Pecan Pie Cheesecake

I love cheesecake. Every type, flavour, whatever, I love it. Then this cheesecake came along and now I think I'm straight up in love with cheesecake. I've made this twice now and by the time the last piece is gone, I'm already ready to make another one.
I made this first at Thanksgiving and I think I this may have been a defining moment in my status as a baker/cook amongst my extended family. My brother told me later that after my cousin had his first bite he said, "What the eff..... I almost said f*** this is so good!" So, I guess that about sums it up. Also, I found this recipe on Pinterest, for original click here.

First, preheat your oven to 350 degrees. 

Crust Ingredients:

1 3/4 cups vanilla wafer crumbs
1/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/3 cup butter, melted.

For the crumbs, I couldn't find any vanilla wafers in crumb form so I just bought a box of nilla wafers and crushed them up in my teensy food processor (I got the mother of all food processors for Christmas and I am SOOO EXCITED ABOUT IT!!!!!). Ahem, anyway, chuck your nilla wafers into a food processor thingy if you have one or just put them in a plastic bag and smash them all up into fine crumbs.

I did two batches of exactly that amount of nilla wafers (I would say there are about 20 in there, so maybe 40 nilla wafers in total?) and whizzed that up.

There is the first batch. So yeah, times that by two, like I said above.
Mix up the crumbs, brown sugar and melted butter and then press into the bottom of a greased 9 inch springform pan. Bake in your preheated oven for about 6 minutes, then set aside. While the crust is baking you can start making your pecan filling.

Pecan Filling:

1 cup sugar
2/3 cup dark corn syrup (I don't know if "golden corn syrup" classifies as "dark" because I couldn't find anything that said "dark" so I just used the golden kind. Worked fine if you ask me)
1/3 cup butter, melted
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups chopped pecans
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Combine all the above ingredients in a medium sauce pan over medium-high heat and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 8 to 10 minutes, stirring constantly. And by constantly, I mean CONSTANTLY. There is so much sugar in that pot that if you let it sit for even just a couple of seconds, it's in danger of burning. So make sure you've gone pee or whatever you need to do because you will be standing by your stove for at least 8 straight minutes. So anyway, stir until thickened (8 minutes is usually enough time) and then pour over crust.

Set that aside. Now you can make your cheesecake filling.

Cheesecake Filling:

3 (8 ounce) packages cream cheese, softened (If I know I'm making a cheesecake one day, I will take the cream cheese out of the fridge or freezer the night before and just leave it out on the counter until I'm ready to go.)
1 1/4 cups firmly packed brown sugar
2 Tablespoons all-purpose flour
4 eggs
2/3 cup heavy cream (aka whipping cream)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 325. With a hand mixer or in a stand mixer, beat cream cheese at medium speed until creamy. Add the brown sugar and flour and beat until fluffy. Then add the eggs, one at a time, incorporating fully after each addition. Stir in cream and vanilla. Pour over pecan filling.

Woo! Action shot! Okay anyway, once the cheesecake filling is poured over the pecan filling, put it in the oven and bake for one hour. Once that hour is over, turn the oven off and leave the cheesecake in the oven for one more hour. DO NOT open the door to the oven. The blogger who posted this recipe that I used said that instead of a full blown water bath, she just filled a pyrex dish with very hot water and then put that on the bottom rack of her oven and put the cheesecake on the top rack and her cheesecake came out without a crack. Yeah, that didn't work with mine. Though the colour was perfect, you will see there was a crack in mine. Also the second time I made this I took the cheesecake out of the oven sooner and I still had a crack in it. So whatever. I came up with a solution that I will share shortly...

Okay, actually two cracks. Not so bad as it's not like it was right down the middle but because I'm a perfectionist there was no way I was going to serve the cheesecake with an obvious crack in the side. I, I just, I can't. It's not in my blood. So here was my solution. A chocolate ganache. Brilliant!! For the ganache, I used about 8 ounces of semi sweet chocolate chips (1 cup) and about 1/4 to half a cup of heavy cream.  I put those together in a microwaveable dish and then microwaved for short increments (about 10 seconds) stirring in between each until the chocolate was smooth and runny. Then I poured that whole thing over the cake.

And what a delicious dessert it was.

Pecans in a chewy, caramel-y layer with cream cheese and chocolate on top. Yeah, I can totally see why my cousin almost dropped an eff bomb.
The second time I made this cake, I did a chocolate ganache again, but I didn't use as much cream so the ganache was much thicker and once I cooled it, it became kind of a hard crust topping which I also quite liked.

Also, I didn't have enough pecans the second time around and though the cake still worked the pecan layer ended up being really hard to cut through given the concentration of "caramel" to the amount of pecans. Whatever, it was still delicious.

It's a snow day today (for me anyway, I live outside the city and my boss was kind enough to not make me brave the highways today) so I'm actually trying to be productive! Studying and blogging in the same day? I never thought that would happen!

Take care folks, and stay warm

- A