Kai and I host a Christmas meal with our friends every year ("Friendsmas"). Kai cooks the food every year and, of course, I make the dessert. This year Kai requested a cookie dough cheesecake.
You guys might recall I have a favourite, go-to baked cheesecake recipe. I found a recipe online for cookie dough cheesecake, that took a basic cheesecake base and then mixed in cookie dough balls and choc chips.
I decided to use that recipe for the cookie dough part, but use my go-to recipe for the cheesecake base. My plan was then to put swirls of whipped cream around the edge and pieces of cookies.
I started off with my cheesecake base recipe, setting up my standard cheesecake pan. And this is when things started to go wrong!
Tip #1: If you are using a recipe that fits into a pan, when you add something to the recipe you need to use a bigger pan!
I mixed up my standard cheesecake and made my cookie dough balls. I mixed the cookie dough balls in and realised I'd made another mistake.
Tip #2: When combining two recipes, make sure the two recipes are the same size - or if not, adjust them for size!
I had way too many cookie dough balls for my cheesecake mixture. Looking back, the cookie dough cheesecake recipe I'd used for the cookie dough balls used 900g of cream cheese, whereas the base recipe I was using called for 500g cream cheese - basically, the cookie dough balls were for a much bigger cheesecake!
I realised I'd messed up when I mixed the cookie dough balls in, but I kept going. Then I started pouring the cheesecake filling into the pan and realised I had way too much filling.
Tip #3: Be prepared to re-assess part way through a recipe!
I realised I had way too much filling - but I just kept going. I didn't want to waste the filling so I just kept pouring it into my pan, and filled it to the absolute brim! As a result it ended up exploding over the top of the pan, and then fell a lot.
In the end it still tasted delicious - but it looked awful!
My go to baked cheesecake recipe
Baked cookie dough cheesecake recipe
Both are great recipes and well worth a try! And I'll be back soon with an update and a better cookie dough cheesecake!
In the meantime - just remember, failure is the key to success, and each mistake teaches us something new!