Peanut Butter Chocolate Cheesecake

I got requested to make yet another cheesecake....this time two flavors. "Oooh, make peanut butter and chocolate! OOH and you could layer it!" Thus my boyfriend. I am not a slave, I tell you!

Yeahhh, I made it anyway.

Obviously since it was two flavors I had to make 2 distinct and independent cheesecakes. One had to be just as flavorful as the other. Since I had made a cheesecake before (see my pumpkin cheesecake) I was very comfortable doing this. However, there still were some interesting challenges I discovered....and will pass on to you!

Because I was making two different kinds, I used a LOT of ingredients:

The first thing I made was the crust. I made it with crumbled Oreos (also a request from aforementioned boyfriend), although since I used a large springform pan I had some holes, which I filled with crushed graham crackers. Because I was only using the cookie part of the Oreos, I had to remove all the cream fillings. This is the horrifying result:

Probably even more horrifying was the fact that James wanted to eat the cream! Although I will give him credit; he only ate half. ;) After I added the graham crackers and cooked it a bit, this is the resulting crust:

The first flavor I made was the peanut butter kind. Now, one thing that I've found with a lot of new bakers is that they worry about two things: 1) messing up measurements and 2) not understanding the language. This last one is obviously harder, because there are a lot of different types of preparation, some of which matter and some of which don't. Beating vs. mixing? Enh, essentially the same. Creaming vs. melting? NOT the same at all. We've all seen these different types of words: beat, whip, fold, cut in....this last one is the one I'm going to address. If you see a recipe that has you adding something dry to something wet or solid and asking you to "cut it in," don't worry. Cutting in is actually just as it sounds. You (ideally) pour in some of the dry ingredient, take a butter knife, and cut into the dry/solid ingredient with the dry one. Essentially, cutting in creates little balls of material (here, peanut butter and powdered sugar). This is not something you can abstain from doing! You can't simply pour in all the sugar on top of the peanut butter and mash around a bit. What you want is for the peanut butter and sugar to be as equally melded as possible, and since peanut butter is sticky if you just pour in the sugar you'll just coat the outside...meanwhile the inside of the lump is still sticky peanut butter. As I mentioned cutting in also creates small balls of material, which make the ingredient more easily to disperse evenly into your batter/mix.

I don't cut in with a knife simply because I prefer a flat tool with relatively larger surface area; thus I use a large fork. It still works because the tines have space between them, acting as small "knives," and the flatter area means you can pretty much just mash it into the peanut butter. This creates 4 cuts, rather than literally cutting it with a knife, which only creates one cut. This is more efficient because it distributes the powdered sugar more quickly. The picture below is what you're looking for when you're done cutting:

Essentially it wasn't too rough of a recipe; I made peanut butter balls and then mixed them in with a classic cream cheese mash. Helpful hint: since cream cheese is kept cold and thus hard, if you don't want to wait an hour for it to come to room temperature simply put the cheese in a bowl in the microwave for 25-30 seconds. It won't be long enough to melt it, but will make it nice and mashy, and thus easier to mix. Below is the peanut butter mix:

I put that aside and set to work on my chocolate cheesecake. This one was also very easy, although it did include whipping cream. Luckily I had enough left over from my crepe cake that I made weeks ago! The problem I encountered when mixing this up was that I added a little too much milk by accident and the resulting batter was much more liquid-y than the peanut butter kind. I wanted both to have the exact same texture, so here's a helpful tip: add all-purpose flour by the tablespoon to the batter to thicken it! I only ended up using about 3 tablespoons, which I knew would not affect the flavor. Actually, even quite a bit of flour won't affect the flavor as much as the texture. Remember this if your batter is too thin and you don't know what to do! I also used Dutched cocoa powder, which means that it is treated to get rid of its natural acidity. What does that mean? A mellower taste. Regular cocoa powder has a much more intense flavor but higher acidity, so my recommendation (which I'll follow next time) is to mix half and half. Here is the resulting chocolate batter:

Then I layered them on top of the crust. I didn't think of the fact that both were essentially liquid, and that that meant I wouldn't have crisp precise layers. Next time I do this I will cook each layer as I add it for a few minutes to firm it up a bit so it can properly hold the next layer. In any case, here is what it looked like:

Did it turn out good? YES YES YES