I LOVE goat cheese.  My grocery store sells little logs of the tangy cheese flavored with all kinds of wonderful things – honey, fig, blueberry.  One of my favorites is the goat cheese rolled in rum raisins.  Give me that and a package of water crackers and I’ve got dinner a very lovely snack.  So when I saw that this month’s Spiked Recipe Challenge ingredient was spiced rum, I knew I wanted to make something with goat cheese and rum raisins.  But what???

This was the very first cheesecake I have ever made and it is definitely a keeper!  It has that added tang from the goat cheese that I just love, and the Biscoff cookie crust is to die for… but more on the ingredients later!  First let me say – there are SO many opinions on cheesecake!  Butter in the crust, no butter in the crust, egg whites, no egg whites, water bath, no water bath, bake, no bake, remove from the oven, leave in the oven to cool.  My head was spinning trying to figure out how to make this darn thing!

I started off by looking for a recipe that sounded tasty yet relatively simple.  I found one on Oprah.com of all places.  After a few ingredient swaps I was ready to bake.  I decided to do the whole water bath thing since so many people seemed adamant about it.  No, you do not dunk your cheesecake in the tub.  You are supposed to wrap the outside of the springform pan in tinfoil, place the pan with cheesecake filling in a larger pan, fill the larger pan with water (boiling, not boiling.  I went with boiling.) about halfway up the springform pan and THEN carefully put the whole setup in the oven. . All this is supposed to prevent your cheesecake from cracking on top.  Mine did not crack, but whether is was due to the water bath or just my mad cheesecake baking skills we will never know.

After letting my cheesecake chill in the fridge overnight I made my rum raisin compote.  Then it was time to plate and photograph.Just one minor problem… my cheesecake was stuck to the bottom of the pan!!  I had sprayed it with baking spray but apparently that was pointless.  My previously crack-less cheesecake was turning into the Grand Canyon as I tried in vain to lift it off the pan bottom.  A quick internet search let me know that I should have covered the bottom of the pan in parchment paper first.  WHERE was this info in all of my previous cheesecake research?!

Luckily I was able to get a few nice pieces out of the cheesecake.  The rest isn’t pretty but it doesn’t really matter because it’s damn delicious!

Goat Cheese Cheesecake (adapted from Goat Cheese Cheesecake with Spiced Cherry Topping on Oprah.com)