Cappuccino Cheesecake

I promised it, and here it is: Cheesecake.

I took this recipe out of the same cheesecake recipe book as my first Cheesecake post, and I have to say it was just as good as that one. I modified the recipe slightly to use a brewed shot of espresso rather than instant coffee, but I'm a bit of a coffee snob like that.

So without further ado, here it comes.

Cappuccino Cheesecake
(Serves 1, unless anyone else hears that you've made it)

Ingredients

Base

1 1/2C crushed Wine Biscuits
2T Sugar
50g Butter

Filling

500g Cream Cheese
1/2C Sugar
1 1/2T Flour
2 Eggs
1/2C Sour Cream
1 Short Black, with a pinch of cinnamon mixed in.

Whipped cream to serve

Pour a strong shot of espresso coffee. Add sugar and drink. This will put a spring in your step, if nothing else. Pour another shot for the cheesecake mixture and place in the freezer or fridge to cool.
Combine all the ingredients for the base in a blender, then press into a 20cm springform tin lined with baking paper. Bake at 160C for 10 minutes, remove from the oven and cool. Increase oven temperature to 230C.
In the blender, combine the cream cheese, sugar and flour, mixing at a medium speed until well blended. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing each in well. Add the Sour Cream and blend.
Add the cold coffee to the filling and mix well. Pour the filling over the base and bake for 10 minutes. Reduce the heat to 120C and bake for another 1 - 1 1/2 hours. Test with a knife to determine that the centre of the cheesecake is cooked.
Loosen from the rim of the tin and allow to cool before removing. Chill.
Serve with whipped cream or natural yoghurt, and maybe, just maybe, coffee.

(I'm going to be honest - I ate this for breakfast, just because I could.)

A New Yorker in New Zealand

I'm not a big desserts sort of a guy. You may have picked up on that from the scarcity of desserts gracing these pages. That and the fact that I refer to my lovely wife as Dessert Chef.

It is Dessert Chef that does the desserts. That is just how it is.

Until Dessert Chef got a book for her birthday.
If there is a dessert that can get my mouth watering at the very thought, it is real cheesecake.

For real cheesecake, I will enter the kitchen, roll up my sleeves and make dessert.

Also, and perhaps more importantly, the opportunity to make cheesecake was the best excuse I had ever had to buy a blender.

Yes, I can hear you. You're saying: "what, you don't already have a blender?" Well now I do.

There was no point wasting any more time. It's many years now since we were in New York, but my first stop on the Cheesecake Highway was at the corner of Fifth and Broadway.

I will say this: living out this particular dream was not a cheap one. You could have bought three of those cheap, sugary things that call themselves cheesecakes in supermarket fridges by the time you'd made this cheesecake. But the taste, without a doubt, simply does not compare.

And in reality I could have halved this recipe and made one smaller cheesecake which would have served us perfectly well, too. As it was we were eating cheesecake every night for half the week.

I am not complaining. Not one crumb.

New York Style Cheesecake

(Serves just the two of you, if you hide it from your guests)
Ingredients

Base
120g Wine Biscuits
3/4 C Sugar
50g melted Butter

Filling
1 1/2 C Sour Cream
1 C Sugar
2 Eggs
1 t Vanilla Essence
500g Cream Cheese
40g melted Butter
For the base, blend the biscuits, sugar and melted butter. (Look at the blender go. Isn't it sweet?)
Grease a 23cm springform pan and line the bottom with the base mixture, pressing down firmly and as evenly as possible.
Blend the sour cream, sugar, eggs and vanilla until smooth. (There it goes; that's one sweet blender.)
Chop up your cream cheese into small blocks. (I just wanted an excuse to put in a photo of the cream cheese. Nomnomnomnom.)
Add the cream cheese to the sour cream mixture and blend. Pour in the melted butter as you blend the mixture down to a smooth consistency. (You couldn't do that without a sweet, sweet blender.)
Pour the mixture over the base and spread out in an even layer.

Put the oven rack one third of the way up, and Fan Bake at 170C for 45mins. Check the interior of the cheesecake is cooked by sticking a knife in it - if it comes out mostly clean, it's done. (Ours took almost an hour.)

Refrigerate for at least 4 hours, overnight if you can.
Dust with icing sugar and serve with freshly whipped cream.