Snicker Bar Cheesecake

I made Homemade Snicker Bars....again. I had a half of a pan leftover.
What to do? What to do?

That's it....I'm making a cheesecake and perfecting the consistency.

My dad makes the MOST PERFECT cheesecakes and I'm trying my best to make them rich and creamy like his. Honestly, his are the best. I love challenging my baking skills to see if I can perfect certain recipes.
This time I wanted to see if it really made a difference to cook a cheesecake in a water bath. So I needed to get heavy duty, wide foil and a roasting pan. (The water bath is optional, if you feel like that is just too much work, you may omit the water bath step. You can surely cook this without the water bath.)

So, here I go. Let's try this recipe!

Ingredients:

CRUST:

6 tbsp. unsalted butter

1 1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs

2 tbsp. granulated sugar

pinch of sea salt

FILLING: (make sure all ingredients are ROOM temperature)

2 pounds cream cheese (four 8 oz. packages)

1 1/4 cups granulated sugar

1 1/4 cups sour cream

6 large eggs, lightly beaten

1/2 tbsp. vanilla extract
1/2 tbsp. pure almond extract

1 C. chopped up snicker bars

TOPPINGS:
Snicker bars, chopped up
chocolate chips and peanut butter, melted together in microwave
1/2 bag of caramels and 1/4 C whipping cream melted in a saucepan together over low heat.

Position a rack in the middle of the oven and preheat to 325 degrees F.

For the Crust:

 Melt the butter, covered in the microwave safe bowl, or a saucepan. Brush a 9-inch spring-form pan with some of the butter. Stir the remaining butter together with the graham cracker crumbs, sugar and salt. Press the crumb mixture over the bottom of the pan, taking care to get the crust evenly into the edges. Place in oven and bake until golden brown, 15 to 18 min.
Cool.

For the Filling:

Beat the cream cheese on medium speed until smooth. Add the granulated sugar and beat just until light and fluffy, scraping the sides of the bowl and beaters as needed.
Slowly beat in the sour cream, then eggs, then vanilla:

Take care NOT to over-whip.
Then, add the chopped snicker bars and gently fold in.
Pour the filling into the  spring-form pan.


Water bath step: (optional)
Then, wrap the bottom and UP the sides of the spring-form pan with foil. 
(I used the HEAVY duty, wide foil for this part)
Then, put the spring-form pan in a roasting pan.
 Now, bring a medium saucepan or kettle of water to a boil.
Put the spring-form pan in the roaster.
Put the roaster in the oven.
Pour in enough HOT water to come about HALFWAY up the side of the spring-form pan.

Time to Bake:
Bake the cheesecake for 70 min.---the outside of the cake will set, but the center will still be loose.
Turn the oven off, cook the cheesecake in the residual heat in the oven for about 1 hour.
This gentle finish minimizes the risk of the dreaded crack in your cheesecake.

Remove cheesecake from the roasting pan to a rack.
Run a knife around the edges and cool to room temperature.
Cover and refrigerate 8 hours OR overnight.

 The next day, I take my cheesecake, chocolate chips, snicker bar block and caramels, whipping cream and prepare the toppings.

I cut up as much of the snicker bars as I want to decorate with.
I melt my chocolate and caramels. (The melting strategies can be found on the snicker bar recipes)

Then, I decorate it up to my hearts content!

 Bring the cheesecake to ROOM temperature before cutting, because the toppings create a thick crust and it can be hard to cut if it's directly out of a fridge.

It's a VERY creamy version of a Snickers Bar cheesecake!
It was fantastic. I think the water bath was the trick to keeping it moist and crack free.

I love baking my family treats.
We like to workout hard so that we CAN enjoy some yummy treats every now and then.
Try this! It's worth the work!

Recipe courtesy of: http://m.foodnetwork.com/recipe/36437 (with a few variations of my own)