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Baked Eggnog Cheesecake—Prototype 32:
Crust:
2 oz. melted, white chocolate
8 oz. (about 1 cup) whipped, lowfat cottage cheese
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
3 oz. graham crackers, ground up (if these are cinnamon-flavored, omit the cinnamon shown above)
Place the resulting mixture into a greased 13" x 9" glass
("Pyrex") pan and pre-bake without tub at 300 degrees for 25 minutes,
then remove from oven (cooling off is optional here).
Batter:
16 oz. (about 2 cups) whipped, lowfat cottage cheese
8 oz. softened Neufchatel cheese ("light cream cheese")
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon rum extract
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
2 cups light eggnog (such as Hood)
1 teaspoon xanthan gum
3 eggs
Expect close to 6 cups of the resulting batter, but do not add this to
the pan all at once. Rather, this needs to be done in four
installments.
For each of the first three installments, gently scoop about 1 1/2 cups of
batter into the pan, fully covering the surface (here's a tip—scoop small
amounts of batter into scattered places throughout the pan, letting this batter
fill in nearby gaps, and if any of these remain, use a rubber spatula and
gently spread the batter to cover these gaps up), and then bake this pan with
its contents for 25 minutes, at 325 degrees*. However, at the end of the third
installment's 25 minutes, add on another 10 minutes of baking time, but only at
300 degrees (that's a 35 minute "baking installment"—the first
25 minutes at 325 degrees and the next 10 at 300). For all four installments,
bake with the pan in a tub filled with at least 1/4 to 1/2 inch of boiling
water.
* (The temperature for the first installment ended up unintentionally at 345
degrees. To compensate for this error, the temperature for the second installment
was set to 315 degrees. See comments below for more details.)
After the first three installments are done, there should be about 1 1/2 cups of
batter left, with 85 minutes of baking time reached at this point (25 minutes
for each of the first two installments, and 35 for the third one). Now comes the
fourth installment—carefully add the last of this batter on top of the
pan's earlier installments, fully coating the entire surface. Next, return the
entire pan-and-tub assembly to the oven, with the temperature remaining at 300
degrees. Resume baking for another 50 minutes.
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. Continue to cool it down at room temperature
for another 120 minutes, then (with cheesecake still in pan) refrigerate.
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