TWD: Tall and Creamy Cheesecake

Hey everyone! Hope you all had a great Christmas! I'm just getting back into the swing of blogging, and this week's Tuesday's with Dorie pick was a perfect excuse. On this week's menu was Tall and Creamy Cheesecake, chosen by Anne of AnneStrawberry.

(Oh, and before I get started, I'm dying to hear what everyone got for Christmas! What was your favorite gift? ...I'll share my prizes in a later post.)

I've made quite a few cheesecakes in my day, so I decided to make one of my favorite cheesecake flavors, apple cinnamon. Mmmmm... yum!


Here's what I did... first, I had some homemade apple pie filling (a canned filling such as Comstock would also work), about a half cup. (By the way, I halved the recipe and baked it in a 7-inch by 2-inch tall cake pan.)


I added about a half cup of my prepared cheesecake batter to the apples and mixed.


I set the apple cheesecake mixture aside. Then, I added half of the remaining cheesecake batter to my pan with my graham cracker crust. I layered the apple cinnamon cheesecake mixture on top of that.


I thought it looked like it needed more, so I added a little more straight apple pie filling.


Then I covered with the rest of the cheesecake batter very nearly to the top of the pan. (Notice the pan is in the water bath, but with no pesky aluminum foil wrap? That's because I don't use spring-form pans for cheesecake anymore. You can read about how I do it toward the bottom of this post.)


Finally, I sprinkled some of the cinnamony liquidy part of the filling on top, just for something different.


Since I added the liquidy apple filling, I baked for about 10-15 minutes longer to make sure the cheesecake was baked through.

I liked the splattered, artsy look on the finished cheesecake. As you can see I got some cracking, but strangely enough the cracks followed my cinnamony sprinkling. I thought it added character.


The verdict? I give it two thumbs up. I have a couple of favorite cheesecake recipes already, but I could easily add Dorie's to the list. It was light and creamy, just like I like. Oh, I forgot to say that I used half cream and half sour cream. I don't like my cheesecake tooooo tangy, just a little bit tang is fine for me.

In addition, I liked the crust. I've never pushed it up the sides before, but I really liked the look of it.

This recipe is a winner in my book. Speaking of books, please check out Dorie Greenspan's book "Baking: From my Home to Yours" for the recipe, or visit Anne's blog above.