Baking Friday - Cake # 8

Hi everyone!  I know that I am behind in posting anything other than the Baking Friday topics.  I have been getting caught up from vacation and plan to post a bit about vacation on Saturday.  We have some cute pics of the grandsons and places we went together, and while I don't have a pic, we even ran into S' maid of honor and her family in Branson!  (They even soaked me on the Bumper Boats!)

But for now we will simply share today's cake - a Peach Cheesecake with a Raspberry Glaze.  What holiday are we celebrating with this tasty treat?  We are celebrating 3 holidays actually!  National Cheesecake Day was Wed 7/30, and National Raspberry Cream Pie is today, 8/1, and August is National Peach Month!  (By the way, have you ever heard of Raspberry Cream Pie?  I have not, but I plan to investigate it more.  In the meantime, I made a Raspberry Glaze to serve with the Peach Cheesecake - sort of a Peach Melba nod with a cheesecake base.)

Since I'm not a big cheesecake fan and I'm not sure that I do cheesecake well, I wasn't uber sure about how this would turn out.  Would I have another FAIL on my hands?  Well if this was a FAIL, one taster said that he would take a fail like that any day!  Everyone who tasted said that it was good - that the peach flavor was solid and tasty as well as the cheesecake being creamy but not too "cheesy" and heavy if you know what that means.  My hubby, G, who isn't a big cheesecake fan but likes it ok, was very pleased with this and said that it was a keeper!  So perhaps you'd like to try making it?  It wasn't hard nor did it take a great deal of hands-on time on my part.  The primary time was in the oven or chilling in the fridge.

It also cut very nicely, but like the blond that I am, I forgot to take a pic of the cut piece, and it's all gone so I can't take a pic of it now!

Oh well.

To put this altogether, I made a peach puree from 4 fresh peaches - but I have a bunch of the puree left over so I could have used only 2 peaches for this one cheesecake.  (But that's ok, too, because our pie next week will be a peach pie, so I will use the puree to help sweeten up the peaches then!)

Here are my peaches, peeled and diced/sliced:

I sweetened and flavored the peaches with:
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 t. ground ginger (I really like ginger with peaches!)
1/4 t. cinnamon
1/4 t. nutmeg
2 T. vanilla sugar syrup

I let them sit for about a half hour to release the juices.

These are scrumptious just like you see above!  Have a spoon?  Dig in!  Have some ice cream?  Cover it with these tasty bits of juicy, sweet, summery yummy goodness and enjoy some summery wonderfulness!

But alas, I needed a puree for this cheesecake, so I removed the slices and pureed the diced pieces in the food processor.  (I chilled the slices for garnishing later.) Then I cooked the pureed pieces over medium high heat with these ingredients:

3oz pineapple juice
1/2 cup sugar
2 T. cornstarch
Dash of salt
Splash of maple syrup
Splash of vanilla
1 T. butter

I combined the sugar, cornstarch and salt and then whisked in the pineapple juice and sweetened peaches.  I cooked that over medium high heat until thick and boiling for 2 minutes.  Then I added the syrup, vanilla and butter until the butter was melted and let it cool.  I tasted....and it was good!  (Seriously, this would be good on ice cream, too!  Need a special sauce for 1 scoop of your banana split?  Try this!  Want to turn this into a smoothie?  Definitely!  Freeze it for about 2 hours and then blend it up with frozen bananas, yogurt, fruit juice - etc!)

Oh!  Looking at that picture it reminds me that I didn't think that it looked quite "peachy pink" enough, so I added a small amount of crushed strawberries to pink it up a bit!  In order to make swirling this into the mix as easy as possible, I poured this peach puree into a squeeze bottle (like I've used for flowing icing onto sugar cookies many times.)

Now I turned my attention to the cheesecake.  This is a vanilla bean cheesecake base.

Crust - I could have used a regular graham cracker crust, but I combined some oatmeal cookies with graham crackers and melted butter and pressed it into a 10" cheesecake pan with a removable bottom.  I froze that for about 20 minutes and then baked it at 375 for 15 minutes until set.

For the cheesecake mixture, I beat on medium low speed, scraping sides and bottoms often:
3 - 8oz packages of softened cream cheese
1-1/2 cup sugar
5 eggs (beat in 1 at a time)
Caviar from 1 vanilla bean
Generous splash of vanilla
1/2 cup half-n-half

I'm not an expert on cheesecake by any means, but I try to not beat too much air into the mixture and simply try to get it as smooth as possible with no chunks of cream cheese.  I hope you can see how creamy it is in this pic.  At least you can see the flecks of vanilla bean in here!

I poured about half of the cheesecake mixture in the crust.  And then dotted it with peach puree.

I poured in the rest of the cheesecake batter...

...and then dotted and swirled more of the peach puree.  Kinda pretty, right?

Here's another view!

I didn't wrap the pan with foil or place this in a water bath like some cheesecakes, but I could have.  Instead I simply placed the pan inside my jelly roll pan and baked it at 325 for 1 hour.  The cake wasn't solid all the way in the middle, but was soft in the middle by about 3 - 4 inches at the end of the hour.  I turned off the oven and propped the door open with a wooden spoon to let the cake finish baking gradually for another hour.  Cheesecakes can be a bit temperamental, and gradual temperature changes seem to help them set and minimize cracking.  When I removed it from the oven, I was pleased with how it looked!

Again, because cheesecakes seem to need a bit of TLC, I let it cool for about 45 minutes (but I could have gone longer except I wanted to go to bed!) before chilling in the fridge overnight.

Thursday morning I removed the sides of the pan after running a spatula around the edges and set it on a platter.  Finally, I garnished with the reserved slices peaches and a drizzle of more of the puree. Yummy!

Even not being a cheesecake fan, I was pleased with the few bites that I tasted - creamy, summery, peachy - a fine way to celebrate National Cheesecake Day and Peach Month!

(I didn't talk about the raspberry glaze, nor do I have any pictures of making or serving that.  Duh!  Sorry! But the cheesecake is good without the berries, I promise!)

Happy Peach Month!  Hope you come back next week for Peach Pie!!  Thanks again for stopping by!