I bring to you a break in the book-related programming to showcase what could have potentially been a disaster of a dessert (also known as white chocolate raspberry cheesecake).
I may or may not have had a birthday yesterday, but in any case, since when did I really need an excuse to bake cake? After seeing this crazily raved-over recipe on AllRecipes, I’d bookmarked it in the hopes of trying it out for July 4th. Then when that didn’t pan out, I decided, why the heck not this week?
I say potentially disastrous because this was the first time I’d tried making cheesecake from scratch. After speaking with a baker friend of mine, I’d realized there were several ways to go about with cheesecake recipes. Apparently a number of them had sour cream, though I’m not exactly sure why that is needed (plus, my friend seems to have problems with people using sour cream in recipes). In any case, since the recipe I found had nothing to do with sour cream and mostly to do with cream cheese, I thought it was legit enough to try out.
Because I did make some major changes, what I ended up with recipe-wise:
WHITE CHOCOLATE RASPBERRY CHEESECAKE
Crust
- 1 cup graham cracker crumbs
- 3 tbsp white sugar
- 1/4 cup butter, melted
Raspberry sauce
- 10 oz raspberry preserves
White chocolate mixture
- 2 cups white chocolate chips
- 1/2 cup half-and-half cream
Cheesecake
- 3 (8 oz) packages cream cheese, softened
- 1/2 cup white sugar
- 3 eggs
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
Instructions:
- For crust: Mix crumbs, 3 tbsp sugar, melted butter for graham cracker crust. Press into bottom of pan.
- For white chocolate mixture: Melt white chocolate chips with half-and-half cream (preferably over a double-boiler-type setup).
- For raspberry sauce: Heat raspberry preserves (I microwaved mine for 30 seconds and then 10-second intervals up until it was a liquid consistency).
- For cheesecake: Mix together cream cheese and sugar, beat in eggs one at a time. Blend vanilla and white chocolate mixture. Pour half of the batter into pan with crumbs, then pour 3 tbsp raspberry sauce in mixture (doesn’t look like it matters how this is done), pour remaining batter, and then pour 3 tbsp raspberry sauce on top. To create a marbled look on the cheesecake surface, swirl the raspberry with the tip of a knife.
- Baking: Preheat oven 325 degrees F. Bake cake for 55-60 minutes. Cool, cover with plastic wrap, refrigerate for at least 8 hours (or overnight) before removing from pan.
The recipe actually used a chocolate cookie crumb crust, which I suppose is fine, too. Some of them use Oreo crumbs, which sounds amazing. But I opted for the graham cracker base because I wasn’t in the mood for chocolate cookie crumbs. I suggest actually checking 10-15 minutes beforehand to see if the filling has set. I was silly and didn’t check until 55 minutes in, and my cheesecake ended up a little overdone. The top surface was all cracked, the surrounding border looked weird, and I was one unhappy baker for a good portion of the day. That said, I decided to refrigerate the cheesecake in the hopes that it would still be easily covered up with raspberry sauce and white chocolate.
Which, thankfully, it was. I just reheated what was left of the preserves and lathered the top of the cheesecake with all the leftover sauce. Then I tempered some white chocolate chips (30 seconds in a microwave for 1 cup if you got lazy like I did). My sister helped with the drizzling, and her boyfriend suggested a white chocolate chip border, which I thought was a pretty nifty idea.
And voila! I swear the cover-up had taken a good 5-10 minutes to do, and the result looked awesome. The taste of the cheesecake was also excellent as far as cheesecakes go (and this is coming from someone who doesn’t really like cheesecake all that much). Raspberry and white chocolate tastes just as delectable as it sounds.
Phew! Next week I do have another cake highlight to make, but for now I’ll leave this Friday on a raspberry and white chocolate high.
Story and Somnomancy 
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