Cranberry-Orange Cheesecake

I’ve managed to snag an invitation to have another Thanksgiving dinner with Maureen and her family, and she said I could bring a dessert*, so I decided I’d make cranberry-orange cheesecake**. It has a gingersnap-graham-cracker crust, and swirls of cranberry sauce flavored with orange zest. The swirls came out quite pretty. Sadly, the cheesecake cracked rather extensively. I consulted with tinaconnolly, who had made cheesecake before, and she assured me that cheesecakes crack all the time, and that it should still taste fine.

Being rather paranoid (and having only a 9 inch springform pan, when the recipe called for a 10 inch pan), I made a couple of mini-cheesecakes so that I could make sure everything tasted ok***.

The mini-cheesecakes knew somehow that they would be eaten at home, and that they didn’t have to be pretty. So, unlike the big cheesecake, neither of the minis cracked (at least, not so far, and they’re pretty much cooled now so my understanding is that the most dangerous time has passed).

* Technically, I wasn’t asked to bring a dessert. I was told “But on the other hand, [there’s] only one dessert…”

** I’ve never made cheesecake before, so of course I went straight for the most complicated recipe I could find.

*** Despite never having made cheesecake before, much less this particular cheesecake, I could only assume that I know better than whoever it is that wrote the recipe I was vaguely working from. So I made liberal changes to the crust (which was originally made from butter cookies), and the swirls (added some cinnamon, and subtracted the raspberries). So it is CRUCIAL that Peter and I sample the cheesecake prior to taking it to a Thanksgiving dinner, just to make sure the new combination of flavors isn’t somehow poisonous.