A Daring Baker’s Cheese(cup)cake

The April 2009 challenge is hosted by Jenny from Jenny Bakes. She has chosen Abbey’s Infamous Cheesecake as the challenge.

As you can see, this month’s daring baker challenge was Cheesecake.  I love cheesecake, and it is something that is easy to make gluten free.  It is only the crust that needs to be altered, and I have found that just about any hard gluten free cookie works well.  As do nuts.

I decided that I really needed to try something different to make this a true “challenge.”  First, I decided to make mini cheesecakes instead of one big one. It’s just two of us here, and this way, I can cut the recipe down. (and I think mini cheesecakes are cute.)  Second, I wanted to come up with a flavor combo that I haven’t tried before.  I’ve made chocolate, I’ve made fruit, heck – I’ve even made pumpkin cheesecake.

I browsed a few of my favorite cooking websites (Food&Wine, Epicurious), keeping in mind any random ingredients I might already have on hand, until I got an idea. I found a recipe for Lemon Ginger Cheesecake on Epicurious.com, and I just happen to have some crystalized ginger.  So using the Daring Baker recipe as a foundation, and the Epicurious recipe as inspiration, I came up with my final result.  The original Daring Baker crust was a traditional graham cracker crust, which due to my being glutenfree, was not going to happen.   But with my recipe, gluten free ginger snaps were a perfect substitute.   By cutting the original recipe down, I made 12 mini cheesecakes.

I did have a little trouble with mine sinking after they were done.   Found out later that my problem was probably due to over-beating the batter.  So note to self: do not overbeat batter!

Gluten-Free Lemon Ginger Cheesecake Minis

(makes 12 mini cheesecakes)

INGREDIENTS
crust:
1 cup finely ground gingersnap cookies (Mi-Del makes GF ones)
1 teaspoon sugar
2 Tbsp unsalted butter, melted (probably don’t need this much)

cheesecake:
1 8-oz stick of cream cheese, room temperature
1/3 cup sugar
1 large egg
1/3 cup heavy cream
1 tbsp. lemon juice
1 heaping Tbsp crystalized ginger, finely chopped
1 tsp grated lemon peel

DIRECTIONS
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F .  Put 12 cupcake wrappers in tins.

2. Mix together the crust ingredients and press into cupcake wrappers. Press the crust into the bottom using the bottom of a glass.  Bake for 5 minutes.  Remove from oven and set aside (leave oven on).

3. Combine cream cheese and sugar in the bowl of a stand-mixer (or in a large bowl if using a hand-mixer) and cream together until smooth.  Add egg, mixing to fully incorporate, but do not overbeat.  Add heavy cream, lemon juice, ginger and lemon peel and blend until smooth and creamy.

4. Pour batter into prepared crust and tap the pan on the counter a few times to bring all air bubbles to the surface.  (At this point, you can put pans into a water bath, but I did not.) 

5. Bake 15 minutes or so, until it is almost done – this can be hard to judge, but you’re looking for the cake to hold together, but still have a lot of jiggle to it in the center. You don’t want it to be completely firm at this stage.  Close the oven door, turn the heat off, and let rest in the cooling oven for one hour.  This lets the cake finish cooking and cool down gently enough so that it won’t crack on the top.  After one hour, remove cheesecakes from oven.  Let it finish cooling on the counter, and then cover and put in the fridge to chill.  Once fully chilled, it is ready to serve.

Decorate with thinly sliced lemon or additional crystallized ginger.

  

And be sure to check out everyone else’s amazing cheesecakes by going to the Daring Kitchen Blogroll.