake:

I did not take pictures of the first part of the recipe, kind of forgot.  For step by step photos please see steps 4-7 here (sorry!)

3 sticks of cream cheese,  room temperature
1 cup sugar
3 large eggs
1 cup heavy cream
1 tbsp. vanilla extract (or the innards of a vanilla bean)
1 bag Oreo Cookies
4 oz semi sweet chocolate

DIRECTIONS:
1. Preheat oven to 350ºF . Begin to boil a large pot of water for the water bath.

2. In a double boiler slowly melt chocolate – set aside to cool

3. Before you start on the cheesecake batter prepare your Oreo Cookies.  We smashed them with a meat wacker in a large baggie. Careful, the teeth on the meat wacker (I am sure there is a better name for it?) will pierce the bag!

4. 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.

5. Add the cooled chocolate and stir to combine

6. Stir in Oreo’s

 

7. Pour into prepared spring form pan

8. Place in a large roasting pan and fill with boiling water 3/4 the way up the cheesecake pan

9. 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

*****First time EVER mine cracked!!!!

I was furious!  Amy was trying to tell me it was ok, but seriously I was angry!  Why would it crack It has never happened before.  I stuck a knife down the crack to see what was going on and it was like soup! Raw!  NOOOOOOO!  Now I really start to panic.  Is it ruined? Did we waste all those ingredients? God help me if this has to go in the garbage!

Started boiling the water again and back into the oven it went for another hour!  Not even sure if it was possible to recook, especially after it had cooled in the oven for over an hour, but at this point it was our only option!

At this point we abandon the second cheesecake as we just didn’t have time.  We were heading back to Amy’s for a lovely dinner with our families.  If we would have done the second cheesecake dinner would have been about 9pm.

Because we were so far behind, as soon as ‘we thought’ the cheesecake was done we turned it off and headed in to dinner.  It would cool down in the oven and be fine until i got back home.  I was still furious and worried that it was not going to turn out.

When I got home I took it out of the oven and did the knife test again, in the giant crevasse (still annoys me that it cracked!) it was firm but still not completely solid.  I put it in the fridge and would deal with it in the morning.

The day got busy and plans changed, I did not get to it until later in the evening.  I took it out of the spring form pan, strictly to see if it held it shape.  It did!

 

I quickly put it back on and went to deliver it.  When I got there, I was going to leave the whole thing, but they insisted I take half.

I took the ring off again and started to cut it, praying that it was not a soupy centre…I must have looked very concerned, my Aunt and Uncle were laughing at me, saying it would be fine that I set my standards too high.  I said at this point my standards are “cooked!” As it was raw the first time.   I cautiously cut into it….

Success!

It was firm and cooked!

YAAAY!!

I completely forgot about pictures I was just so excited it turned out!  We all had a forkful and agreed it was a success! Whew!  What a relief, I would have gone crazy if I had to put that in the garbage!

When I got home I did remember to take a picture

 

It was quite delicious.  I would make an Oreo Cheesecake again.  I was really impressed how the Oreo pieces stayed throughout the cheesecake, unlike the chocolate chip one I made where they all sank.

Despite the near disaster, I had a great day baking with Amy, we will have to do it again to do the second cheesecake….stay tuned!