Ginger Cheesecake with Gingerbread Crust

I’m a little late on this post, but I baked the cake early! This week is another free choice week with the heavenly cake bakers. My husband had a halloween potluck at work on October 28, and he was tasked with dessert. I’m the dessert person in our house, so he asked if I could make something. I gave him the list of unbaked cakes, and told him to pick something. He headed straight for the cheesecakes, and came up with this one.

The first step was to make the gingerbread cookies for the crust and the decorations.

I don’t remember the order involved, but once that dough is mixed up, it looks something like this.

I let the dough chill out in the fridge overnight, then baked the cookies the next day.

Once I had enough little men and women to more than circle the ring of the cake, I used the rest of the dough to make squarish cookies to crumble for the crust. Speaking of crust…

The hardest part of the cheesecake batter was squeezing the juice out of the ginger. I found that my microplane grater actually got the ginger far too fine (it more or less pureed it, leaving nothing of substance to squeeze), so I used the smaller of our two options for grating cheese. That worked a lot better.

Once the batter’s mixed up, you pour it into your prepared crust. Like all of Rose’s cheesecakes, I do mine in a round cake pan, not a springform. If I grease the bottom of the pan with shortening, line it with parchment, wait until it’s completely set to unmold it, loosen it with a small metal spatula, then warm the bottom of the pan over a low flame before unmolding, I’ve never had one stick. On the other hand, I’ve had nothing but problems when I use springform pans… so I don’t.

I’m told the finished product went over pretty well at my husband’s potluck at work. There was one small piece left, and I think it might have been saved intentionally for me. I have to admit, this wasn’t my favourite cheesecake, but maybe I’m just not a big fan of fresh ginger. I love powdered ginger in my cookies, and a hint of ginger in a stir-fry, but the tang of the cheesecake didn’t really go well with the ginger juice in my mind. Everyone else apparently liked it, though, so I guess that’s what counts!