The One With Cheesecake Photos

My blackberry cheesecake? Was badass. Bad. Ass. Completely worth the ridiculous amount of money I spent on the ingredients.

I finally got home last night after a 14-hour workday and cut into it. My photographer D took pictures of the process, so, of course, I'm going to share them with you all. So you can be. . .you know, jealous. Of my mad cheesecake skills.

Even though I've been making cakes and cupcakes and pies for. . . ever, I'd never attempted a cheesecake before. Main reason for that being, I didn't have a springform pan. For those of you who don't know, the springform pan has a latch on it that you pop so you can take the surrounding pan off of the bottom. This is necessary for cheesecakes, because unlike with regular cakes, you can't just flip them out of the pan. . .they have to stay rightside up. So I waited until A.C. Moore had a sale on them and bought one. That was like 2 months ago, so it was about time.

I've already linked to the recipe, but I'll do it again if you're interested, because I don't feel like going through the entire process on here. The only thing I would change about it is that the recipe suggests 2 - 3 cups of blackberries. I only used two (those things are EXPENSIVE!), and I wasn't able to cover the entire top of the thing. . .I had to arrange them artfully in the middle. I'd prefer the berries to go to the edges (although. . .I seemed to have an excess of juice with the amount I used. Maybe I'd drain some of it. I don't know.

Also, I don't have an electric mixer, so I mixed this entire thing by hand. My biceps are enormous. Do YOU have tickets to the gun show?

So I made the cheesecake:

Mmmm. . .cheesecake.

Then, the berries were cooked:

Mmmm. . .berries!

And then the entire thing was put together:

OMG!

And sliced. . .

And, of course, then it was eaten.

Awesome.