Chocolate Turtle Cheesecake

A different post today. I'm having my kitchen redone (God bless you, Landlord!), so I made this cake at my father's house. Dad bakes bread and has a very, very cool kitchen. But, I was flustered by not knowing where anything was, so I don't have many pictures.

This cake is for my friend Alysia, whose birthday was Saturday. Her family has a lot of July birthdays, so she asked about a cheesecake instead of a traditional birthday cake. After some discussion, she said that she likes New York-style cheesecakes and the Turtle flavor combination–chocolate, caramel, and pecan.

My inspiration is this beautiful Turtle Cheesecake by Miss Patti at Cake Central.

I'll write about the cheesecake later–today I'm focusing on the elements that make it Turtle.

This blog is all about challenging myself (and becoming rich and famous), so I wanted to make the caramel and chocolate sauces. I used the recipes from The Family Baking Book from ATK.

Dad has a very high BTU cooktop and Le Creuset pots. They have a white lining that makes it very easy to see the color of the caramel. *sigh*

The failed caramel

I hash to throw away my first batch of caramel, as I didn't read the friggin' directions. We live, and, hopefully, we learn.

I put enough water in the pan to cover the bottom, the added 7 ounces or 1 cup of sugar to the middle. I then heated the pan over medium-high without stirring until the syrup was light amber.

I then lowered the heat to medium-low and cooked until it was the color I wanted. I removed the pan from heat and very slowly whisked in 1 cup heavy cream. The first failure was mostly from not adding the cream slowely. Finally, I stirred in lemon juice, vanilla, and a pinch of salt. I have a new-found love of caramel.

I made the chocolate sauce later in my gutted kitchen. It was very simple–I just heated cream and stirred in chopped chocolate and a little corn syrup off heat.

Now we come to the fun part–squeeze bottles! I feel so fancy. I decorated the cheesecake on my kitchen table, in the middle of my living room, while distracting my children with Sid the Science Kid.

I tried doing a layered grid like the inspiration photo, but the relative viscosities of the sauces fought me. I ended up flooding the cheesecake with caramel and decorating with chocolate sauce.

The caramel tasted much too good to leave it at that, so I covered the sides in caramel also. Some chopped pecans, et violà!

Posted with Blogsy