This cheesecake started out as any other chocolate cheesecake I've made. I smashed up some Oreos and got cracking on the cheesecake bit. This time, however, I was trying to rush getting it done and didn't really read the recipe very well. I knew I wanted to 2/3rds the recipe, so I got that bit right, but I totally messed up the order. And this is where things fell apart.
Turns out, my cream cheese wasn't so much as softened and room temperature and straight out of the refrigerator. Also, the eggs are the last things to go in. Whoopsa daisy! While the mixture looked okay, it wasn't the same consistency as usual. I popped it in the oven anyway.
I got it out of the oven and it was a complete mess. The middle sunk and there were cracks everywhere. I wasn't too worried, however, as my plan was to make caramel, stir in crushed up pecans, cover the top of the cake with this and then drizzle melted chocolate over it.
I started on the caramel. I was afraid that I would cook the sugar too long and make the caramel rock hard, so I opted for cooking it until it was just barely yellow. Then I added in the cream, gave it a stir and realized it was not what I was hoping for, given that it didn't even look like caramel.
A friend was going to be at the house in T minus 15 minutes, so I just went with it as there was no way I could just serve the cheesecake as is. So I mixed in my pecans and topped the cheesecake. Now it wasn't just ugly, it looked gross.
There's nothing a little melted chocolate can't fix, right!?! Uhhh, wrong. This was still a disaster, but with few options, I served it anyway.
Unsurprisingly, it was not at all what I was hoping for. The cake bit turned out okay, but the topping was pretty awful. It was more like a sugary candy with pecans that kind of melted in your mouth, but was hard enough that you definitely needed a fork to stab through it.
There was no way I was going to eat another piece of this. I didn't have enough cream to make a full batch of caramel, so I made a half of a batch. Once that proved successful (I let it get a bit darker this time around), I chipped the topping off of the cheesecake with a fork.
Then I ate the topping, just to see how awful it was ;)
Next I topped the cheesecake with crushed up pecans and drizzled the caramel on top. I didn't mix the pecans in this time as I knew I wouldn't have enough caramel to cover it all.
Finally, I ate a big piece to congratulate myself on my victory over ruined caramel!
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