Cheesecake Marathon

 Our neighborhood association is having a community garage sale tomorrow, so I decided to turn it into a bake sale.  My goal is to raise enough money to buy laminate flooring for the community center, because right now it is GHETTO!!!!!

 For the occasion, I decided to make a chocolate chip cheesecake, vanilla mocha swirl cheesecake, mint chocolate cheesecake, and a coconut cream cheesecake which ended up being a banana cream cheesecake instead, and 2 sopapilla cheesecakes.  Since I decided to make so many I went with my original 3,2,1 recipe, but after making the "Cheesecake Factory" recipe I decided to add an additional egg.  I doubled the recipe and then divided as necessary.

This is the one that started it all...except I didn't have the miniature chocolate chips so I used full size chips and half a bag of chocolate chunks.  Obviously this is before baking...notice the nice and pretty appearance...yeah that didn't last.

I love the way pioneer woman does with putting the step by step pictures, but I didn't want to rip off her idea, so I just put various pictures throughout the night.

Random pot of beans...Not sure what brought on the urge to make a pot of beans, but man do they smell good.  I sure wish I had some fresh cilantro though...maybe my crop will grow this year...didn't work out so well this year.

Now I know most of the women out there are looking at this picture thinking "Heaven" but ya know what's weird, my wife isn't really a fan of chocolate.   In fact she's not really a big "sweets" person at all, which just goes to show God's sense of humor for putting us together.

Brittany, yes Brittany, not Brittney this one is for you....chocolate chip cheesecake and beer. (by the way, this is before baking so that's why it's not ugly yet)

 My 3 favorite "B's"  Brittney, baking, and beer....haha she told me to put that.

This is my vanilla mocha swirl crust, just a store brand oreo crust, but I accidentally bought the ones with chocolate filling.  While I was at the store I thought I saw that they were chocolate cookies with peanut butter filling, which was perfect for my chocolate chunk peanut butter cheesecake, but when I got home I realized that either I can't read, or I grabbed the wrong bag....at 29 yrs old (i think) lets hope it's the latter.  This thing I'm using to pack my crumbs together was a gift from my mom.  I have no idea what it's supposed to be used for but it works well for rolling out crust.

Hahaha, so about the coconut cream turned banana cream cheesecake....  Let's start at the beginning....(and I know my mom is over there singing "a very good place to start..."  yes I've suffered through the sound of music one too many times.)  For mothers day last year, or the year before, don't remember...I thought about the fact that my mother's favorite pie is her mother's coconut meringue pie so I set out to make a coconut cream cheesecake.  I figured meringue probably wouldn't go so perfectly with a cheesecake, but now that I'm telling the story it's got the wheels turning...maybe its not such a bad idea after all.  So back to the story, I just happened to find some coconut cream Jello instant pudding one day and thought, "might as well let Jello do all the work, and I'll take the credit."  So I whipped up my usual 3,2,1 recipe and threw in a couple boxes of the pudding.  Two boxes might be a little overkill, but I'm anything but conservative when it comes to cooking....politics yes, cooking no.  If it says 1 tsp of vanilla I use 2 Tbsp.  Never been too good at following the rules, and recipes are just rules after all aren't they?    After I baked it, I sprinkled a little coconut on top and toasted it...good initiative, bad judgement...I burned the coconut.  Ooops, but it still tasted great and was an instant hit.  Since that first one, which I think had a vanilla wafer crust, I have experimented with different cookies, and finally found some coconut cookies that are awesome as a crust.

Tonight though...I looked in the cupboard and found no coconut cream Jello instant pudding, no, it was a box of banana cream pudding mix...they both come in a yellow box, how was I to know.  Oh yeah back to the grown man being able to read thing.  Have I mentioned that when I was a kid they said I had ADD?

As you can see from the picture, my banana cream cheesecake was a miniature one.  I can't find the bottoms to all my springform pans.  Apparently I have left them all over town and I guess people are holding them for ransom or something....what they don't understand is that they have to return the bottom to get a new cheesecake.  It's kinda like Marie Calendar's where you return the pie tin to get a discount...well maybe not like that at all but oh well.

Since it's a mini cheesecake, I didn't use 2 boxes, I only used about a fourth of one, and it turned out pretty well.  The batter had a great flavor,  I'll just have to whip up some whipped cream to top it with before I sell it tomorrow.

Mint chocolate cheesecake, miniature of course...my hands aren't that big!  Remember earlier when I said if it calls for 1 tsp I use 2Tbsp....well not a good idea with mint extract or cocoa.  Not that I had a recipe that I was not following.  I used about a quarter tsp of the mint, but probably should have used about a sixteenth tsp.  I think a quarter tsp would be perfect for a full size cheesecake but I didn't make a full size, I made a mini.  So all that to say this, I put too much mint.  Then to balance the mint I ended up using a tsp of cocoa, which is a lot for such a small cheesecake...but then I added 2 more tablespoons, oh yeah it brought out the bitterness.  So to offset the bitterness, I added a quarter cup of sugar....experiment gone bad!  But I think the final product turned out tolerable, I will offer a money back guarantee on that one...after all its for charity right?  But the idea was good.  I think I just added enough for the full size recipe that's all.  Maybe I will pick some mint leaves off my wife's plant that she says I'm not supposed to touch to garnish with.  I know, I know, I went off about garnishing that one time, but it's just a thought...I might not even do it.

 Definitely NOT cheesecake.  This is my chicken concoction, I had some jalapeno dip in the fridge that I needed to get rid of so I threw the chicken in the bowl, then scooped out the dip on top and topped it all with about 2 tbsp of butter (real butter).  Let me just say "Wow!"  It was mighty tasty. Give it a try......now back to cheesecake....

 So pretty right?  Yeah, hasn't baked yet!  This is the vanilla mocha swirl.  It has the same chocolate cookie crust as the mint chocolate cheesecake, but the secret is in the batter.  It's my 3,2,1 modified to 3,3,1 like I mentioned earlier.  I just divided it into two bowls.  One I added about 2 Tbsp of vanilla, this is after already adding a Tbsp to the original mix.  The other bowl I added a couple Tbsp of cocoa and 2 double shots of espresso.  Then I poured them into the bowl alternately and finished off by dragging a knife across the top to try and pretty it up a bit.  Can't wait to see how this final product tastes.

Look at that perfect espresso, I should open a coffee shop or something.

We shall see how they turned out.....but that is for another time and another place.  Good night world.