Friday Night, fishing and baking...what a weirdo

On my way home from fishing I stopped at wally world to get some nuts for my cheesecake crust.  I caught a white bass and a crappie by the way for those who might be interested, best day fishing this year.  We also saw a tree full of turkeys right as the sun was sinking below the horizon.  You should hear my father-in-laws turkey call, if you can call it that.  Unfortunately I forgot to get some more sour cream at the store so I only had half of what the recipe called for.

All you Cheesecake Factory lovers, this one is for you.  Supposedly this is their recipe, so we'll see how it goes.
http://www.momswhothink.com/cheesecake-recipes/cheesecake-factory-recipe.html

Not my picture!  You have to remember this is The Ugly Cheesecake, I don't often do pretty.  My wife has "pretty" covered.  (brownie points big time)

This recipe has the most ingredients of any cheesecake I have ever made I think.  The vanilla wafers are going to make an awesome crust I predict.  I love the way they smell, I almost started drooling while crushing them.  I've used them before and always been pleased, but I'm guessing the addition of three types of nuts is going to send my taste buds into orbit.  The batter tasted pretty good too....5 raw eggs, I'm not scared! Yes I had my face in the bowl licking it clean, after I licked the beater and the spoon I used to scrape the sides.  This week is my first time using lemon juice in cheesecakes, but I really think it adds a nice touch.

Like I said, I forgot to pick up some sour cream so I only had half of what the recipe called for...bummer, I was totally going to try and follow the recipe for a change, at least this once.  But I failed.  Not scared though,  it's already smelling pretty tasty.

I am a little concerned that the crust could have used a little more butter, it didn't really seem like enough.  It didn't bond the ingredients together all that well.  However, that just might be a good thing.  While driving home from the lake, I was thinking about different crusts.  The chocolate chunk peanut butter cheesecake that I made the other day had a very crispy crust.  It was very dense and crunchy, but I got to thinking that when making a pie crust the goal is flaky right? So maybe a cheesecake crust that is a little on the crumbly side could be the way to go.  If this really is the Cheesecake Factory's recipe, well they've created an empire, so I have to trust them I guess. This might come as a shock to some of you, but I think I have only eaten there twice, and I honestly can't remember much about the cheesecake I had.  I just remember that when I left there the last time, I set out to recreate what I had, and I was pleased with my results.

If you clicked on the link above then you have seen that this one is supposed to chill for 24 hours before it gets eaten, so I guess we will all have to wait till after church to find out how it turned out.  Which might be a good thing, because I don't think I will have time to bake one tomorrow.  I have to build a cabana at church so most of my day is already booked, and then my wife should be coming home from Houston in the evening.

Now for a note on ingredient selection.  I have seen many different opinions on which ingredients to use.  One guy says don't get the store brand cream cheese because it might not be as good of quality as the name brand stuff. Me personally, I'm cheap and rock the store brand all the time.  Probably the only thing I go name brand on when it comes to baking is chocolate.  But I will buy store brand chocolate chips for chocolate chip cookies because lets get real, who is going to criticize the quality of the chocolate in a chocolate chip cookie.  And there is always the question of fat free ingredients vs. full-o-fat, well, I've used both and never had a complaint.  In fact I've only ever had a complaint about one cheesecake I have ever made.  Cheesecake covers over a multitude of sins!  Have you ever seen somebody take a bite and not say "mmmmm!!!!!!! this is amazing"?

Out of the hundreds of cheesecakes I have made I have only thought two of them tasted awful.  One was the chocolate chunk peanut butter cheesecake that I made this week because the smoke ruined the topping, and the other was a coffee cheesecake I made for Christmas a few years back.  The one this week I just cut off the topping and the rest tasted alright.  I will have to revisit that recipe to give it a fair chance, but for now, I'm still not too impressed.  The coffee one...that was just me being stupid.  I always brew some coffee and add it to the batter when making coffee cheesecakes, but that one time I decided to grind up the beans into a really fine powder and put them straight in the batter.  Yeah yeah, I know, who does that?  It was awful.  The stupid thing was crunchy.  The only person who liked it was my uncle, I finally just threw it in the trash.

So back to the point of that last paragraph....it's cheesecake, who cares what it looks like or what brand you use, its still going to taste good.