The Cheesecake Stands Alone

My mom took piano lessons for the greater part of her childhood.  I don’t quite remember how or exactly when our family managed to get a piano at our house, but we did.  I assume it was so my mom could play and my dad could jam with her on the drums.  I can’t be sure, but I think in mine and in my sister’s minds we were setting up to be the family version of Miami Sound Machine and we were going to put on awesome shows with hits like Dr. Beat and Conga. 

We had always had a little keyboard from the 80’s that played the tinny, programmed melodies, that kind of sounded like music, but also like the background noise in an intense game of Tetris.  Our new piano was electric and you could change the setting and it played organ sounds or flute like sounds, but it was full size and had a body.  There was a thud beneath the keys when you slammed on them that could not be recreated with the keyboard.  It was the real deal.  That little, crappy Casio was awesome for Miami Sound Machine recreations, this new and improved real piano was possibly going to legitimize our singing adventures and rocket us into stardom.  Well, even that’s a little far fetched for my imagination, but it would have been great if it had happened that way.

Once we got the piano, my mom started tinkering at it regularly and playing what I like to call “Saturday Morning Music”, which is Beatles, Elton John, Billy Joel, etc (basically Singers and Songwriters of the 70’s).  Once there was a piano in the house, a sing a long atmosphere developed with my mom running to play a song to accurately finish a story, or hit a punch line, or provide the soundtrack for that specific moment in time.  She was excited about her new toy!  I like being able to do things with my mom and in figuring the piano out I kind of taught myself how to read music and how to follow the notes. 

I was not a baby Mozart; in no way, shape, or form was I even close to being a prodigy.  It was more fine tuned memorization and fudging.  I could always play the top part of the music, but trying to get my right and left hands to play in sync and together never really worked out well.  I’m not sure if it was too much to concentrate on or if my left hand was just stubborn because my right hand always got the attention or what, but my skill level never really progressed. Don’t even ask about the pedals, there was no way I was ever throwing a foot into the mix with two uncoordinated hands. 

That’s when my mom decided we should have real lessons. 

Real lessons were exciting at first, but then proved to be a little too mundane.  Our teacher was very nice and came to our house and was young and cool, but lessons meant a set schedule, a set time, set things to practice, and in many ways a structured challenge.  We stuck with it for a while, but it lacked the loose environment that we had before.  The tunes we were learning (if you could even call them that) were boring, children’s rhymes and had a sing a long level of zero.  Not to mention, the odds were not in favor of my child-sized hands and once the music started getting complicated my fingers couldn’t stretch to hit the right keys. 

Needless to say piano lessons may have been doomed from the start in our household.  However, it was always a fun part of our evening family ritual and I think a sort of decompression outlet for my mom.  And in spite of my piano struggles I still carry some things with me: I still know how to play the Russian Dance from the Nutcracker Ballet on the piano, I learned all the words to ‘As Time Goes By’ from Casablanca, and I will never forget the soundtrack my mom played for me when I was dating my first real boyfriend – 'Daniel', by Elton John.  (Who, strangely enough, did end up ‘traveling tonight on a plane’, but that was long after we had broken up.)

You may be asking yourself what this ridiculous piano story has to do with cheesecake and the reality is very little to absolutely nothing.  As you all know from my previous post I am not a cheesecake fan.  But in the same way I taught myself the piano, I feel with this second attempt at cheesecakes I am now comfortable with cheesecake.  With a little methodical thinking, anything can happen.  (Except for the recreation of Miami Sound Machine’s greatest hits; I think that only got worse the more times we tried to make it right.)  So when asked for another cheesecake I gladly accepted the challenge and made something fantastic, beautiful, complex, and edible.

German Chocolate Cheesecake

Crust: (adapted from Hershey's Kitchens)

1 cup – ground Chocolate Teddy Grahams crumbs

2 TBSP – sugar

1/3 cup – unsalted butter, melted

¼ cup – coconut flakes

¼ cup – pecan chips

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Grease, with cooking spray, a 9” spring form pan.  In a bowl, stir to combine, the graham cracker crumbs and sugar.  Next add the butter, coconut, and pecans to the crumb mixture and stir until combined.  Press into the bottom of the spring form pan and using a cold, metal measuring cup, push the crumb mixture up the sides of the spring form pan about 1”.  Place the crust in the oven and bake for 5 minutes until it is pretty set.

Filling: (adapted from Bon Appetit, October 2006) 

4 – 8 oz packages of cream cheese, softened

1 cup – sugar

¼ cup – unsweetened cocoa powder 

1 TBSP – vanilla extract

4 – eggs

8 oz – semisweet chocolate, melted and cooled

Directions:

Keep the oven temperature at 350 degrees.  Melt your chocolate in a double boiler and set aside to cool.  In the bowl of your mixer blend the cream cheese, cocoa, and sugar together until combined.  Add the eggs, one at a time, making sure that each egg is incorporated into the batter before adding the next egg.  Mix in the vanilla.  Add the lukewarm chocolate and mix until combined.  Pour the batter over the crust and bake until the edges are set and the center is still a little wobbly.  About 1 hour.  Allow cheesecake to cool before adding the topping.

Custard Topping: (adapted from David Lebovitz)

½ cup – heavy whipping cream

½ cup – sugar

3 TBSP – unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

2 – egg yolks

¼ tsp – salt

½ cup – pecans, toasted and finely chopped

¾ cup – coconut, toasted

Directions:

To toast the coconut and pecans: Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.  Line a cookie sheet with foil.  Put the pecans on one side of the cookie sheet and the coconut on the other.  Place in the oven for about ten minutes.  The coconut and pecans will start to brown a little.

For the topping:  In a medium saucepan, combine the heavy cream, sugar, and egg yolks.  In a medium bowl combine the butter, salt, coconut, and pecans. 

Heat the cream mixture over medium/low heat stirring constantly.  The mixture will start to cook and thicken.  Once the mixture coats the spoon (or the thermometer reaches 170 degrees), turn the heat off and pour the hot custard over the pecan, coconut, and butter mixture.  Stir the custard until the butter has completely melted and the custard is smooth.  Cool the custard completely before pouring over the top of the cheesecake.

Cheesecake Assembly:

Once the cheesecake and custard topping are both cool, pour the custard topping over the cheesecake.  Take a small handful of chocolate chips and seal them in a Ziploc baggie.  Microwave them for 20 seconds squeeze the bag to help move the melted chocolate.  Continue to microwave in 20 second increments until the chocolate in the plastic baggie is completely melted.  Snip the corner off the plastic baggie and pipe the warm chocolate in an intersecting line pattern over the top of the cheesecake to add a little pizzazz.  Refrigerate until ready to serve.

Wrap up and substitutions:

I tried to keep my cheesecake from falling once it cooled.   Since this was a huge problem last time I made a cheesecake dessert.  I looked up several websites and advice on the matter and could not get a clear answer on what to do, but I tried one approach anyway.  I turned the oven off once the cheesecake was done and let the oven cool down slowly, with the cake in it, with the oven door open.  The cheesecake still fell and the door was rather hazardous in our teeny kitchen.  This is something I will figure out, but it may take me some time.

I love coconut, but it causes me much pain to say that in my adult years I have developed a severe allergy to it.  As much as I wanted to try this cheesecake I held back.  However, the rich chocolate, coconut, pecan smell you get from this cake is to die for.  It was seriously torture not being able to try it, but on smell alone this cake was a tremendous success.  I did have many loyal taste testers who attested to its deliciousness. 

I can see my cheesecake adventures going the way of my piano lessons.  The ride was good while it lasted, I was able to create some delicious gems, but for now my attention span on cheesecakes is over and we’re on to the next big project.