Rosie Makes A Belated Birthday Cake For XKT.

I have a triple-play of birthdays in August.

August 7-9-11.

The 7th is Youngest Hawthorne's.

The 11th is Daughter Hawthorne's.

And in the middle on the 9th is XKT's.

XKT was out of town for her birthday,

celebrating Daddy XKT's birthday,

but she showed up at the Hawthorne's last week

and I had a cake prepared for her.

I knew one of her favorites is cheesecake

with spun sugar and that's what I'm making.

Let's start with the crust:

Crust ingredients:

1/4 cup unsalted butter (1/2 stick), melted

1 package graham crackers

Combine broken graham crackers and melted butter.

Process.

I pressed the crumb mixture

 onto the bottom and up the sides

of a buttered 7-inch spring-form pan.

Cheesecake Ingredients:

2 eight-ounce packages cream cheese, softened

3/4 cup sugar

1/4 cup heavy cream

1 TB flour

1 TB cornstarch

1/2 cup sour cream

1 tsp vanilla

Heat oven to 350 degrees.

Beat cream cheese.

Gradually beat in sugar on medium-high for about 3 minutes.

Beat in cream.

Add eggs, one at a time,

beating after each addition.

Mix in sour cream, flour, cornstarch, and vanilla.

Pour filling over crust.

Bake 60 minutes.

Turn off oven.

Let cake cool in oven about 5 hours.

Refrigerate at least five hours before serving.

Here are the step by steps:

Beat softened cream cheese

and gradually beat in sugar.

Mix in cream.

Beat in eggs, one at a time.

Sour cream in.

Flour.

Cornstarch.

Vanilla.

Ribbon the cheesecake batter

 into prepared graham cracker/butter crust.

Ready for a 350 degree oven.

I baked for 60 minutes,

turned oven off,

and let it sit in the oven for 5 hours.

Then I stuck it in the fridge overnight

since XKT is here for the night.

I will finish it the next day

with spun sugar.

Here's the cheesecake next morning.

Check it out all around.

When you're making your crust

and pushing the crackers up the sides,

don't worry if you don't get the grahams evenly, height-wise.

The cheesecake puffs up high while baking,

but then settles down to the crust.

Next, I'm making my spun sugar topping

for XKT's cake.

Ingredients for spun sugar:

1 cup sugar

1/3 cup water

Blend sugar and water in saucepan.

Bring to a simmer.

Swirl pan to be sure sugar has dissolved completely.

Cover pan tightly and boil syrup for 3 minutes

over medium high heat.

Uncover pan and continue boiling and slowly swirling.

In a bit, the syrup will start to color.

Watch CAREFULLY!

Keep swirling and boiling,

perhaps lifting pan off constant heat,

until it's a light caramel color.

Remove from heat.

It will continue to darken.

Have a pan of cold water waiting

if necessary to quick-cool the caramel

 and stop the cooking and browning.

This is the beautiful golden caramel color you want.

Let it rest a minute,

then grab a couple of forks and a friend

and dip and drizzle.

Every time I do this,

I feel like a spider.

On LSD.

I'm sorry.

But I got carried away from here on.

Crack spider!

Hmmmm.
Wonder what this tasted like.


 I guess I'll never know.

 Oh wait.

There's a slice with My Name on it!

Thanks, XKT