Sweet Potato Cheesecake. I was so pleased that it came out with no cracks 🙌🏽. It was my first time attempting a NY style cheesecake and using the water bath method. I used a quick hack and microwaved the sweet potatoes instead of baking them, and the cheesecake came out just as smooth and sweet. I’ll post the full recipe soon, but until then.
2 large sweet potatoes, about 2 pounds
3 8-ounce packages of Cream Cheese, room temperature
1 cup granulated sugar
3 large eggs,
2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice [foodie hack, equal parts allspice, nutmeg and ginger powder about 1 tsp, and 3/4 tsp of cinnamon.
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/4 cup heavy cream
Crust
8 ounces of gingersnap cookies or graham crackers, crushed
4 tablespoons unsalted Butter, melted
Combine both, press into your 9 inch spring form baking pan lined with parchment paper, and bake on 350 for 9 mins then let cool before filling. [foodie hack, buy a pre-made graham cracker crust and press into your tin, which lets you have to skip the baking and cooling step]
Assemble:
Microwave the sweet potatoes on the potato setting. It should take roughly 7 minutes for both potatoes to cook fully through. (You can opt to bake this in the oven, but before holiday cooking I like to keep my oven free for the essentials.)
Once cool, remove the sweet potato skin and mash the flesh until smooth. Add in pumpkin spice, vanilla, and heavy cream.
Cream sugar and cream cheese until smooth, about 3 minutes. Add in the eggs one at a time and mix in. Add in the purée mix.
In a 9 inch springform pan lined with parchment paper and the prepared crust (see note above) pour filling into the crust, then wrap the cake tin twice with foil so that water can’t deep through.
Prepare a water bath. In a larger roasting pan, fill it with boil water enough to come up half way up the side of a cake tin.
Bake 60- 70 minutes, the cake will be slightly wobbly in the center of the cake. [the whole top shouldn’t shake, if it does keep baking]. It’s done when only a quarter size area in the center shakes.
Turn off the oven and crack the door slightly and leave the cheesecake to cool for one hour. Once an hour has passed, remove the cake from the water bath and put on a cooling rack to cool completely. Once cool to the touch, place in the fridge (covered) for at least 8 hours before serving.
