Abbey's Infamous Cheesecake

B More Sweet Blog

Ingredients:
Crust:
2 cups Shortbread Cookie Crumbs
1 stick / 4 oz. unsalted butter, melted
1 tsp. Baldwin's vanilla extract

Cheesecake:
3 blocks of cream cheese, 8 oz. each (total of 24 oz.), room temperature
1 cup granulated sugar
3 large eggs
1 cup heavy cream (or sour cream for extra "zing")
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

Preparation Instructions

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

2.  Lightly grease the bottom and sides of a springform pan with Crisco or softened butter.  Mix together the crust ingredients and press into the prepared pan.  You can press the crust just into the bottom, or up the sides of the pan too - baker's choice.  Set crust aside.

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 (I substituted sour cream for the heavy cream, just to give the batter that extra zip), vanilla, lemon juice, and alcohol (I used Grand Marnier) and blend until smooth and creamy.

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.  (Note:  even if you've used your springform pan previously, and you haven't had a leakage problem, you should probably wrap the bottom of the pan in aluminum foil to prevent heartache.  Most springform pans have some leakage.)

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 cooking 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.

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.  Please plan accordingly!

Dressing it up to look as pretty as the picture:  Drizzle some warm butterscotch on top and add some homemade butterscotch candies.  Melt some butterscotch disks in the microwave, pour the melted butterscotch into candy molds and put them in the fridge to chill.  Unmold them, and voila - very pretty.