Rage Cheesecake with Oreo Crust, Whipped Chocolate Ganache Frosting, and Home-Grown Tart Cherry Topping
I took recipe-bits from all over and changed them into something that sounded more like what I wanted, so here's what I did today instead of committing a felony!
RECIPE BEHIND CUT
Oreo crust part:
* 25 Oreos
* 5 tablespoons of melted butter
* Pan--pie pan or springform, depending on how deep a cheesecake you want. This makes a nice, not-too-deep cheesecake in a nine-inch springform; it would be Too Much Filling in a pie pan, which would mean you have extra, and that's always fun too. An eight-inch springform is probably perfect.
1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. You may eat TWO OREOS. Crush the remainder. I have the best time with this when I use a food processor, but if you are *particularly* spirited today, this is a good place to take out some aggression. Just pulverize the things, filling and all, until they are all reduced to the consistency of sand.
3. Add melted butter and mix until it's like *wet* sand.
4. Put buttery chocolate sand into your chosen cooking dish. I use a little jar and push push push pat pat pat until it's all nice and level from the center of the dish to the edge and has no holes.
5. Bake for eight to twelve minutes. You want it to still look a little moist. Do not overcook!
6. Remove from oven and let cool. Don't move the pan around too much before it's cool or you risk fracturing the crust.
Cheesecake part:
* Two packages of cream cheese, room temperature unless you like cream cheese chunks in your cheesecake. No judgment, some people are into that.
* 2/3C white sugar
* 3 eggs
* 3 cups of sour cream (this is a very moist cheesecake!)
* Vanilla to taste
1. Preheat oven to 325F, that's 25 degrees LOWER than for the crust.
2. Cream sugar and cream cheese until smooth.
3. Add eggs, one at a time, mix until just blended.
4. Add all sour cream and vanilla, mix until just homogenous. Don't overmix or you get weird dry pillowy stuff instead of nice dense cheesecake.
5. Cook in prepared crust for approximately 50 minutes, until it's set at the edges but a little jiggly yet in the middle.
Note: Properly you'd do this in a bain marie, but I don't have one, so I wrap the bottom of my springform pan in aluminum foil and set the whole kit and kaboodle into a sturdy cookie sheet, put all that into the preheated oven, and pour water into the cookie sheet once it's safely on the oven rack. If the cheesecake starts to overcook on the top before the center is set, cover it with aluminum foil.
6. Remove from oven; let rest in bain marie/rigged pan for ten minutes before removing springform pan to clean towel. Let rest *there* until it's cool enough to put in the fridge. Cover and chill for two to four hours.
Cherry topping part:
* Sour cherries that have been frozen since last year, or a bag of cherries, or fresh cherries, whichever, approximately 4.5 cups which is too many for just this cheesecake but it's nice to have around anyway
* Granulated sugar to taste
* Corn starch
Or just pick up a can or two of cherry pie filling, in which case you can skip this whole step.
1. Defrost cherries. If you don't do this in a pot, there's a good chance that they will leak precious juice all over your clean counter. Don't be me; thaw that stuff in the pot you'll heat it in.
2. Once they're not a singular ice block but instead a bunch of big ice chunks, turn the temperature on low, maybe around a 2.
3. Once the cherries are separate from each other, add sugar to taste. This changes a lot depending on your cherries' tartness; I eventually used nearly two cups of sugar for around 4.5 cups of cherries. Usually I'd use a good bit less, but they're very tart this time.
4. Cook and cook and cook until the liquid is reduced by about a third.
5. Add corn starch. For those measurements I added about a tablespoon and a half. Remember to make it a slurry before pouring it into the pot; you can either do this with a little water, or you can spoon out some of the cherry syrup (don't burn yourself!), mix that into a little bowl along with the corn starch, and then pour it all into the pot. Bring back to a good bubble for four or five minutes, then remove from heat and allow to come to room temperature.
Whipped chocolate ganache part:
* 1 part heavy cream to 1 part chocolate (I just use Toll House. Everyone says not to do that. It's been fine).
1. Put the chocolate in a heatproof bowl.
2. Warm the cream on the stove until it's juuuust about to start bubbling. Stir frequently so it doesn't get a skin.
3. Remove from heat, pour into heatproof bowl over the chocolate.
4. WALK AWAY. I'm serious. Don't touch it. Don't poke at it. Do not, do NOT, attempt to stir it. Walk away.
5. After five minutes, come back and stir, stir, until it's all one thing. It should be like a very good, very thick chocolate syrup. You *can* just eat this, with a spoon. You can pour it over a cake, or dip strawberries in it. Chilled right as it is, it is a dessert on its own.
6. Let it cool to room temperature.
7. Come back and use your hand mixer or stand mixer to whip it up. This should get to a pipeable consistency; if it doesn't, you may need to incorporate powdered sugar. If you add butter and powdered sugar, you'll get a very stable buttercream.
Finishing part:
1. Remove springform edge from nice cold cheesecake.
2. Pipe or dollop whipped ganache in ring atop the cheesecake.
3. Fill the ring with cooled cherry filling.
4. Garnish further if you'd like. I used decorative Sixlets and some more crushed Oreo.
5. Finished!
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The Justice League finds out about the Anti-Ecto Acts, and Batman is the driving force behind condemning them.
He even goes so far as to summon popular ghost hero Phantom for advice, given that his son, Red Hood, would absolutely fall under those Acts.
Phantom...tells him he's wrong.
Red Hood is 100%, completely and totally alive. Same soul, same body, sort of the same person. Only 'sort of' because people change as they grow, so obviously he isn't going to be the same person he was when he was fifteen.
There's not a trace of ecto in him, or in any of the Bats. None of them are even liminal.
Batman asks if he's sure. If he's really, really sure. Because ghosts run on emotions, and Red Hood came back extremely violent and irrational.
"Well yeah, of course he did," Phantom deadpans, and Batman suddenly feels very, very small under that glare. "He was murdered, unavenged, told that there was no way he was the same person when he came back pissed, and had his words as a victim ignored. I'd get violent too. Look, I gotta go, but thanks for getting the Acts removed."
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