It’s that time of the month again… Daring Bakers time!

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

As much as I love seeing what all the hundreds of Daring Bakers can do with exactly the same recipe, I have a real soft spot for our more creative challenges… where we can pretty much do what we like.  They have an exciting, last day of term feel to them.

I make cheesecake quite frequently, so I wanted to try and do something different with the decoration.  (I should probably confess that my idea of decorating a cheesecake is piling a few truffles in the centre!)  Jenny mentioned in her challenge announcement that we should “make it unique, make a showstopper of a dessert” so that’s what I tried to do.

Originally I wanted to wrap a vanilla-bean laced cheesecake with some white chocolate plastic and piling the centre high with fresh and chocolate-dipped strawberries.  But… it isn’t strawberry season yet, and the few berries I’ve pinched from Lucas have been a bit watery, so I just couldn’t.

So, it was time for Plan B, for which we need a little background.

I am a real coffee-lover.  So much so that I have to ration myself.  Case in point: the last time I bought a bag of coffee, I disappeared into a week-long high and drank jugfuls upon jugfuls of cold-filtered coffee.  (If you have slightly more self-control than me, then you can find the method over at Smitten Kitchen.)

But all good things must come to an end, and now our coffee machine sits on top of the larder (no space on the worktops) and apart from that week when I buzzed around like a hummingbird on crack, the only coffee in the house has been the Visitors’ Jar of instant coffee.

Deciding to make a cappuccino cheesecake was therefore a risky move, but if it tasted as wonderful as I expected it to, then it would be totally worth it.  Plus, bouncing off the walls was bound to burn off all the calories from the cheesecake!

To make the cheesecake look even more special, I decided to wrap the cheesecake in chocolate plastic.  This… did not go well.  Maybe I didn’t manage to scrape all the liquid glucose into the melted chocolate, or perhaps I cooked the chocolate too much, but the but instead of ending up with a pliable and slightly sticky ball of chocolate, I got chocolate crumbs.  No matter what I did, I just couldn’t rescue matters, so I wound up wrapping the cheesecake in some chocolate sugarpaste that I had lying around.  It didn’t turn out as whisper-thin as I’d hoped, but it still looked and tasted pretty damn good.

Since I was playing dress-up with the cheesecake, I added some little gold buttons and some seam details before completing the cappuccino effect with a dusting of cocoa powder.  Oh, and because I couldn’t resist gilding the lily, I made some fanciful sugarpaste flowers,

In case you couldn’t tell, I was really pleased with the cheesecake and it tasted almost as good as it looked.  The coffee flavour of the actual cheeesecake was great, and the whipped cream really made the frothy, extravagant cappuccino effect work.  I’ve got to say, this isn’t my favourite cheesecake recipe ever.  I know that lots of Daring Bakers loved it, but I just liked it.  I found myself missing the distinct tang of cream cheese; it felt like the double cream smoothed out the texture and the flavour.  More tang, please!  However, this didn’t stop me from hoovering it down with Dave.  Poor Lucas didn’t get a look in at all; probably a good thing, really.  He bounces off the walls enough already, thanks!!

I think a big thank-you is in order for Jenny, for making me be creative and have fun at the same time!

Don’t forget to check out the other amazing Daring Bakers creations via the blogroll.

Cappuccino Cheesecake

Based on Abbey’s Infamous Cheesecake

Crust

• 180 g Digestive biscuits, crushed into crumbs
• 85g unsalted butter, melted
• 24 g caster sugar
• 1 teaspoon cocoa powder
• 1 teaspoon good-quality instant coffee

Filling

• 400g cream cheese, at room temperature
• 75g soft brown sugar
• 50g caster sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 135g double cream
• 1 tablespoon instant coffee

Decoration

• 15og chocolate sugarpaste
• 150g double cream
• cocoa powder
• sugarpaste flowers

1. Preheat oven to 180C. Boil a kettle of water for the water bath.  Wrap a 7″ springform tin in three layers of heavy tinfoil; set it into a deep roasting tin.

2. Mix together the crust ingredients and press into the prepared tin. You can press the crust just into the bottom, or up the sides of the pan too – baker’s choice. Set crust aside.

3. Heat a third of the double cream in the microwave until almost boiling.  Add the instant coffee granules to the hot cream, stir to dissolve.  Add the coffee mixture to the rest of the cream for the filling recipe and allow to cool for a few minutes.

4. Combine cream cheese and sugar in the bowl of a stand-mixer (or in a large bowl if using a hand-mixer) and cream together until smooth. Add eggs, one at a time, fully incorporating each before adding the next. Make sure to scrape down the bowl in between each egg. Add coffee cream, and mix until smooth and creamy.

4. Pour batter onto prepared crust and tap the pan on the counter a few times to bring all air bubbles to the surface. Place pan into a larger pan and pour boiling water into the larger pan until halfway up the side of the cheesecake pan. If cheesecake pan is not airtight, cover bottom securely with foil before adding water.

5. Bake 35 to 45 minutes, until it is almost done – this can be hard to judge, but you’re looking for the cake to hold together, but still have a lot of jiggle to it in the center. You don’t want it to be completely firm at this stage. Close the oven door, turn the heat off, and let rest in the cooling oven for one hour. This lets the cake finish cooking and cool down gently enough so that it won’t crack on the top. After one hour, remove cheesecake from oven and lift carefully out of water bath. Let it finish cooling on the counter, and then cover and put in the fridge to chill. Once fully chilled, it is ready to decorate.

6. On a surface lightly dusted with cornflour, roll out the chocolate sugarpaste into a long, thin strip, about 2cm taller than the height of the cheesecake and about 5cm longer than the circumference.  Remove cheesecake from the springform tin—I usually keep it on the base—and wrap the chocolate sugarpaste round the cheesecake.  Add some detailing at the join if you like.

7. Wthe cream until slightly thickened and spread it over the top of the cheesecake and sieve a very light coating of cocoa powder on top to complete the cappucchino effect.