In an attempt to finish off last year’s Christmas dishes (XMAS 23) before this year’s Christmas gets here, here’s 16-22: Apricot Swirl Cheesecake. Probably more of a summer recipe, but whatever, cheesecake is good any time of year. I made this together with 16-20: Chocolate Mousse Cake, because you need both a chocolate dessert AND a fruit dessert.
Fun fact: this may look okay-ish in the picture, but trust me, this does not go well. Jump behind the cut for the details (and mistakes).
Following instructions is IMPORTANT, y’all. Read this through, then again. Make sure you understand what goes where, when…because apparently I struggled with that.
Ingredients. I’m using almond flour instead of grinding my own almonds–you can read more about the differences between almond flour and almond meal here. Lactose-free cream cheese and dairy-free whipping cream for various reasons, but trust me on at least that part. Lemon isn’t pictured, but I have one.
Dusted a greased springform pan with the almond flour.
Cooking the dried apricots. Or essentially, rehydrating them. So far, so good.
My thinking at the time was that it’s easier to get stuff out of the food processor as opposed to the blender, so I went with the food processor.
However–here’s where the mistakes begin, and my choice of appliance is far from the most egregious mistake I’ll make with this.
Mistake #1: I misinterpreted the directions in Step 2 and got rid of the water that I cooked the apricots in instead of including it, which left me with what is NOT a purée. This not being a purée ends up being an issue going forward.
Mistake #2, and this was a big one: I think (it’s been a while since I actually made this) that I included the cream cheese into the food processor (with the “purée”) and then realized that this was supposed to be a swirl cheesecake and stopped.
This is what happens when you’re trying to do too many things at once.
Well, shoot. What do I do now with the other parts that I didn’t combine in yet?
Mistake #3 (I think): At this point, I just kept going and just poorly stirred it all together in the springform pan.
I mean, what else do you do at this point?
I had some old slivered almonds that I needed to use up, so we’ll toast those (5-10 minutes @ 350 F) for the garnish. I also made some cranberries (from scratch), because who doesn’t like those? This isn’t exactly my recipe, but it’s close enough.
You know, now that I look at this picture, it’s very possible that I made this entire thing for Thanksgiving and not Christmas (judging by the two cranberry containers), since I remember I made two at Thanksgiving, I froze one, and then we ate the second at Christmas. However, I don’t care enough to go back and fix it (and the other two XMAS 23 recipes) at this point.
Well, here’s how that weird mixture turned out. It looks…interesting.
That crack doesn’t look great, and neither do the sides. Sigh. Good thing this isn’t for anyone more than just the two of us–I’d be freaking out otherwise.
The crack got worse when I transferred it to the “serving platter”–hopefully I can hide some of this with the glaze and some creative garnish.
I’ll focus on hiding the crack, but I don’t know if that’s gonna save this thing.
It did not. This looks sloppy to say the least.
Can some whipped cream garnish make it look better? Depends on the angle.
Okay…how about glaze, whipped cream garnish, AND toasted almonds? We’ve hidden the crack, but there’s no saving the sides. Plus, I’m not winning any cake decorating awards any time soon.
Still mostly looks like a cheesecake on the inside, and tasted like one too.
I paired it with 16-20: Chocolate Mousse Cake and it was quite the decadent…holiday? Even if I did it all wrong.
Grade: A-
