Week 17, July 18th: Toffee Crunch Caramel Cheesecake

Oh Caramel, how I've missed you old foe turned friend...

I'm still not sure if we're on good terms, but more on that in a bit.

This week, I was craving toffee and cheesecake, so I did a little googling and came across a Toffee Crunch Caramel Cheesecake.
Recipe from: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Toffee-Crunch-Caramel-Cheesecake-231417

This guy is a two day process.
Day one is cheesecake followed by chilling.
Day two is caramel, toffee, more chilling and eating.

The weekend was crazy busy: three grad parties in two towns on Saturday, followed by a 2nd birthday party for Lily-bean an hour away and running concurrently with another grad party.  Good news is I only have one party next weekend and then one sometime in August.  It was just a little crunch trying to get in my baking with sleeping in and an afternoon of driving and party hopping.

Lily did not want to share her cupcake with me.

 The recipe was really straight forward, nothing too fancy, a lot of doing and then waiting.  I thought that the gingersnap crust was a bad idea with the caramel theme going on.  I'm going to have to research that for the next pass at this guy.  I had two screw ups: 1, I removed the sides of the springform while the cake was still hot- directions had said put hot cake uncovered in fridge, but it meant with sides intact.  You can see how it sort of splatted.

 2, I think I overcooked (ie burnt) the caramel.  It seemed to be going too well.  I was jamming out to some tunes and making another batch of caponata, grilling some chicken and letting bread rise.  I thought I was in the kitchen zone- I burnt the caramel, overcooked the caponata (it's this watery mess), burnt the daylights out of the chicken... the bread was decent though.  My parents thought that the caramel wasn't actually burnt, that it might be the kick of the gingersnaps... I love it when they lie to save my feelings : )

 After pouring on the caramel, you crumble toffee candy bars and edge the cake with it.  I was being lazy and instead of going after them with a mallet or a glass, I just crushed them in their packaging with my hands.  Bad idea.

I gave some to my neighbor, who txted me and said it was delicious.  Mom, dad and gram seemed to enjoy.  Mom said it could have been sweeter- the cheese cake itself.  Dad liked it, but said that there was a bite of an aftertaste- either from the crust or the burnt caramel.

I'm not giving myself a pass on this one- besides the Christmas cheesecakes and the pumpkin cheesecake, none of them has come out well.  It's time for me to find and execute a good plain cheesecake that I can jazz up when desired.  

So, goals for the upcoming weeks: more quiet, more cheesecakes, more bread, more caramel, more sneaker mileage, and more skyping with the princesita

more smiling, more things crossed off the to-do lists, no whining, no excuses.

Have a great week!