Daring Bakers: Abbey's Infamous Cheesecake

The April 2009 challenge is hosted by Jenny from Jenny Bakes. She has chosen Abbey's Infamous Cheesecake as the challenge.

This is a basic cheesecake recipe developed by her friend Abbey T., who has made infinite flavor modifications to this basic recipe with great success. Basically, you can take this recipe and easily tweak it to create any flavor cheesecake you desire. I decided to go for a Neapolitan effect, inspired by the classic ice cream flavor.

I planned to make the basic batter, then split it in thirds and add strawberry puree to one portion and melted chocolate to another, but then I realized how neatly the recipe divides in to third. Since it calls for three blocks of cream cheese and three eggs, and all the flavorings are listed in tablespoons (1 tablespoon = 3 teaspoons), making the batter in thirds seemed like a really easy way to ensure even flavor distribution.

Oddly, despite my equitable distribrution of ingredients, the chocolate portion came out notably thicker than the other two. I expected the strawberry puree to thin the batter a bit, but it didn't really: the pink and plain batters had the same consistency. I ended up using cocoa powder instead of melted chocolate, but even so, I used about a tablespoon, which doesn't seem like enough to significantly alter the consistency. But it did. Once baked, there wasn't a noticeably difference in texture, but the chocolate layer held up better than the strawberry and vanilla.

To top it off, I dipped some strawberries in dark chocolate. Delicious! 

I would definitely recommend this cheesecake recipe. It's definitely rich, but not so rich that just a bite or two makes you say, "Enough!" In that way, it's actually pretty dangerous - it's just mild enough to make you want one more bite. Every time. So, with that in mind, proceed with caution.

This post is already long, so I'll post the recipe separately.