It was recently one of my best friends birthdays, and no birthday is complete without a cake. So, I creeped on her Pinterest and found some baking recipes she'd pinned recently. Any guesses on what they were? You got it - salted caramel. So I got to thinking, mixing and matching, and came to create this beauty. You're going to love it.
Caramel:
1 cup sugar
5 tablespoons butter
½ cup heavy cream, room temperature
2 teaspoons salt
Pralines (optional):
1 cup walnuts, chopped
½ cup pecans, chopped
¼ cup brown sugar, packed
2 tablespoons butter
¼ teaspoon salt
Oreo Crust:
25 Oreo's
7 tablespoons butter, melted
Cheesecake:
3 (8 oz) packages cream cheese, softened
1 cup sugar
3 eggs, room temperature
2 ½ tablespoons heavy cream, room temperature
⅓ cup caramel, cooled
¾ teaspoon vanilla
Ganache:
8 oz semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 cup heavy whipping cream
Whipped cream topping (optional)
Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 and grease springform pan; set aside for later.
Begin by making caramel so it has time to cool. In a large skillet, melt sugar over medium heat until it is a dark caramel color. Remove from heat and add butter until completely melted. Return to heat and add heavy cream and salt. The mixture may get hard, but continue to stir until smooth and fully combined. Transfer to glass container and set aside to cool (we put this in the freezer while we made the other ingredients and stirred it every so often).
Next, begin melting brown sugar, butter and salt in medium pot over medium heat. Once these ingredients begin to combine, stir in nuts and continue to stir until butter starts to bubble. Stir for an additional minute then spread evenly on parchment paper so it can cool.
In food processor, crumble Oreo's. Pour melted butter over Oreo and mix until thick and all pieces are covered with butter. Gently press Oreo crust into the bottom of the pan and up the sides. Set aside.
In large mixing bowl, beat cream cheese and sugar until fully combined. Add in eggs, one at a time. Continue beating while adding in heavy cream, caramel, and vanilla until ingredients are thoroughly combined. Pour mixture on top of Oreo crust.
Bake cheesecake for 55 minutes. Turn off oven and let cool until you can take it out of the oven by hand (sidenote: I made this cake late at night, baked it, and let it cool in the oven overnight - it turned out perfectly).
Once cheesecake is baked and cooled, make the ganache by placing chocolate chips in a small bowl and bringing heavy cream to a simmer in small pot. As soon as heavy cream begins to simmer, remove from heat and pour over chocolate chips, swirling the bowl until all chocolate chips are covered.
Place a lid over the chocolate chips and let it sit untouched for 15 minutes. Remove the lid and whisk chocolate chips until smooth. Once the mixture is smooth, let it sit at room temperature for an additional 15 minutes.
Remove rim from cheesecake and place on wire rack. Pour ganache over cake until desired thickness is reached. Refrigerate for at least 1 hour before topping with pralines, chocolate chips, caramel, and (optional) whipped cream. ENJOY!
NOTE: More than likely, you will have leftover ganache, caramel, and pralines. I'm sure you already knew this, but these are absolutely delicious on ice cream, brownies, really any other sweet you can think of. They also can last a few weeks in the fridge in an airtight container, so save up, share with friends, put it on your other favorite dessert, go crazy!
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