Giant Oreo Cheesecake

Assalamualaikum!

I haven’t been able to blog for the past week. Three midterms down, two more to go! I decided to stay home and have a spa night for myself tonight. My body deserves to be pampered. I bought some masks at a Korean beauty store and I wanted to give them a try. Yeay! I’m currently listening to 2002,my favorite new age musicians, with two candles burning by my side. This is life…

Last night in kick boxing class, half of the class had to stand in the middle of a circle and take turns being punched in the abs by the other half of the class.  Later on we got to do the same to the other group. Heehee. Bad ass I tell ya.  “I give ‘er a ha! And a hayyya’…and I kick ‘er sir.” =P

So last time I blogged about Chocolate Cake and Nutella Mousse Filling for Safaa’s birthday and now I’m sharing with you the recipe for the other cake I made for the same party. This cake is for Omar Abdelkader or we call him Omar A or little Omar =)

I saw this Giant Oreo Cheesecake awhile ago on Youtube and I knew I just had to make it.. I’ve already decided to make this cake for Omar since neither I nor anyone else knows his favorite cake flavor. Somehow I don’t think guys talk about their favorite flavors as much as girls do. I mean..I don’t know if guys even…care? To think about it, I still don’t know what kind of desserts my brothers like…Hurmmm..

Anyways, one of our friends was sneaky enough to get Omar to tell us his favorite dessert/cake and whaddaya know! He loves cheesecake AND anything chocolate. So he would DEFINITELY love this cake!

Originally the cake is supposed to be a no-bake cheesecake. However, I couldn’t find any flavorless agar strips/powders in the grocery stores near my apartment. So I had to make a baked crust-less cheesecake instead. Not that it’s a bad thing or anything.. I’ve always preferred baked cheesecakes over no-bake ones.

So here you go, my version of Giant Oreo Cheesecake!

Crustless Oreo Cheesecake

10 Oreo Cookies, divided

 3 (250 g) packages PHILADELPHIA Cream Cheese, room temperature

 3/4 cup sugar

 1 teaspoon vanilla

 3 eggs

1. Heat oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit.
2. Line an 8 inch cake/springform pan with parchment paper and set aside.
3. If you are using a springform pan, make sure to wrap the bottom of the pan with a few layers of aluminum foil to avoid water from seeping in.
4. Beat cream cheese, sugar and vanilla in large bowl until well blended.
5. Add eggs, 1 at a time, beating just until blended after each addition.
6. Separate the cookie from the cream (we only need the cookies)
7. Chop or crush cookies. Gently stir the chopped cookies into cream cheese batter.
8. Pour the cream cheese batter in the cake pan. Put the cake pan in a bigger baking dish or a roasting pan.
9. Fill the outer baking dish with boiling water. The water should come about 2/3 of the way up the cake/springform pan.
10. Bake for 35-45 minutes or until centre is almost set.
11. Let cool completely before removing it from the cake/springform pan.
12. Store in the fridge for a couple of hours or overnight

Brownies or Big “cookie” layers

6 Oreo cookies, divided

½ cup butter

2 eggs

1 cup sugar

3/4 cup self raising flour or (3/4 cup all purpose flour, 1 teaspoon baking powder and ¼ teaspoon salt)

1/4 cup cocoa powder

1/2 cup of chocolate chips

1. Preheat your oven to 356 degrees Fahrenheit.
2. Grease and line two9 inch springforms parchment paper.
3. Place the cookie part of the Oreos into a ziplock bag and crush into fine crumbs
4. Put the butter into a bowl and melt it in the microwave.
5. Beat in the eggs into the melted butter.
6. Add the sugar and mix well.
7. Add the cocoa powder and self raising flour until well incorporated
8. Fold in the chocolate chips and cookie crumbs.
9. Divide the batter evenly into both springforms.
10. Bake in the oven for about 10-15 minutes or until the knife/ toothpick inserted in the middle of the brownie comes out clean.

 Now….If you want to make it funkier, add more details on your giant cookie!  I made chocolate sugar cookies for decoration. I halved the recipe below.

Chocolate Sugar cookies

(Makes 36)

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder

1/8 teaspoon salt

3/4 cup butter, softened

1 1/4 cups white sugar

1 egg

1. Sift together the flour, cocoa, baking powder and salt; set aside.
2. In a bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until smooth.
3. Beat in the egg.
4. Gradually stir in the sifted ingredients to form soft dough.
5. Divide dough into 2 pieces, flatten and wrap in plastic wrap. Refrigerate for 2 hours.
6. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit
7. Flour your kitchen counter or chopping mat with cocoa powder.
8. Roll the dough out to 1/8 inch in thickness.
9. Cut many 1 cm by 3 cm strips, 2 mini triangles and letter for your word of choice.
10. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes in the preheated oven. Allow cookies to cool on baking sheet for 5 minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.

Note: I printed out a template of the word on a piece of paper and cut out the letters. I simply pout the cut out letters and ran a knife around them.

To assemble

1. Place one layer of the brownie on a plate followed by the cheesecake and the other layer of brownie.
2. Arrange the sugar cookies on the brownie with the mini strips as a boarder and the letters in the middle.
3. Use melted chocolate as a glue to secure the decorations in place.

  

One of the things that I’ve learned while making this cake is that, brownies hardens really really fast. Two reasons why I never knew this..1) I’m not a big brownie lover 2) I never made one from scratch.

Since I baked this a day or two ahead, I wrapped these brownies in cling wrap with two slices of bread and kept in a big (if possible) air tight container. The magic of bread! This trick works for most cakes and cupcakes too. Somehow the moisture from the bread would moisten the air in the container thus keeping your baked goods from drying. The bread on the other hand would lose its moisture and harden. But hey! You could always make croutons or bread crumbs from that!:D

The other thing that I learned or I actually forgot to do was to use cocoa powder instead of flour while rolling my cookies out. That's why my cookies had white specks on them!=P

Original idea and brownie recipe from here

Original Oreo cheesecake recipe from here

Original chocolate sugar cookie recipe from here

Phew!That was a longggggg one!! I better sleep soon. I need to start studying for my Linguistics midterm next week!AYAYAYYY!

Take care everyone!

Wasalam

Love, 

Sofhan Hasni