Coffee and Caramel Cheesecake

Cheesecake. Need I really say more? Already you have in your mind the memories of past cheesecakes; creamy, tangy, sweet, fluffy goodness. Maybe yours was topped with cherries, or chocolate, or caramel. I've put a spin on the classics, and added coffee to mine. It's subtle, and different, but totally good. If you want to try it, read on.

For the Shortbread Crust (You could sub in any type of crust you wanted, I suppose):

1/3 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter
1 egg
1 1/2 cups flour

For the Filling:

32 ounces of cream cheese
1 1/2 cups white sugar
4 eggs
1 cup sour cream
3/4 cup milk
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/3 cup of espresso
1/4 cup brown sugar

For the Topping:

1/2 cup cream, whipped
1 cup of sour cream (I had a 16 oz container and just used what was left over from the filling)
2 tablespoons sugar

Cream the butter and sugar for the filling. Add the egg. Then add the flour.

Use your hands to push it all to the edges of a sprin gform pan, and maybe just a tad up the side. A spring form pan is a special pan that is in two parts, a base plate and then a collar that you can detach. It helps get the cheesecake out later. Prick the crust with a fork to keep it from puffing up to much.

Bake at 400°F for around 10 minutes, or until it gets just slightly browned.

Treat the filling like you would a cake batter. Cream the cream cheese and the white sugar first, or else you won't ever get the cream cheese all incorporated. Add the eggs one by one. Blend your sour cream and flour, to prevent the flour from lumping. Then add it to the batter, along with the milk, vanilla and salt.

Now it's time to add some coffee!

Start by dividing your batter. A ladle will come in real handy here. Take out two ladle-fulls and put in a small container. Then divide the rest roughly in half. Add coffee to one of the larger portions, and the brown sugar to the small one.

I mentioned in the intro that the flavors in the cake were subtle, and they really are. By adding more coffee and brown sugar, you can increase the flavor a bit if you want.

So, I was trying to go for the whole design on top of the cheesecake thing. I wanted to do the classic flower by making rings of batter, than dragging a knife through them. (make rings by ladling some of the plain in the center, than some coffee, then some caramel and repeated a bit {you'd have less rings of caramel, though}) Unfortunately, my batters were all too close to each other in color, and once baked you couldn't see it at all. :-/ But I still liked the taste of it, because one bite would be of a strong coffee, and the next you could hardly notice it. So it made it interesting.

You could, if you want complete coffee, double the amount of coffee and keep the two large batters together. It would be coffee through and through.

And if you wanted a design that actually showed, I suppose you could dye it... though that I wouldn't want to do.

Bake at 350°F, for a whole hour. Then turn off the oven, but keep your cheesecake in there. It will continue to cook a bit, and then slowly cool, helping to prevent the top from cracking (However, if it does crack, don't be alarmed. You can fill it with topping and no one will ever know) Keep it in there until mostly cooled

So, my design didn't work out, and I wanted to make my cheesecake pretty. So I opted for the classic sour cream topping, with a minor adjustment. I realized it would be great if it was fluffy, because that way it would mimic the foam you'd get on top of a latte.

Whisk the 1/2 cup of cream to stiff peaks. Add sugar. Fold in sour cream. Spread it on top of the cooled cheesecake. Chill in the fridge so it gets cold. (Or eat it, if you cant wait any longer... I think mine was actually still a tad warm when I cut into it. )

Remove the cake from the fridge. Run a knife around the edge of the pan, then remove the ring. Enjoy the beauty of your cake until you cant wait any longer and you cut into it. Share or keep it all to yourself. Eat it.

And then your done. Go relax. Someone else should do all those dishes for you... or at least, you should be able to bribe someone to do so with a slice of cheesecake.