Baked Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cheesecake—Prototype 3:
 
Let's give a springtime 2014 update for this flavor! One of the features here is much larger pieces of cookie dough (actually, whole cookies, somewhat like my recent cookie sandwich type cheesecakes).
 
Yogurt Cheese:
Prepare ahead of time 3 pounds of yogurt cheese, derived from three 32-ounce containers of nonfat yogurt. If the resulting yogurt cheese falls below 48 ounces, add back enough of the whey (that was strained out from the yogurt) to make up the difference.

Crust:
4 oz. semi-sweet chocolate, melted
2 tablespoons cocoa powder
8 oz. (1 cup) yogurt cheese (see above)
3/8 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 oz. finely ground All-Bran

Place this crust mixture into the bottom of a greased springform pan (9 to 9 1/2 inches) and pre-bake without tub at 300 degrees for 10 minutes, then cool enough to comfortably touch at least the pan's upper sidewall.

Batter:
4 tablespoons melted or softened butter
1 1/4 cups granulated sugar
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
3 tablespoons arrowroot
40 oz. (5 cups) yogurt cheese (see above)
2 teaspoons vanilla
4 eggs

Cookie Dough:
1 16-ounce package of chocolate chip cookie dough, separated into 24 pieces (many packages are already like this, i.e., portioned to make 24 cookies).

Expect about 7 cups of the resulting batter (of course, that's before adding any cookie dough), but do not add this to the pan all at once. Rather, this needs to be done in five installments. Wrap the pan in foil just before adding the first installment (no earlier than that—minimize the foil's disturbance in order to minimize its leakage risk).

For each of the first four installments, gently scoop about 1 1/2 cups of batter into the pan. Add about 6 cookie dough pieces (don't bother breaking them up—keeping them whole is fine and, in fact, recommended—but if the pieces have a tall, chunk-like form, flatten them into cookie-like shapes), ensuring that they are fully coated and—as much as possible—immersed. After adding an installment, bake the pan with its contents for 15 minutes. For each of the first three installments, bake at 325 degrees. For the fourth installment, reduce the temperature and bake at 300 degrees. For all four installments here, bake with the pan in a tub filled with at least 1/4 to 1/2 inch of boiling water, but (to reduce spillage risks) do not fill the tub all the way at this point, because the whole tub-and-pan assembly is going to need to be removed from the oven (in order to comfortably add contents to the pan) between installments.

After all this is done, there should be about a cup of batter left, with 60 minutes of baking time reached at this point (15 minutes for each of the first four installments). Now comes the fifth installment—carefully add the last of this batter (do not add any more cookie dough at this point) on top of the pan's other contents. Try to fully coat the entire surface, especially wherever cookie dough pieces may be showing. Next, return the entire pan-and-tub assembly to the oven. At this point, fill up the tub generously with boiling water. Resume baking at 300 degrees for another 55 minutes (based upon usage of a 9 1/2" pan).

Afterward, shut the oven off, and leave its door slightly ajar, with the cheesecake still inside—and in the tub—for an hour. Next, remove the cheesecake from the oven and tub, and—if desired—add a border of chocolate chips around the edge of this cheesecake. Continue to cool it down at room temperature for another two hours. After doing so, remove the cheesecake from pan and refrigerate.

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cheesecake—Prototype 3 (whole) Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cheesecake—Prototype 3 (slice)

Again, I used Market Basket Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough for this one.

And this time, I could readily taste the cookie dough! Of course, I picked up the cheesecake flavor itself as well. There was no respiratory interference. But I also felt that forming the cookie dough in larger pieces made a helpful difference as well.

This cheesecake, served among a modest selection of snacks, was gone in probably about 20 minutes (one of my fastest disappearing cheesecakes!) at Living Hope Church, on Mother's Day 2014.
 

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