So the boyfriend was beggin for cheesecake, but more importantly he was begging for cheesecake for his grandfather's birthday party/everyone in his family who was born in January. Well, I can't remember ever having made a cheesecake before so I decided to practice first. I used a recipe from Alton Brown for a sourcream cheesecake. It came out amazing, but was missing some extra something to make it mine. So the boyfriend suggested adding orange zest and ginger. This turned out amazing!! We also decided to forgo the traditional graham cracker crust and instead made ours out of ginger snaps. Delicious!
Well here's about the recipe we used:
Crust:
38 ginger snaps, crushed but still with big chunks.
1 stick of butter, melted
Filling:
1 1/4c sour cream
20 oz cream cheese (2.5 packages)
1 c sugar
2 eggs
5 egg yolks
1/3 c heavy cream
1 tbs vanilla extract
1/2 tbs cinnamon
1/2 tbs nutmeg
1 tbs orange zest
1/2 tbs grated ginger
Preheat your oven to 300. Butter a springform pan or line a regular pan with parchment paper. Mix ginger snaps and butter til coated and spread evenly in bottom of pan. Bake for 10 minutes at 300 F. Lower oven temp to 250
In a stand mixer mix sour cream on low for about 30 seconds. Add cream cheese and sugar, mix on low until sugar is wet. Then turn up to medium and mix until smooth. In another bowl mix together eggs, cream, and vanilla. Pour this mixture slowly into mixer, scraping down bowl halfway through. Once this is smooth add the cinnamon and nutmeg. The mix should be speckled. Then add the orange zest and ginger and mix it well making sure to scrape the bottom of the bowl to get any bits that the paddle misses. Once the mixture is super smooth pour it into the pan with the crust. Put this pan into a larger pan. If you are using a springform surround it with foil to prevent leaks. Fill the larger pan with warm water just covering the crust line of the smaller pan. Place in oven and bake for 1 hour at 250 F. After an hour, turn off the oven and open the door for 1 minute. Then shut the oven door and leave in oven 1 more hour. Place in refridgerator for another 3-4 hours or overnight if you can.
That's all I did, but feel free to garnish with more gingersnaps or orange slices if you would like!
