Coffee Lovers Cheesecake with a sprinkle of pecansToday is day 3 of my Another 7 Days of Cheesecake. After yesterday's disaster, I needed something truly satisfying. And here it is.
Equipment:
Ingredients:
- 1-1/2 8-ounce packages cream cheeese, room temperature.
- 2 eggs, beaten
- 3/4 cup pourable Splenda (the still-low-carb pourable stuff, not the half-real-sugar Baking Splenda)
- 1/4 cup buttermilk
- 1/4 teaspoon blackstrap molasses (might increase this to 1/2 t.)
- 1 tablespoon sugar-free Kahlua syrup (Davinci brand)
- 1-1/4 teaspoon super-fine ground coffee
Directions:
Use a coffee grinder to super-fine grind some coffee beans down to dust. You'll be eating this, so you want to get this stuff very finely ground. Dust. Mix two eggs together in a bowl and set aside. Get your cream cheese and toss it into the mixing bowl. I warm the cream cheese first in a glass dish, to get the stuff up to room temp. If you have a KitchenAid mixer, it probably came with a nice hard metal paddle mixer. Start mixing up that cream cheese. You will be beating it pretty good. Add in the egg mix slowly, too fast and it will splash all over the place. Add in all the other stuff, a little at a time. Get that thing beat pretty good.
Alternate Directions: Add in a handful of pecans. I didn't do this, but wish I did. I ate the cheesecake with pecans on the side, and it was fantastic. Wish they were in it. Next time, for sure.
Okay, anyhow, get your hard-to-find 5" diameter cheesecake pan, and coat it good inside with butter. This is going to be a no-crust cheesecake. Pour the cheesecake batter into the greased cheesecake pan. The batter just about reach the top of the pan.
Get a square of aluminum foil, place the cheesecake pan in the center of the square, and fold up the foil around the bottom of the pan, so that water does not seep in at the bottom during cooking. Get another square of foil, wrap the foil over the top of the cheesecake pan, so that the cheesecake doesn't fill up with steam and water during cooking. You probably won't even see the pan after covering it up with the foil, but that' fine.
Fill your pressure cooker with 2 cups of water, or whatever amount you use when using a steaming basket within your pressure cooker. If you don't have a steaming basket for your pressure cooker, or if you don't have a pressure cooker, give up now. I hope you read this before you make up a bunch of cheesecake batter.
Place the cheesecake pan in steaming basket in the pressure cooker. Close the lid on the pressure cooker and seal it. If your pressure cooker has multiple pressure settings, use the high setting. Following the directions for your pressure cooker, cook for 20 minutes, then remove from heat for another 10. Using my Fagor pressure cooker, this means that I start the pressure cooker on a burner turned on high until steam is blowing out the pressure cooker and the little pop-up indicator pops up. I then carefully slide the cooker over to another burner that is turned on halfway, where I start the timer for the 20 minutes.
Okay, after the 10 minutes is done, release any remaining pressure using the cold water release method. Do take care, you do not want to move the pressure cooker around too wildly.
After releasing the pressure, open the pressure cooker and remove the cheesecake pan, keeping mind that the pan will still be quite hot. Allow the pan to cool, then transfer it to the refrigerator for the evening. In the morning, remove the cheesecake from the cheesecake pan and transfer it to a different pan.
This is a nice coffee-flavored cheesecake, not a fake-tasting "mocha" flavor, but real Cup 'O Java flavor. As shown here, I personally feel the flavor could be cranked up a notch. I'd boost the molasses to a teaspoon and the coffee to a couple of teaspoons or even a tablespoon. That's me, though. You might not be so inclined, but that's the joy of cooking, right? Make it to suit your tastes. Enjoy.