Key Lime Cheesecake

Chris recently celebrated his 28th birthday and I figured I would try to bake him a cake...however, he doesn't particularly like cake so I knew it had to be something different. Usually I make him Key Lime pie but I wanted to try something else. I decided to make this cheesecake from epicurious.com. Everything tasted good but I really messed it up... unfortunately, I cooked it for 40 minutes and didn't let it cool down fully before refrigerating it. Sadly, it was a runny mess inside! It looked perfect from the outside but I guess I should have done some sort of fork test or something to see if the middle was cooked through. Oh well, it really did taste good but it needs more time to bake and it needs to fully cool before putting it in the fridge. I hope to try again soon and see if I can figure out what went wrong because the flavors were delicious!  


Ingredients
Lime custard

• 6 large egg yolks
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 6 tablespoons fresh Key lime juice or regular lime juice (I use Nellie & Joe's Key Lime Juice) 
• 1 teaspoon grated Key lime peel or regular lime peel (I use 1 regular lime) 

Crust

• 1 3/4 cups graham cracker crumbs (about 12 whole graham crackers)
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted

Filling

• 2 (8-ounce) packages cream cheese, room temperature
• 2/3 cup plus 3 tablespoons sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 3 tablespoons fresh Key lime juice or regular lime juice
• 1 tablespoon grated Key lime peel or regular lime peel

• 1 16-ounce container sour cream (I actually used about 1/2 of that, and thought it was enough) 

Steps:

For lime custard:
1. Whisk all ingredients in a small saucepan over medium heat until custard thickens and boils for 30 seconds, about 8 minutes. 
2. Cool to room temperature, stirring occasionally (mixture will thicken).

For crust:
1. Preheat oven to 350°F. 
2. Wrap 3 layers of foil around outside of 8- to 8 1/2-inch-diameter springform pan with 3-inch-high sides. Butter pan. 
3. Stir first 3 ingredients (graham cracker crumbs, salt and sugar) to blend in medium bowl. Mix in butter until moistened. 
4. Press crumb mixture evenly onto bottom and 1 1/2 inches up sides of prepared pan. 
5. Bake just until set, about 5 minutes. Cool completely. Maintain oven temperature for later in the recipe. 

For filling:
Place cream cheese, 2/3 cup sugar, eggs, lime juice, and lime peel in processor; blend well. (I just used a hand mixer) 

Assembly
1. Spoon custard into crust; smooth top. 
2. Carefully spoon filling over. 
3. Set cheesecake in large baking pan. Add enough hot water to baking pan to come 1 inch up sides of cheesecake pan. Bake at 350 until almost set but not puffed and center moves slightly when pan is gently shaken, about 45 minutes.
4. Stir sour cream and remaining 3 tablespoons sugar in medium bowl to blend. (since I used only about 1/2 of the sour cream, I used about 1 1/2 tablespoons of sugar) 
5. Carefully spoon sour cream mixture over hot cheesecake; smooth top. Bake until topping sets, about 10 minutes. 
6. Cool 10 minutes. Run knife around sides of pan to loosen. (I skipped this, it didn't seem like a good idea to do it yet because it wasn't cooled)
7. Cool cheesecake completely (oops, this might be where things went drastically wrong, I just threw it in the fridge).
8.  Cover and refrigerate overnight. 

Here is a picture of it, it sure looks good... oh well!