Kasi and Stephen stopped by to have a birthday dinner for Kasi. I asked Kasi what she’d like to eat and her answer: Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cheesecake! ’nuff said. I’ve made this particular cake before (maybe once or twice) and tastes wonderful. However, I don’t often go for this recipe because it needs to be modified to cook correctly, and it has some extra steps that don’t add enough value for my taste.
The recipe comes from “Star Pooley” as posted on AllRecipes and, as I mentioned, some changes are necessary, just like the last cheesecake recipe I found on AllRecipes — the one for apple and maple.
First of all, Star recommends blind baking the crust. I’m not a fan. But just to be near the recipe I do it for half the time, that is MORE than enough and really superfluous.
Second, Star’s recipe scale for cookie dough creates at least twice as much as necessary for this cake. And because it’s not actually cookie dough (there are no eggs in it), you can’t bake off the rest. Star suggests dropping the cookie dough evenly over the entire top of the cake. Maybe if I did that it would be the right amount, but I doubt it. I usually drop in about nine balls of two tablespoons each. The first eight are symmetrically positioned around the outside (about half an inch from the edge). And the ninth is in the center. This puts 1.125 cups of cookie dough into the cake!
Finally, Star’s cooking recommendations go against my personal beliefs. Star suggests cooking for 40 minutes at 350 deg F then pouring the icing over the hot cake. Oy! My oven, which is the best we could buy (pro-sumer Bluestar) cooks hotter and more evenly than any other I’ve used. And therefore I only cook cheesecakes for 50 minutes at 350 deg F. In any other, I always do 55 or 60 minutes. Then, and this is critical for ALL CHEESCAKES, do not move the cake. Do the jiggle test (check to make sure it has set around the edges and jiggles in the center), turn off the oven, and leave the oven door open about two inches for an hour. Then you can remove the cake, no sooner.
I’m also against icing a warm cake, but in this case I went half way. I let it cool on the counter another hour, then I iced it and let it cool again for another hour before the fridge. This time I came up with a great way of cooling it in the fridge. Instead of covering with saran wrap, which is very close to the cake surface and accumulates a lot of condensation, I used a large cake cover (from a cake carrier). After two hours I wiped down the inside and covered it again. The next day, I replaced it with saran. No water on my cake!
Everyone loves this cake, and it was worth fighting with the recipe to make it. Try it out yourself and let me know how it goes…
More pictures on Flickr.
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Actually, we think you needed to add the rest of the cookie dough. We’d rather have cookie dough in about 1/3 of the bites, now it’s in maybe half that. Still yummy though
does the soggy look on picture number2 vome from the icing or is it really that soggy?><
Laylit, really can’t remember. This is from almost 3 years ago.
holy shit i must have it!!!
not to be mean but I saw this guy who stole ur pic and is using it for his site…