Wednesday, April 20, 2011

White Chocolate Blueberry Cheesecake

Cheesecake batter is like a playground, or a freshly prepared canvas just waiting for inspiration to be applied. I can rarely leave it plain, even though plain is so good too. I was in a blueberry mood, a bag Ghirardelli white chocolate put it over the top.
I took this to dinner at my friend Gail's house with an Espresso cheesecake too, there were a lot of us that evening, and it is never good to run out of dessert with children looking at you waiting for their piece.
First I should say that I forgot to take photos of the crust, sorry, I was rushing, not good because then you forget things...like pictures.
Second, cheesecake is always best when made a day in advance, like lasagna, the flavors develop over night--it's a beautiful thing ;)
I used a classic pate sucree for the crust because I don't care for graham crackers, a good pastry crust is so much better tasting  and looking. This is very easy in a food processor. Come on, don't let the name scare you, it's a glorified pie crust (tastes better though).
Crust:
1 1/4 cups flour
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
8 tablespoons cold butter, cut in chunks
1 egg yolk
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 tablespoon water or milk
Into the food processor, or a large bowl with a pastry cutter, put the flour, salt, sugar. Pulse/mix. Add the cold butter pulsing/cutting until it looks like coarse crumbs. Pulse/cut in the egg yolk, vanilla and water or milk. Continue to pulse until it balls up into a nice soft, workable dough.
Using fingers, press it over bottom of 9 inch springform pan lined with parchment paper on the bottom and up the side. Prick with a fork so it doesn't bubble up and put in fridge for 25 minutes. 
Preheat oven to 375F. Bake crust for 10-12 minutes or until the edges begin to turn golden. 
Brush with egg white and return to oven for 2 minutes, this seals the crust so it doesn't get soggy.
Batter:
3 8oz. packages cream cheese, softened to room temperature
3/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 large eggs
1 can blueberry pie filling
1 bag white chocolate chips
In a large mixing bowl, beat the cream cheese until fluffy, add the sugar, mixing well then the eggs, one at a time mixing well after each addition. 
Add vanilla.
Sprinkle 1/2 the bag of chips on the bottom of the crust.
Pour the batter in.
Swirl the rest of the chips into the batter. Then, with a large spoon, drop 1/2 the blueberry pie filling on the top of the batter, dropping in four circles. 
Carefully swirl a knife through the blueberry just a few passes is all you want to do otherwise it just mixes in instead of having a pretty swirl pattern.
Pretty. Oooh, aaah.
Bake in preheated oven at 450F for 10 minutes then turn down the temperature to 250F and continue to bake for 40 minutes. It should be jiggly but not loose or liquidy. Is liquidy a word?
Very nice. Serve with the rest of the pie filling on the side. Hmm , maybe some whipped cream too. 
That's an espresso cheesecake beside it, that was really good too ;).





2 comments:

  1. Ok, you're hired! For Josh's 16th birthday, Sophies 16th, their graduations, weddings... For me, right now! They look wonderful and I'm sure they tasted just as scrumptious as they look!! I think I see a cheesecake baking class in my future - for Sophie and I :)

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