I ruined my pie.

I just spent the past several hours of my life making the perfect pie. Yes perfect. Here's the recipe. I made it all up tonight.

Julianne's Apple Cinnamon Cheese Pie

I have made several cheesecakes now, and I find it interesting that they all have slightly different amounts of ingredients and different ways to cook it. I decided to make up my own recipe and see how it turns out. From the sounds of it, you can change a lot with a cheesecake, and it will still turn out good.


Ingredients:

• 9 inch graham cracker crust
  

• 8 oz cream cheese
• 1/4 cup brown sugar, packed
• 1/4 cup heavy cream
• 1/4 cup sour cream
• 1/4 cup apple cider
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 egg
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
  

• 1 large apple or 2 small apples peeled and sliced thinly
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tbsp butter
• 1 tsp lemon juice (leave out if you use granny smith apples)

Directions:

1. Prepare a graham cracker crust or use pre-made graham cracker crust. Preheat oven to 350 F.
   
2. Beat softened cream cheese until smooth (this is important if you like your cheesecake smooth). Add brown sugar and beat until smooth. Add heavy cream, sour cream, apple cider, and vanilla.
3. In medium saucepan, saute apples with butter cinnamon and lemon juice until softened (medium to medium-low heat).
4. Beat egg in separate bowl. Add to cream cheese mixture and mix until consistency is even. Poor half of mixture into pie pan. Add apples in one layer (two if necessary). Poor rest of mixture into bowl. Optional: I saved about 1/4 cup of the mixture and added 1/2 tsp cinnamon. I then added this in drops/ swirls over top and used knife to create a marble effect. You can just add the cinnamon ahead of time if you prefer.
5. Put pie pan in large pan filled with about 1 inch of water. Place in oven and bake for 30 minutes. Turn off oven and leave in oven for 30 minutes. Let pie cool to room temperature. (All of this helps prevent cracking.)
   
6. Refrigerate several hours or over night. Enjoy!

The cheesecake was beautiful. The marble effect gave it just the right look I wanted. I made certain to slowly let the cheesecake cool to avoid cracking, and I used the water pan for the same purpose (see directions # 5). And it worked! No cracks. Like I said perfect. Well, almost. The crust was a little too high. It didn't make as much as I thought it would, so the crust came a bit above the cheese filling. So, to fix that, I used a butter knife to flake off the extra. It was going to be perfect. But then... If you're food ruining-phobic, stop reading now. This part is pretty bad. But then as I was tipping the pan sideways a little to let the crumbs fall onto a plate, the entire cheesecake fell on to the plate! The whole thing, crust and all. And now it was broken. My beautiful marble effect was ruined. I guess I am rather fortunate that it didn't fall on the floor. It's still edible and will likely taste almost the same, but there's something about looks that makes a food taste better. Anyway, I was able to put it back into the pan slightly intact. I ended up spreading the filling all around to make it symmetrical. Poor cake. Lesson learned. Never attempt to make something that's already quite beautiful more beautiful by cutting it and removing parts of it. Just like plastic surgery.

On a more positive note, here is a picture of a marble cheesecake I made that I didn't ruin. Happy Birthday Mom. I'm glad yours turned out. Sorry for ruining your birthday cake Brett. I'll think of some way to make it up to you.

Update: Though the pie didn't look very pretty, I thought it tasted pretty good.