The (Blueberry) Cheesecake Experience

Today I was brave enough to try something a bit challenging: bake a blueberry cheesecake. Well, it is certainly challenging for a beginner like me, having no formal training nor experience in baking. But eversince I bought the small electric oven for my nephew's birthday (as requested by my sister, she wanted to cook baked macaroni for the kids), I have always wanted to try different recipes and bake different goodies with it. Me and my boyfriend are both fans of blueberry cheesecake, and so I decided to try one myself.

Here is the recipe I used. I got this from a cooking blog (sorry I'm not able to remember the site) but the author mentioned that she adapted it from Nigel Slater's Kitchen Diaries.

Ingredients:

2 225-gram blocks of cream cheese, softened
1 250-ml brick of all purpose cream (room temperature)
3/4 c. plus 2 tbsps. of white sugar
4 eggs
1-3/4 c. of graham cracker crumbs
1/3 c. of butter
1 can of blueberry pie filling

The procedure was quite easy but I had difficulty beating cream cheese together with the ingredients. After a minute or so in medium speed, my mixture still have lumps of cream cheese left. I was a bit hesitant to mix some more 'cause I read in a cooking guide not to beat the cream cheese too much (if you are making a cheesecake) or else there would be cracks in the finished product. What I did was, I got two spoons and manually break the lumps by getting a spoonful of mixture and pressing it against the other spoon. It kind of lessen the lumps but it was a bit tedious. After that, I got my small springform pan (which has the graham crust already) and pour the mixture until half the pan is filled. I baked it for about an hour.

Since I am still in the experimental stage, I used bain marie for the first cheesecake that I made. I also put aluminum foil at the bottom of the pan to make sure that the water will not mix with the cheesecake. For the remaining cheesecake mixture, I decided to use medium aluminum cups so I could pack it as baon for my sisters and my bf. I did not use bain marie here. I just hoped that they will not crack or burn. :p It only took 45 minutes to bake the second batch of cheesecakes.

Unfortunately, I was not able to get hold of canned blueberries in Puregold, so I asked my eldest sister to buy one for me in Landmark. The cheesecakes are already cooled and are in the ref now. I just hope my sister won't forget the blueberries I requested. :)

Here are the photos of the cheesecakes sans blueberries.

P.S. I tried a slice of my cheesecake and well, not bad for a first try. :) But I would still want to make a few improvements, like making the sides smoother and the consistency better. But the taste is okay (at least for me). Time to take my cheesecake to the ultimate scrutiny: the taste test.