Stonewall Kitchen's Marscapone Cheesecake

Yes, I know I'm supposed to be doing smoothies, but the next smoothie recipe calls for stewed prunes and I'm avoiding it. You know you would do the same in my position.

Instead, I have been trying to do recipes that involve using up items that are lurking around my cabinets/fridge and need to be used up. As both my dad and friends have sent me gifts featuring Stonewall Kitchen goodies, and Stonewall Kitchen so kindly has recipes corresponding to each and every one of their goodies, I have been making a dent in the backlog of jams and jellies and whatnots I've got hiding around. I suppose if I were a big jam eater, this wouldn't be an issue as I'd just so daily toast-avec-jams for breakfast, but I'm not, so it's recipe heaven.

As a cheesecake fan, and someone who is easily lured by fancy words, I opted to try their Marscapone Cheesecake with Bittersweet Chocolate Swirl recipe, and it was so goddamn good, not only did I have to blog it, I actually made it again a week later.

The long and the short of it is this: I love cheesecake. I have tried many times to make cheesecake as good as the stuff you get in restaurants. They have always turned out fine, but not amazing. Until now.

This recipe is insane. It is ridiculously delicious. It is also a little confusing, which caused me to mess a couple of things up, but I have figured out what they mean. Also I have realized that the way they use the chocolate sauce, you can use the recipe to just make an unbelievable plain cheesecake or one flavored with really anything else. Hence, when I did it again for a housewarming party last weekend I put in strawberry jam instead of chocolate sauce, and I am thinking of doing it with their blueberry jam for Thanksgiving.

Anyhow, without further ado, the best cheesecake recipe you will ever see.

Behold.

Marscapone Cheesecake with Bittersweet Chocolate Swirl*

*(or with Strawberry Swirl in the picture)

Bottom Crust:

3/4 cup all-purpose flour

1/4 cup confectioners sugar

1/4 cup finely ground toasted pecans

1/2 cup cold unsalted butter (or salted, because I often prefer salted)

Filling:

16 oz cream cheese, room temp (I mean, or not)

16 oz Marscapone cheese, room temp (does the temp really matter?)

1 1/4 cups white sugar

1/8 tsp salt

4 lg eggs, room temp

2 lg egg yolks

1 1/2 tsp vanilla

1 1/2 tsp fresh lemon juice

1 12 oz jar Stonewall Kitchen Bittersweet Chocolate Sauce (or whatevs)

Bottom Crust:

1. In your amazing new food processor, combine flour, sugar, and pecans. Pulse briefly (i.e., until the pecans, which you put in whole, are chopped up. You could have put them in the nut chopper and ground them, but they were just gonna get ground in the food processor, so why the extra step?). Add unsalted butter. Wonder what the difference is between unsalted and salted butter. I mean, obviously the difference is the salt, but what is the difference taste wise? Pulse until mixture resembles fine crumbs, or rather go way past this point the first time and discover that quickly it goes from fine crumbs to moist buttery balls of would-be dough. Realize you should stop before this point.

2. Preheat  oven to 350 F. Shouldn't this be step #1?

3. Line the bottom of a 9" springform pan with foil. Second time try this with wax paper, and determine that works better. Either way, butter it.

4. Press crust mixture evenly into the bottom of the pan. Not up the sides, goofball. This isn't a pie. This is a cheesecake. Crust just is on the bottom. Throw out the first try with the over-blended crust dough that you spread up the sides like a moron, do a second batch correctly, and press it just into the bottom of the pan. Lovely. Bake for 20-25 minutes, until lightly golden.

5. Butter sides of pan when cool.

Filling:

(which, it must be noted, I find you should start working on once the crust it out and cooling)

1. Increase oven temp to 500F. Be surprised your oven goes to 500F.

2. In an attempt to use all of your large kitchen items, now switch from the food processor to the mixer, onto which you should put your paddle attachment. Beat cream cheese until broken up, which, is basically redundant if you are using whipped cream cheese (versus block) that is at room temp. But whatevs. Just mix it a bit.

3. Scrape beater and sides of bowl (duh). Add salt and half of the sugar; beat until combined. Think about how annoying the paddle attachment is. Scrape sides of bowl again (duh) and add remaining sugar. Or forget this part until the very end right before you pour it into the bowl. It works then, too, thank heavens. Beat until smooth and fluffy, which is nice because the smoother and fluffier it gets the less annoying the paddle is.

4. Add Marscapone, lemon juice and vanilla. Beat at low speed until just blended. Check.

5. Scrape bowl (seriously?) and add yolks, which means they also want you to separate the eggs, but apparently although they have to walk you through every time you scrape the bowl, they are going to assume you know that part. Beat at low speed until blended.

6. Add whole eggs, two at a time, beating just until blended after each addition. Oooh, this is starting to look creamy.

7. Place pan on cookie sheet, although you will never know why. Why? Reserve 1 1/2 cups of the filling, pour the remainder of the filling into (onto?) the crust.

8. Heat the Bittersweet Chocolate Sauce until lukewarm - which is their way of saying in its room temp state it is a pretty firm/immovable glob. If you just heat it for like 30 seconds on the stove it loosens up and becomes a much more workable viscosity. Hooray big words!

Stir 1/2 cup of chocolate sauce into the reserved filling. Place dollops of chocolate filling on top of the cake.

9. Drag a knife through the chocolate dollops creating a swirl pattern.

9.5 Spend a long time puzzling over instructions 8 and 9 because they are poorly worded. Realize ultimately that it appears they want  you to waste all but that half cup of the chocolate sauce, and pour just that half cup in with the filling, and then use that new cheesecake/chocolate mixture to make the globs which you will then drag through. I have since tried this in various permutations, including doing a three-layer thing with the strawberry jam - bottom layer = pure cheesecake onto which I poured the entire strawberry/cheesecake mix, onto which I put globs of pure strawberry jam that I dragged through. The good news is, at this point the stuff is so good basically any of these options will work.

10. Bake 10 minutes @ 500F, then reduce temp to 200F and continue to bake for about 1 1/2 hours. Do not open the oven door during the cooking process! (Okay!!). Cheesecake should be golden on top and center is almost set, to which I say it's kind of hard to really manage both of those in my oven. After 1.5 hrs the outside is turning a nice brown more than golden, but the inside is still a little too jiggly. I would do this part more by eye than time - def make sure the center is nearly set.

11. Cool on a rack, which seems weird given that it's still in it's springform, but whatevs. When cool, refrigerate covered overnight, or if you're me, for a few hours during the afternoon so you can eat it that night.

Not sure when Scrapy Von Scraperton wants you to take off the springform bits, but I leave it in the springform int he fridge and only spring it from the springform at serving time.

12. Garnish with chocolate shavings and drizzles of the leftover chocolate sauce so I guess you're not entirely wasting it. Please note this is where I A. unleash the springform and then B. slide if off the buttered wax paper onto a prettier plate. The buttered wax paper worked way better for this than the buttered foil, FYI.

13. Take to party and watch people repeatedly roll their eyes back in their head when they eat it and then swear at you that it's too good and have an entirely room of them bid you adieu as the cheesecake lady upon your extremely triumphant exit. This shit is good. Enjoy.