New York baked cheesecake

The Mister lost a bet at work and had to provide a cheesecake. He reckoned he’d build a feature with 10 bugs or less but Susanne from the Quality Assurance team had her doubts – 10 bugs or less and she would provide a cheesecake, more than 10 bugs, The Mister would. There were 11 bugs.

So we made cheesecake on Sunday. The Mister unveiled it for a dev team afternoon tea yesterday.  Susanne was thrilled with it and The Mister received many compliments on how wonderful it was.

There were a couple of requests for the recipe so here you go.

10-12 plain digestive biscuits (of if you’re in the States, 15 graham crackers)
3 TBSP melted butter
900g cream cheese
1.5 cups white sugar
3/4 cup milk
4 eggs
1 cup sour cream
1 TBSP vanilla essence
1/4 cup all purpose flour

Preheat the oven to 175C (or 350F). Grease a 24cm (9in) spring form tin

Crush the digestives finely in a food processor and mix with melted butter until they look like wet crumbs, but not clumping together. Press into the bottom of the tin with the back of a spoon.

In a large bowl (if your hand-held blender can cope with it!) or a food processor/mixer, beat cream cheese and sugar until smooth. Blend in milk and then mix in the eggs one at a time, mixing just enough to incorporate. (It’s at this time I pour everything out of the food processor into a bowl and use the hand-mixer because the processor is getting rather full and leaving unbeaten cream cheese on the bottom.) Mix in sour cream, vanilla and flour (I sprinkle it from a little sieve) until smooth.

Pour filling onto the crust and bake in preheated oven for 1 hour.

After an hour turn the oven off and leave the cheese cake to cool in the oven without opening the door for 5 to 6 hours to prevent the top from cracking. Store in the fridge.