Misadventures in the Kitchen: S’Mores Cheesecake with Summer Berries

I don’t normally like to admit this, out of fear that people will throw things at me, but I’m not the world’s biggest cheesecake fan.

Don’t get me wrong: it’s okay.  But I wouldn’t order it at a restaurant as long as there was molten chocolate cake or crème brulée to be had.  I don’t even particularly like The Cheesecake Factory (although, to be fair, this has more to do with the fact that I don’t like having to read a freaking novel in order to decide what I want for dinner than with the quality of their desserts).

Still, I am frequently enticed to crave things I wouldn’t normally eat thanks to the glory of food styling, and when I saw the photograph of S’Mores Cheesecake with Summer Berries in Bon Appetit’s July issue, I couldn’t help but emit a dreamy “Mmmmmmmm.”  Fresh graham cracker crumb crust?  A silky mixture of cream cheese and high-quality milk chocolate?   Homemade marshmallow topping, toasted gorgeously with a kitchen blowtorch (!!!)?  Sign me up!  So much for not liking cheesecake.

I made the cake over two days, since each step required a certain amount of cooling and chilling time.  This meant the entire process was extremely low-stress.  In fact, I’d wholeheartedly recommend this recipe for beginning bakers because the difficulty level is fairly low for such an impressive looking cake and it doesn’t require a stand mixer. 

The crust was a snap to make – just a mixture of graham cracker crumbs (which of course you can buy ready, though I just broke whole ones into quarters and blitzed them in the food processor for a minute or so), sugar, and melted butter, pressed into the bottom of springform pan, baked, and cooled. 

The filling was a bit more labor intensive, as it required the chocolate to be melted over simmering water.  If you, like me, don’t have a double boiler, no worries; you can easily MacGyver one out of a medium-sized saucepan and a stainless steel mixing bowl large enough to remain stable and rest a few inches above the saucepan’s bottom.  Whatever you do, learn from my mistakes and don’t use a glass bowl unless you’re sure it’s heatproof.  It will shatter, and chocolate-coated glass shards are not a good thing.

My mother had somehow convinced me in the grocery store that it was a better idea to use small wrapped chocolates that whole bars, so once I had finished unwrapping an entire bag of Dove Promises, I tossed them in the bowl, giving them the occasional stir to help keep the heat even throughout.  Once the chocolate was melted, I chucked it into the same large food processor (washed, of course) with the other ingredients and, after a few minutes of blending, it was ready to be poured into the pan for baking.  You definitely want to be sure your processor is big enough to accommodate the mixture or you’ll find yourself with a mess on your hands.  If it isn’t you could of course use a hand mixer, though I wouldn’t bother with a stand mixer unless that’s all you’ve got handy.  The advantage of using a mixer, of course, if that in exchange for your extra elbow grease, you have a beater or two to lick once you’re done.  Whatever you do, don’t lick the food processor blade.  It’s stupid.  I know from experience.

I let the cake chill in the refrigerator overnight, and the following morning I set to work on the marshmallow topping.  For this, my MacGyvered double boiler seemed to be de rigeur as a regular double boiler isn’t large enough to allow use of a hand mixer.  I followed the instructions to the letter; right down to the cutting of the marshmallows into quarters with kitchen scissors (although I’d imagine you could just as easily use mini marshmallows, at a ratio of five or six babies to one big guy).  It produced a shiny, snow-white mass that held soft peaks and tasted like Marshmallow Fluff times ten.  I spread it over the cake top, swirling it about in an aesthetically pleasing manner.  It was beautiful.

I brought the cake to the lake to serve, but naturally failed to remember to throw in the kitchen blow torch.  Regular lighters don’t burn hot enough to caramelize sugar.  I tried.  (Incidentally, and not entirely relatedly, but also in the arena of food chemistry and combustion: liquor under 100 proof won’t catch fire.  I won’t tell you exactly how I came to discover this except to say that it involved a cupcake with an iced likeness of Johnny Damon, his infuriating move from the Red Sox to the Yankees, and copious amounts of booze, both as a means of inebriation and an intended catalyst of ignition.)  Anyway.  You really need the extra-hot blue flame that the blow torch produces.  Fortuitously, I managed to track down an actual propane torch – crisis averted.  This is an important step not to skip because it’s the torch that gives it the toasted marshmallow flavor of a s’more.  Would you eat a s’more with a raw marshmallow?  No.  But the utmost care must be taken as you barely need to wave the flame over the cake to get it to caramelize, and you don’t want it to burn.

I served the cake with blueberries and sliced strawberries rather than the prescribed blueberries and raspberries as my mother has a weird aversion to brambles (that’s blackberries, raspberries, and related fruits…don’t say I never taught you anything).  It was phenomenal.  The texture was perfectly creamy and the tanginess of the cream cheese helped to mitigate the richness of the chocolate and the intense sweetness of the marshmallow topping.  The toasted flavor that the caramelization gave it, though, was what really made it sing.  This would also be delicious with a layer of sliced banana between the crust and the cake – it’d be like a cross between a s’more and a banana boat.

Overall, I wouldn’t say it was an improvement on the s’more, because nothing’s better than a s’more when you’re sitting around a roaring campfire, but at the very least it was a marvelous interpretation of one.