Search This Blog

Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Coffee Toffee Cheesecake - The Results!

Ta-da! My beautifully decorated cheesecake.

So, if you'll recall, I was making my first ever cheesecake just the other day.  Great news!  The coffee toffee cheesecake worked out awesomely!  It was far easier than I could have ever imagined.  If I can do it, you can do it.  I swear.  The above picture is my cheesecake after it had cooled over night.  I added the chopped up Heath Bars all over it and then melted dark chocolate and piped a nice design - cause that's how I roll. 

Now, here's how you too can make a delicious Coffee Toffee Cheesecake.  I used the linked recipe with a couple of small adjustments, which you can read about in my original cheesecake post.

I seriously followed the directions other than the previously read/written about small adjustments which I couldn't help, because I'm lazy.

One thing I will tell you, that I didn't know about until I was making a cheesecake is that you MUST wrap your spring form pan with tin foil.  (Yes, even if your spring form pan has a bottom.)  I laughed at the idea of wrapping tin foil around my pan, but did it anyway because I wasn't sure.  I'm really happy I did wrap the darn thing because when I removed the foil and pan it was all sticky/buttery gross and that would have ended up all over the place.  The tin foil just helps you contain the mess.  I used two sheets of foil and made sure to wrap all the way up around the sides of my pan.

I'll also say that when/if I make my crust again I will pulse the crap out of those cookies to make the crust easier to spread and mold to the bottom of the pan.

This is a picture of my cheesecake right after it had come out of the oven, still in it's water bath.  (Yes, you need to use the water bath.  Do it.)


After my cheesecake came out of the oven I delicately removed it from the water bath - so it'll stop cooking - and placed it on the counter to cool.  When it had cooled completely I covered the top with foil (cling wrap tends to fall in on the top and make it look ugly.) and put it in the fridge for the night.  Yup, just leave the foil and spring form pan as is, there's no reason to remove it yet.

The next morning I pulled the cheesecake out of the fridge and removed all the foil and the spring form pan.  It's messy, be prepared.  I used a new piece of foil on the bottom of my pan so I could move the cheesecake around without getting everything else in my kitchen gross.  I had my Heath Bars already chopped into a fine powder and sprinkled it all over.  The recipe calls for 4 Heath Bars but you will be fine with 3.  I melted my dark chocolate (when you melt chocolate in the microwave you should do it in 30sec increments so you don't burn your chocolate, ever 30sec take it out and stir it around), and put it in a small ziploc bag so I could pipe a nice design.  I stupidly didn't wait for my dark chocolate to cool sufficiently so I tried to burn my hands off.

Here's a nice side view of my decorated cheesecake.


And finally, cut that cheesecake up and eat it! Eat it like there's no tomorrow!


Monday, July 29, 2013

Coffee Toffee Cheese Cake!


I bought a spring form pan today so I could make my first ever cheesecake. Of course, being me I couldn't just make regular cheesecake, the fancier the better, so I'm making a Coffee Toffee Cheesecake! And I'm crossing my fingers that everything turns out properly. My creation is currently in the oven.

I mostly followed the recipe I found online.  My first alteration was that I couldn't find a 9" spring form pan- okay i was lazy and bought my pan at Safeway- so I bought a 10" pan. My second alteration was that I couldn't find chocolate wafer cookies so I used "Tuxedos" aka the generic Oreo.  I used my sexy new food processor (my anniversary gift from Bob this year) to pulse the crap out of the cookies. It was perfection. And my last alteration was using instant espresso rather than just plain instant coffee.
The above picture is my sexy crust.
The below picture is my filling before I poured it into the crust. The filling was thick and pudding-esque, and DELICIOUS! It honestly crossed my mind to just eat the filling as pudding.
After my cheesecake comes out of the oven and I doll it all up I'll have a follow up post.  (PS- I wrote this from my phone! How totally awesome is technology?!)