This cake is for my Aunt Angel's birthday. She loves Birthdays.
I asked her what she wanted and she mentioned cheesecake.
At first i was like cheesecake??
That is too easy and boring for a birthday cake! Really CHEESECAKE? OK.
So of course I had to think of a way to joosh* it up!
(joosh - I use this expression all the time but when I tried to look up how to spell it I had a hard time. It turns out I am not the only one . . . "joosh" or "zhush" (as in the French je + “oosh”) is a word whose usage dates as far back as 1968 in Britain. Its spelling, much like its origin, is elusive. It has been defined by the American Dialect Society as a verb to mean “primp or fluff up”. . . . . very interesting, at least to me it is.)
In order to joosh-zhush-or whatever you want to call it up I decided to employ my tiered cake pans and make a big multi colored, and multi flavored, cake.
I was having a hard time deciding on flavors so my friend/coworker suggested a twist on Spumoni.
If you don't know what spumoni is then get with it!
Spumone (from spuma or "foam"), plural spumoni, is a molded Italian ice cream made with layers of different colors and flavors, usually containing cherry, pistachio, and chocolate layers.
Perfect!
First thing to do when making a big cake is make a trip to the Costco.
I got 4 pounds of cream cheese, 8 pounds of butter, 36 eggs, and 2 pounds of sour cream.
I won't actually use all of this for the cheesecakes.
(In fact I already used 2 pounds of the cream cheese to ice Robby's carrot cake.)
You got to stock up!! Robby loves a good unit price!
I used my go to cheesecake recipe from The Holub Family Recipe Book, with my usual alterations.
The first step is to make the basic cheesecake filling recipe.
Maureen's Cheesecake (+ Olivia's Standard Alterations)
Four 8 oz packages of cream cheese (room temp)
6 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup sugar
1/3 cup flour
1 pint sour cream
Blend everything together in this order:
cream cheese
+ sugar
+ vanilla
+ eggs
+ flour
+ sour cream
Next you need to divide the batter and flavor it.
Since I had three different size pans I couldn't just divide it into three. So I had to pour the batter into each pan then pour it out into bowels.
Once I had the batter portioned out I had to do each of the three flavors.
Chocolate:
Add 1/2 cup cocoa powder and 1/4 cup sugar to batter.
Pistachio:
Add 1/2 cup of pistachio flour, 1/4 tsp pistachio extract, and 3 drops of green food coloring to batter.
Cherry:
Add 1/4 cup sour cherry preserves to batter.
(Place batters in fridge while preparing the crusts.)
For each flavor I made a complimentary crust.
This is where it got kinda tedious and annoying, but i pressed on!!
For the Chocolate I thought OREO!
For the Pistachio I used Nilla Wafers and more pistachio flour.
Finally for the cherry I used the typical graham cracker crust.
Funny how the size of the boxes coincided with the cake sizes!
For the Chocolate Crust:
Pulse 1 sleeve or oreos in the food processor. Add 1 stick melted butter. Press into parchment lined pan.
Pulse 1 cup of nilla wafers in the food processor. Add 1/2 stick melted butter and 1/4 cup pistachio flour. Press into parchment lined pan.
Add 1/2 stick melted butter to 1 cup of gram cracker crumbs. Press into parchment lined pan.
Pour each batter over their paired crust.
Bake in water bath for 1 hr at 350.
Turn off oven but leave cakes in oven for at least 2 hrs to fully cool.
Refrigerate overnight before attempting to stack!!
Starting with chocolate, carefully remove each cooled cheesecake from it's pan and stack.
I also made those cute little watermelon cookies for decoration.
I was gonna blog them but i think that is enough for now! Don't you agree??
(NEXT UP IS OREO CAKE!)
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