Caramel Cheesecake (or “It never rains, but it pours”)

Saturday, 10 Jul 10

You know those days/weeks/months where you’re really better off staying out of the kitchen, but you really really really want to make something extravagant and amazing? Where you know it’s just going to end in disaster, but you really can’t resist? Yeah, it was one of those weeks.

Straight out of a hectic exam schedule (hardest subject in law school, stats subject with a 50% fail rate that I need to get into Honours, going into an exam worth half my grade having barely read all the course material…no sweat. =_=;;) I wanted to challenge myself. Yeah, well, you can already tell this was a stupid idea from the outset.

I chose the amazing Tartelette’s pillow cheesecake recipe. Cheesecake is something I’ve made before successfully, and my family loved it last time, so I thought we would get along fine. And we did. Sort of. In the end, it was a mixture of triumph and despair, one gigantic roller-coaster ride that left everyone sort of nauseous, but exhilarated, at the end.

Take for example, the cheesecake itself. The scotch finger crust (not in the original recipe) came together perfectly, and the caramel sauce, pictured above, was seriously to die for. I was contemplating simply pouring it down my throat, cheesecake be damned. Alarm bells started going off in my head when the cream cheese stubbornly refused to soften, despite leaving it at room temperature for the better part of the day. And then there was the problem of fitting it into the mixing bowl, particularly when the whipped egg whites were added. It was stressful, but I got it into the oven fine, managed to save enough caramel sauce to feather a lovely pattern that I was absolutely proud of…

…when it evaporated away in the heat of the oven, leaving only subtle reminders of where the beautiful caramel flower had been…

Of course, that wouldn’t have mattered so much if there weren’t a massive crack or 3 destroying the pattern. Sigh.

Then I thought, well, we can fix that. Still some caramel sauce left, and some cream in the fridge. I’ll just glaze the top with the sauce and be done with it.

my mouth is watering in memory of this sauce…

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I decided to fancy it up with more feathering using cream, this time going in stripes, making it more akin to this okonomiyaki than the previous flower.

To do this, you simply pipe horizontal lines back and forth across a liquid surface. Then quickly, before it sets, you run a knife tip or toothpick down vertically in stripes, before doing the same except the other way. And you know, that would have looked great, except for the fact the caramel dripped off the cake, taking with it much of my pretty pattern, which also mysteriously decided to disappear into the caramel. Gah. I’ll spare you the pictures of how it looked after that. >_<

So then I decided I had to detract attention away from the no longer glossy and smooth surface of the cheesecake, and what better way to do it than with pointy bits of caramel that could take someone’s eye out? xD

I guess the caramel dipped macadamia nuts didn’t turn out too badly. However, there was a lot of stress and mess involved, from keeping the caramel at the right temperature for dipping without letting it burn, to the mess in the kitchen and on Tim and I with sugar threads everywhere, to worrying about transporting it, since it had to be kept separate from the cake and kept getting stuck to each other…needless to say, by the time the cheesecake was served, I was too disheartened to really enjoy the cake or caramelised nuts.

And like this entire journey…

Reviews were mixed. Generally, people loved the cheesecake base. The texture was indeed pillowy, and not dry like some cheesecakes can be. And the combination of vanilla and caramel was spot on…it was just a little too sweet for many of the adults, especially the aunt the party was for, who was returning to Vietnam after a holiday. Amongst the younger people, the cheesecake was loved, and everyone thought the caramel nut decorations were spectacular.

5 Comments

1. I know what you mean…I spent a week dreaming up a jaffa dessert plate and, amongst other things, it definitely didn’t turn out how I thought it would look. People thought it tasted good but it didn’t look nor taste up to scratch in my mind, and after all that effort!

   Comment by mademoiselle délicieuse — July 10, 2010 @ 12:09 pm

2. I like how one is dressed in camouflage paint and another sports weapons of pointy destruction haha they all look insanely pro btw especially that caramel flower pattern

   Comment by Grace — July 15, 2010 @ 12:16 pm

3. I think both the flower and stripey designs are brilliant – you could imagine them in a fancy cake shop. And I just love the drippy caramel photo….

   Comment by OohLookBel — July 15, 2010 @ 12:44 pm

4. I love the spiky caramel macadamia nuts! Caramel cheesecakes are my favourite kind of cheesecakes. and the scotch finger base is a fantastic idea!

   Comment by Amy @ cookbookmaniac — July 17, 2010 @ 8:17 pm

5. […] brownies. But stubborn me felt the need to adapt. I made them with the remnants of the caramel from the cheesecake, which resulted in deliciously sticky lickable fingers and crumbs everywhere….And these […]

   Pingback by the way it crumbles » Cheesecake Brownies — August 19, 2010 @ 7:54 pm

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