Review: Cranberry Hazelnut Cheesecake [Archive]

rburganmckinley

12-20-2004, 05:59 AM

I made this and brought it to a christmas party this weekend. I couldn't get the fat free cream cheese at ourlocal grocery store (I know :rolleyes: ) so I used all 1/3 less fat cream cheese. It turned out great. A very smooth and rich cheesecake, not too sweet and the cranberry set it off nicely. Though a little chocolate sauce on top wouldn't have hurt! :D

Cranberry Hazelnut Cheesecake

Crust
1 1/4 c chocolate cookie crumbs
1/2 c finely chopped/ground hazelnuts
2 Tbsp melted butter

Stir together melted butter, cookie crumbs and hazelnuts. Spread evenly into a 9" springform pan. Press onto bottom and up sides. Bake at 325�F for about 8-10 minutes. Cool completely

Sauce
1/2 c sugar
2 Tbsp cornstartch
2 c cranberries
1 c water
1 Tbsp hazelnut liquor

In a medium saucepan stir together sugar and cornstartch. Stir in water and hazelnut liquer and then cranberries. Cook and stir over medium heat until thick and bubbly and cranberries have popped. Remove 3/4 cup worth of sauce and puree. Set pureed sauce aside and refrigerate remaining sauce.

Filling/Cheesecake
2 8 oz packages 1/3 less fat cream cheese
2 8 oz packages fat free cream cheese
1 c sugar
3 Tbsp all purpose flour
4 large eggs
2 Tbsp hazelnut liquer (Frangellico)
1/2 C ground hazelnuts

Preheat oven to 350�F. Beat cream cheese and sugar until light. Beat in flour. Beat in eggs 1 at a time until just blended. Beat in hazelnut liquer. Stir in hazelnuts.

Pour 1/2 of filling into crust. Drizzle pureed sauce over filling. Carefully top with remaining filling covering sauce as much as possible.

Bake cake on a shallow pan for 45-55 minutes or until center appears nearly set when shaken. Turn oven off and let sit in oven for another 60 minutes (to slow cooling and prevent cracking). Cool completely. Top cake with remaining cranberry sauce. Chill until set.

CompassRose

12-22-2004, 10:27 AM

That's awesome! Yours looks really good, too.

I also made a Cranberry-Hazelnut cheesecake, to bring to a potluck on Saturday. Unfortunately, the weather went crazy Saturday night... so the only people who saw and shared my lovely cake were me, A., and our friend who was also supposed to be going to this dinner, but lives thirty minutes further away. She came as far as our house, and declared that she was stopping there until the salt trucks came and she felt safe going back. "All of the cars on the highway are facing the wrong way," she said.

We ate Cranberry-Hazelnut Cheesecake for breakfast for three days running, and it was good.

CRANBERRY-HAZELNUT SAUCE

2 cups fresh or frozen cranberries
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup orange juice
2 Tbsp lemon juice
1 Tbsp fresh ginger, peeled and grated
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 cup hazelnuts, chopped
2 Tbsp Frangelico... plus 2 Tbsp Frangelico, a little water and some cranberry juice concentrate

Combine cranberries, sugar, juices, ginger, salt and cinnamon in a medium pot. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer 15 minutes or until crans pop and mixture thickens. Stir in hazelnuts; cook 3 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in first 2 Tbsp Frangelico, cool.

Use dollops of it in cheesecake. Put remainder in Mason jar in the fridge. Take it out later to bring along for "pooling" over cheesecake (back when you still think you're going to the potluck). Think "wow, that's rock-solid." Add more Frangelico. Think, "that's still not as pourable as I wanted." Decide that adding more Frangelico would make it a bit more punchy than you really had in mind. Remember that you have leftover cranberry concentrate in fridge from ... interesting... experiment in Cranberry Fudge (to be renamed Cranberry Chews, but that's another story) and add some of that and some water to desired saucy consistency. Think as you are spooning the last of it onto pancakes four days later that "this stuff really rocks! Too bad it's all gone now!"

HAZELNUT CRUST

1/4 cup plus 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
3.5 Tbsp ice water
1 tsp lemon juice
3 Tbsp hazelnuts
2 Tbsp sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
3 Tbsp butter

Combine 1/4 c. flour, water, and lemon juice. Stir with a fork till well blended and set aside.

Grind hazelnuts with sugar in a coffee grinder until processed to a fine meal. In a large bowl, whisk together remaining flour, hazelnuts and sugar, salt and cinnamon. Cut in butter. Add slurry and toss with a fork until mixture is evenly moist.

Press into the bottom and up the sides of a 9" springform pan coated with cooking spray. Freeze ten minutes. (Note: I adapted this straight from the CL Pumpkin Pie with Pecan Crust recipe. By the texture of the stuff pre-slurry, though, I think for a cheesecake crust it might have held together fine without that step.)

Preheat oven to 400�F. Bake crust 10 minutes, until lightly browned. Cool on wire rack.

CHEESECAKE FILLING

3 8-ounce packages "ultra low-fat" cream cheese
16 ounces Quark cheese
1 cup sugar
3 Tbsp flour
1/4 tsp salt
8 oz low-fat sour cream
4 large eggs
2 tsp vanilla

Place cream cheese in food processor with cream-whipping blade; cream till smooth. Add Quark and blend. Whisk together sugar, flour, salt. Add to cheese mixture and blend. Add sour cream and blend again, then, with motor running, add eggs one at a time, and vanilla.

Pour half into prepared crust. Dollop spoonfuls of cranberry topping over it. Watch them sink. Start to pour the rest over, and watch cranberry topping float to top. Aim remaining pours to sink all the dollops of cranberry, and forget about "a layer in the middle". Bake for one hour and fifteen minutes at 375�F. (It is still so hard for me to pull a cheesecake when it's quiggly in the middle!) Remove from oven, run knife round edge, and cool to room temperature. Watch a spectacular 5-pointed star crack form in the very centre, and decide that you will after all be doing the icing-and-sauce trick on top -- once it's chilled overnight. Chill overnight.

WHITE CHOCOLATE ICING, AND FINISHING

2 Tbsp whipping cream
2 ounces white chocolate, chopped
4 ounces ultra-low-fat cream cheese, softened
1/2 tsp lemon extract
About 2 Tbsp hazelnuts, chopped
More of the Cranberry-Hazelnut Topping (pre-dilution)

Put the whipping cream and the chocolate in a small heatproof bowl or cup, and microwave on High for about a minute or two (remove and stir every thirty or forty seconds) just until chocolate is dissolved. Cool to room temperature.

Beat cream cheese and lemon extract together with an electric mixer. Pour in the chocolate mixture, and whip until smooth. (Don't overwhip, or it might curdle.) Put a star tip in the corner of a small plastic baggie or Ziplok, and fill the bag with the icing.

Cut a 5" circle out of parchment or waxed paper (or, as I did, a small disposable dessert plate). Take a short length of tape, fold most of it over on itself leaving two sticky "legs", and stick it to the middle of your circle to make a "handle" to lift it off the cake with after icing. Plant the circle in the centre of the cake. Pipe rosettes of icing close together in circles all round this centre piece. Put the whole thing, cardboard and all, in the fridge to set the icing for at least half an hour.

Remove from fridge. Don't touch the circle yet! Sprinkle the chopped hazelnuts all around the iced parts -- press them in just a touch if you like. Now carefully pull the circle out of the middle, using your handle. Stare in amazement as this actually works, and you are left with a nice well (revealing the crack) in the middle of your cheesecake.

Dollop spoonfuls of Cranberry-Hazelnut Topping into the middle bit, and gently spread them out to the rims of the prepared pool. Put it back in the fridge till serving time.