Turtle Cheesecake

I am usually fairly good at taking baking risks, but for some reason I have always been a bit intimidated by the cheesecake. Maybe it's because I have had many a pieces of cheesecake at The Cheesecake Factory and didn't want to disappoint myself, but when I saw this recipe on Pinterest for turtle cheesecake I couldn't pass it up. So I set off to find a spring form pan to make my cheesecake. Looking at the recipe, I found that there weren't any crazy ingredients and the process seemed fairly straightforward. Feeling a bit more confident, I started. This was a chocolate swirl cheesecake on a graham cracker crust. It called for chocolate graham cracker crumbs, but I could only find the plain ones and didn't feel like making my own. 

To make the crust, combine the butter and graham cracker crumbs. Then press it into the pan and part way up the side. To make the filling, start by mixing the sweetened condensed milk and cream cheese together. Add in sugar, lime, eggs, and vanilla. Then start the process of melting the chocolate chips in the microwave. This is a slow process because you don't want to burn the chocolate and if you microwave it too much it starts to harden. Once the chocolate is melted, you scoop out about half of the cheesecake mixture and mix it in the chocolate. Alternate between the plain and chocolate filling, starting and ending with the plain filling. Take the spatula and even out the filling before baking at 300. The trickiest part of making the cheesecake is the baking time. You don't want it to be underdone, but you don't want it to be over done it.

The recipe calls for a bake time of 1 hour and 15 minutes, but mine ended up being in for almost about 1 hour and 45 minutes. I found it hard to determine when the center moved just slightly, so I probably baked my for longer than was necessary. Allow it to cool completely, before drizzling on the caramel and chocolate and then topping with pecans and chocolate chips. In the end, I was fairly pleased with my cheesecake. I was very proud of myself for taking on the challenge and managing to produce something that was pretty decent. Don't be afraid to try something new! Chances are it isn't as hard as you think it is and you very well may surprise yourself. If something goes wrong, just realize you learned what not to do. Knowing that my first attempt wasn't a complete disaster has made me excited to make another one.