Caramel Cheesecake

First, let me say that I have never been so frustrated in my life as when I was trying to make this caramel. Fortunately, after 8 failed batches, I know what to do now. Follow my directions exactly. You will notice that the color on top of the cheesecake is different than the picture below. That is because my first successful batch was only a mediocre success, so I saved it and ended up having to use it . . . more on that later.

Caramel

In a bowl, mix together with a fork:

1 1/2 cups sugar

1/4 cup water

Now, pour this carefully right in the middle of a large saucepan. Do NOT get any on the sides. Now, put the heat on high, like around 8. Don’t touch anything. It will start to boil. And it will keep boiling, and it might look a bit like crusty sugar on the top. Don’t touch it. Gradually, it will start to turn color. Now, very carefully, take a fork and kind of move it about (I actually took some of the hard sugar from the sides and kind of moved it to the center). Now, it will turn a dark amber color. Almost like dark honey. Now, take 3/4 cup of warm cream and pour it in while your stir like crazy. You might get splatted a bit. Take it off the heat kind of as you’re stirring it. Now, add 2 T. butter, a pinch of salt, and 1/2 tsp vanilla. It will be runny, and it will be a bit darker than peanut butter. Offer up a dance of thanksgiving that your caramel did not mess up, as mine did 7 times previous to me finding this method. You will need 2-3 times this for the cheesecake, so I am sure you could double or triple it, but I am not making any guarantees. This stuff was a beast to make. Here is the color it should be, and you can’t tell, but it’s runny.

Now that we have this out of the way, I didn’t try this because there was pie and I always choose pie over cheesecake. However, Stefani said it was as good as the Cheesecake Factory’s, so that means it gets a 9. Now that we have the caramel out of the way, here is the recipe:

Crust:

24 Oreos, powder these in a food processor

1/4 cup butter

Put this in the bottom of a 9 or 10 inch springform pan and bake at 350 for 5 minutes.

Next, you take about 1 cup of caramel and add about 2 cups of chopped pecans to it and make a layer on top of the curst.

Then, add your chocolate cheesecake filling:

Cheesecake filling

4 (8 ounce) packages cream cheese, room temp
3/4 cups brown sugar
2 T. milk
4 eggs
1 cup caramel
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
3 T. all-purpose flour

Mix cream cheese and sugar until there are no lumps. Add milk and stir
to combine. Add eggs one at a time. Add caramel, vanilla and flour and
stir until smooth.

Then, I baked at 350 for 1 hour, turned off oven and left in for 2 more hours. Cool completely and chill for 8 hours.

Finally, take about almost a full recipe of the caramel and dump it on the top of the cheesecake, and add chopped pecans. I ran out of caramel, but I had my first caramel in the fridge and so I used that. It tasted fine, but it was way too thick, so the caramel itself will be far more runny if you do it right.