söndag 27 oktober 2013

Coffee swirl cheesecake

Some days, some decisions are tougher than others... I was up for a huge challenge. Decide what cheesecake to bake for the Christening of a baby. Well, not any baby... Just a specific one, a real cuty. The kid of two classmates of mine. Ok, former classmates of mine to be completely honest... Done studying since a couple of years back without being too specific... ;) Anyway, let us come to the point.
Point is... among all potential flavours and recipes there are for cheesecakes, how the hell do you come to the best choice? So... obviously doing a pre-taste of a few different ones and ask somebody to taste. The more people, the safer the choice. To do the pre-baking efficient, I tried to bake ONE cheesecake with different flavours and use the same basic recipe. And if you think that was an easy task, you are definitively wrong. How do you think you can efficiently keep the fillings separated from each other? As far as I know, you can't. So no picture of the trial cheesecake. Looked like crap. But gave a good idea of what people liked! The cheesecakes on trial were raspberry and white chocolate flavour, coffee flavour and a Nutella flavour. Most people preferred the raspberry one. The coffee one became somewhat too strong (too much coffee) and Nutella ones were undecided. Different opinions across the board. But one good idea by an original friend. Why not have two layers? One coffee layer and then the "regular cheesecake" at the top. Swirls that had appeared in the parts where the different cheesecake flavours merged gave the idea and they were deemed cool by my friend.
Coffee swirl cheesecake 2013-10-26


So here is the final recipe!

Ingredients

Crust
250gr digestive cookies (if you live in Sweden, go for the Göteborgs Original ones. Far better than what you will get when you use Original Americal McVities!)
150gr butter

Filling
2 eggs
180gr caster sugar
400gr Philadelphia cheese
1 tbs Espresso Nescafe
1 tbs hot water
Less than 1/2 tbs coffee powder (for decorative purposes)

Instructions

Heat up the oven to 175 degrees Celsius. I use the fan in the oven for more even heat.

Crumble the digestive cookies. I use a food processor with blades. Melt the butter. Please, make sure you do not heat it up too much, otherwise the crumble may become completely fluid. I promise you... ;)
Add the melted butter to the crushed cookies and mix until you get something you can actually cover a springform pan. As I am lazy and don't like to have my dough stick to the pan, I do put a baking sheet on the bottom of the pan and then also butter in the pan. Then put the crumble mix in it evenly. I always try to avoid getting too thick corners. Bake the crust for about 6-7 minutes.

Whisk eggs and sugar. Add Philadelphia cheese until incorporated. On the side mix both kinds of coffee with the water. Then add it to 2/3 of the mixture.

Put the mixture with the coffee at the bottom of the pre-baked crust. Add the remaining 1/3 of the mixture without any additional flavouring at the top. Do it carefully and try to cover the coffee completely.When you have done it, you can try to swirl a little.
"Raw" coffee cheesecake after having swirled the two mixtures together 2013-10-23
Or you don't... It's a free world. But fact is, I do think it will be very difficult to keep a clean cut in the two layers. And then it won't be a coffee swirl cheesecake any longer. Bake for 30 more minutes or so (maybe some additional 5 minutes can be needed).
Baked coffee cheesecake with swirls 2013-10-23
Cool to settle. I have personally only eaten cheesecakes one day after I have baked them, so they have always got one night in the fridge to settle. Unsure if it is necessary tough. It also keeps very well in the fridge so you do not need to eat it up in one shot. No excuses... ;)

If I had had some coffee beans, I would have probably distributed a couple of those in the middle or on the side for decoration purposes. Or if I had had some time to waste, I would have done some out of chocolate and sprinkled it over the cake in the middle or on the side for the same purpose. But now I had neither time nor coffee beans so it had to do without any decoration.







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