I’m usually the go to person in my family when it comes to making birthday cakes. I enjoy baking and the things I try usually turn out pretty good. My dad’s birthday was a couple weeks ago (and I’m just getting around to posting about this now, I know it’s bad) and he requested a cheesecake.
I’ve made them a couple times before. They can get pretty involved (hello water bath), but the recipe I’ve been using is pretty straight forward and you simply bake it in the oven. The recipe is from one of my favourite cookbooks, The America’s Test Kitchen Family Baking Book.
The recipe calls for two pounds of cream cheese. Needless to say, that’s a lot, especially when it’s all been chopped up.
I love graham cracker crusts. They’re my favourite crusts. I might even eat the crust last cause it’s so good. This crust was pretty easy, just graham cracker crumbs, sugar, and butter.
By the time I had the cream cheese, eggs, sugar, and vanilla creamed together it was definitely starting to look like a cheesecake.
Once it finally came out of the oven (I had to bake it an additional 20 minutes), it smelled so good! That hole in the middle of it was to check the temperature – once it reached 150 degrees I knew it was done.
The cheesecake was supposed to cool completely before being out in the fridge for a couple hours. It was driving my dad crazy that he had to wait so long to have a piece.
My dad loves cherry pie filling on his cheesecake, so I made sure to pick some of that up at the grocery store while I was getting the ingredients for the cheesecake.
His birthday cheesecake ended up being a huge success!
What’s your favourite kind of cake?