Cookies and Cream Cheescake

In my personal baking experiences, every cheesecake I've ever made, was always a disaster. I could never achieve a perfect crust that did not fall apart, or a filling that didn't crack all over the top making my cheesecake look very unattractive. Thankfully the contributors of How to Break an Egg, provided some very helpful advice that made it possible for me to create a cheesecake very close to being Cheesecake Factory worthy.

Ingredients

21 Oreo cookies, 15 left whole, 6 coarsely chopped
3 tbsp. melted butter
1 lb. cream cheese
1/2 c. granulated sugar
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
2 large eggs
1/2 c. sour cream


The first step was to make the crust. I mixed crushed Oreo cookies together with butter and spread the mixture out into a 9" spring-form pan. To spread the crust out evenly across the entire bottom, I used Beranbaum's suggestion of utilizing a straight-sided glass to press down and push the crust up the walls (Beranbaum 193). In doing this, my outcome was an evenly distributed, tightly packed crust that stayed together and did not fall apart.  

After I had the filling complete I poured it on top of the crust, and baked the cheesecake for 30 minutes at 300^o. Once the cheesecake was done baking, I was left with my hardest challenge that I could never find the solution to; keep my cheesecake crack free. Luckily, Daley has a very effective solution for this problem. "After you remove it from the oven, run a thin-bladed knife between the crust and the pan sides to prevent the cake from breaking as it cools" (Daley 194). I used this tip, and sure enough, after 4 hours of cooling in the refrigerator, my cheesecake had absolutely no cracks in it. It looked just the same as it had when I took it out of the oven. For anyone who struggles with cracking cheesecake filling, I highly recommended using Daley's technique because of the numerous methods I've tried, this one was the only one to provide me with a successful filling.

As an end result, my cheesecake turned out amazing! And this time, I got to not only brag about my cake being scrumptious, but also about my cake giving off some good looks! 

I'd like to try out these new tips I learned with different cheesecake recipes to see if they will work with different combinations of ingredients and flavors.
Do you have a favorite cheesecake recipe I could possibly try out?

"Kitchen Tips, Food Fixes and Handy Techniques." Fine Cooking: n. pag. Rpt. in How to Break and Egg. Ed. Pam Hoenig. Newtown: The Taunton Press, 2005. N. pag. Print.