Daring Bakers Cheesecake Challenge

Key Lime Cheesecake

April's Daring Bakers challenge had us getting creative with cheesecake. I love cheesecake, and I was so excited to find a key lime version to kick off the summer with. I was really pleased with the taste of it... Aubrey says it's the best he's ever had, but he wishes it had a little more lime flavor in it. Cheesecake wasn't as hard to make as I thought it would be. I was scared to death that it would crack in the middle, but low and behold... it held up. Hooray!

Ingredients:

Crust:
2 cups graham cracker crumbs
1 stick butter, melted
2 Tablespoons sugar
Zest of 1 lime
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Cheesecake:
3 sticks of cream cheese, 8 oz each, room temperature
Zest of 1 lime
1 cup sugar
3 large eggs
1 cup heavy cream
3 Tablespoons key lime juice

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350. Begin to boil a large pot of water for the water bath.

2. Mix together the crust ingredients and press into your preferred pan. You can press the crust just into the bottom, or up the sides of the pan too - baker's choice. Set crust aside.

3. Combine sugar and lime zest and mix with the cream cheese in the bowl of a stand-mixer (or in a large bowl if using a hand-mixer) and cream together until smooth. Add eggs, one at a time, fully incorporating each before adding the next. Make sure to scrape down the bowl in between each egg. Add heavy cream and key lime juice and blend until smooth and creamy.

4. Pour batter into prepared crust and tap the pan on the counter a few times to bring all air bubbles to the surface. Place pan into a larger pan and pour boiling water into the larger pan until halfway up the side of the cheesecake pan.

5. Bake 45 to 55 minutes, until it is almost done - this can be hard to judge, but you're looking for the cake to hold together, but still have a lot of jiggle to it in the center. You don't want it to be completely firm at this stage. Close the oven door, turn the heat off, and let rest in the cooling oven for one hour. This lets the cake finish cooking and cool down gently enough so that it won't crack on the top. After one hour, remove cheesecake from oven and lift carefully out of water bath. Let it finish cooling on the counter, and then cover and put in the fridge to chill. Once fully chilled, it is ready to serve.

The April 2009 challenge is hosted by Jenny from Jenny Bakes. She has chosen Abbey's Infamous Cheesecake as the challenge.