Why Cheesecake is So Darn Expensive: Part 1

In honor of my friend's long prolonged birthday party, I decided to make her a cheesecake. Because she likes cheesecake.  But also because we were going to make cheesecake together this summer, but since she moved and she's also quite busy, and I am now going to be heading off to MIT quite shortly, I decided to blog her cheesecake making process instead as a temporary substitute.

Let me just tell you the history of my decision to make an ultra fancy cheesecake: I like to bake things.  And preferably things you can't easily buy in a bakery.  So when my friend said "let's bake plain cheesecake" I told her that was boring, and of course linked her this: http://www.crazyforcrust.com/2013/11/110-cheesecake-recipes/.  Which of course led to the selection of Black Forest Cheesecake.

So now, 2 months later, I'm stuck making Black Forest Cheesecake and writing a blog post about it while praying to the baking gods that it turns out alright.  Although anything cakelike does tend to go "kablooey" (I'm mostly a cookie baker) on me, so I guess we'll see...

Credits to the Brown Eyed Baker for the recipe, with many modifications that were possibly not intentional.

To create your Black Forest Cheesecake, you must start with a delicious crust.  Since I knew my sister would want oreos, I bought two packages of oreos I'd actually want to eat, Megastuffed and Mint Oreos (Added benefit: Friend likes mint chocolate! Yay!).  I used approximately 12 Mint Oreos, 4 Megastuffed oreos, and about 5 graham crackers I found laying around and used a food processor to turn them into a not-so-fine-crumb-because-I'm-impatient.

Combination of Oreo and Graham Cracker Crumbs!

Theoretically, the combination of mint oreo, megastuffed oreo, and graham crackers should blend nicely together, the mint contrasting the somewhat earthy flavors of the graham cracker.  After pulverizing them to a crumb, I mixed in about a tablespoon of cocoa powder to darken the mixture and add some more chocolately flavor and a tablespoon of brown sugar (because brown sugar has nicer flavors than white).  Stir in about 1/4 cup of melted butter to form a moist crumb so it will press nicely into a crust (I used olive oil once.  Either I didn't use enough, should've waited for it to cool, or it's just a bad binder, but it made a really crumbly crust- so use butter!).  You may need less because the filling of the Oreos do make it a bit moist already, so use your good judgement.

After making your crust mixture, it's time to press it into the pan.  I want to remove the cheesecake from the pan onto a container so I don't have to give away my only springform pan as a present as well, so I put a circle of parchment paper on the bottom of the pan and started spreading around the crumb mixture and pressing it down using a spatula.  

A springform pan and my crust crumbs 

What is a springform pan, you might ask? Great question, I had no idea until about a month ago while making chocolate covered cheesecake bites.  It's essentially a flat pan with removable sides, and there's a clasp at the side that allows them to sort of "spring" apart, revealing your baked good within.  Anyway, after much spreading and pressing, I finally achieved a nice, decently thick crust.  Make sure you press down hard enough that no crumbs come loose from your crust and should you accidentally shift the crust around, the entire thing shifts.

A speckled Oreo-Graham Cracker Crust

Now for the cheesecake part.  First, you want to start off by melting the chocolate.  Chocolate is a) very delicious; b) very temperamental and c) very expensive.  I have a 3 lb bag of Ghiradelli's Dark Chocolate Chips that I got from BJ's that I've been using, and so I melted down a little less than 2 cups of the chips.

Chocolate Chips in a Double Boiler Type Setup!

Now chocolate needs low, even heating to melt, and can easily burn in a microwave, so I recommend you find a small pot, fill it up halfway with water, and put a bowl on top (the water should not touch the bowl) and allow the steam to melt your chocolate- this is how chocolate is typically melted, short of having some device to do all this for you.  If you find your chocolate burning/melting too fast, lower the heat.  If you find that it's overly thick, turn up the heat a bit.  Make sure you do not get any sort of water mixed with your chocolate- this will cause the chocolate to "seize" or turn into chunky little bits of non-molten chocolate and the oils and solids will separate and it'll be a big, expensive, irreversible mess (non polar and polar substances really don't mix).  If, for future projects, you find yourself melting chocolate for dipping in this manner and you wish to make it thinner, add a little bit of warm oil, although you will also find that the chocolate subsequently does not set as well if you add too much oil.  Also, do not mix temperatures of chocolate- this will also cause horrendous seizing and cause a terrific mess.  I may know this from experience.

A nice chocolate melting process

After the chocolate was melted, I set it aside to cool down a bit (don't let it solidify though!) and subsequently moved on to the "cheese" part of black forest cheesecake.

When I bake, I usually categorize things in my mind as either "taste" ingredients or "baking" ingredients.  "Taste" ingredients are only to make things taste better (e.g. mix ins, dashes of spices, cocoa powder, etc) and can be a bit flexible with the measurements. "Baking" ingredients are essentially to the structure and texture of the baked good, such as flour, baking soda/powder, cream of tartar, butter/oil, and sometimes your sugars.  These need to be measured correctly and generally cannot be messed with unless you are an experienced baker and know what you're doing/are looking to change the structure of the good.  Now in cheesecake, there is no flour, there is cream cheese.  With this background knowledge, I challenge you to spot the mistakes in the picture below: 

For lack of a scale, I figured 2/3 of 48 oz would be about 32 oz, the required amount of cream cheese for this particular recipe.  So, I divided it into thirds and started scooping it into my bowl:

Bowl with Ingredients

Really not the best idea, but the best I can do without a scale- but please don't try this yourself, just buy 4 8-oz boxes of cream cheese.  Which leads to crucial mistake number 2: The cream cheese is a lie.  It's in a tub, which means it's cream cheese spread, which in my ultimate stupidity I neglected to realize before I baked the cheesecake.  Oops- many prayers are being sent to the baking gods.  However, it explains why, while blending all the ingredients:

It seemed rather airy for the short amount of time I've been blending it.  Which is not desirable for a thick, rich cheesecake, but I guess it'll be a fluffy cheesecake instead?

Now, add four eggs, one at a time, and blend (not too much, you don't want to retain too much air)

Add in the chocolate:

Blend/mix again, making sure to scrape down the sides, and it should look somewhat like this:

Except thicker, if you use actual cream cheese (hopefully).  Then it's off to heat the oven to 350 degrees, scoop the batter into the bowl (you can give the raw batter a try if you're not scared of the safety hazards of eating raw eggs, but it tastes awful and slimy  like slightly sour chocolate pudding, the sourness from the cream cheese, so it's not really great for eating).  

Putting batter into the pan!

After you put the batter in the pan (for me, there was a lot of batter! It's going to be one thick cheesecake), make sure you smooth off the top as best as you can so it bakes somewhat evenly:

And off it pops into the oven! You may have noticed that I wrapped the pan in aluminium foil- springform pans have been known to leak, so it's a good precaution to take against such leakages.

Now, I have to admit, now that the cheesecake is baking,  a) it is a pain to make the more complex cheesecakes and b) all that cream cheese, chocolate, random graham crackers and oreos for the crust, and other materials really do add up in terms of cost.  Kudos to Cheesecake Factory, I understand your pain now (and your rather large prices, making my own cheesecake probably costs upwards of $30 without home ingredients too).

***After much praying, hoping, and blogging, I am pleased to announce that it looks fine (taste I have no idea), and it can now go into the fridge to cool overnight.  Stay tuned for Cheesecakes: Part Two