Tall and Creamy Cheesecake - TWD

Oh, simply divine! I love cheesecake and could eat it for every meal. Anne of Anne Strawberry chose this fine dessert for her pick. She baked hers with a peppermint bark twist and it looks fantastic. I was so excited and decided to make it for a Christmas Eve party that we went to. You can find the recipe HERE or on pages 235-237 in this gem of a cookbook.

This recipe involved an incredible amount of cream cheese, 4 blocks to be exact. I also used a combination of heavy cream and sour cream. When I was putting the recipe together I accidently dropped one of the eggs into the batter. Yeah....eggshell and all. Don't know how this happened, I just accidently dropped it in there. My KA mixer was running at the time. I got nervous and jumped to shut it off to get the egg shells out. Well, I accidently kicked up the speed and the egg shells got crunched into even smaller pieces. CRAP! I was not going to start over again and waste all of this cream cheese. I picked out what I could find and hoped for the best.

I put a small amount of fresh raspberries into the crust before I dumped in the filling. I was nervous about the water bath and had visions of the water leaking into the cheesecake. I was quite neurotic about the aluminum foil and must have checked that I double wrapped the pan several times. Luckily it turned out great and no water seaped in. I did have trouble finding a pan big enough to fit the springform pan and water covering the bottom half. Next time I make this (which I will), I am going to buy a huge re-usuable roaster pan for the bath.

The cheesecake was so flippin' good. I served it the same day after it had been chilling in the refrigerator for just a little over 4 hours. It was good, however, the next day was much, much better. The next time I plan to serve it to others I will bake it a day ahead. I hope to make it with key limes soon. My oldest son even liked it and couldn't get enough. I was kind of surprised and thought that this was kind of a "grown up dessert". Not really for 5 year olds. We were both sad when it was gone.

If you haven't made this cheesecake, it is so worth baking. Trust me...you will not be disappointed! I can't wait to see what the others did with it as there are so many variations that you could tinker with.

NOTE: As for the eggshell fiasco...it appears that only 2 people found some. The Hubster being one of them. He said that he couldn't tell if it was an eggshell or a raspberry seed. HURRAY!!