Cinnamon Roll Cheesecake

Last week, I was invited to my friend's house for a lunch with a couple of foreigners who run a cafe in the city next to mine. Including me, there were seven women from a total of five different countries. As it was a lunch, each of us brought something - naturally, I offered to bring a dessert. While I am in love with the Chocolate Caramel Cheesecake, I decided to try something new with a Cinnamon Roll Cheesecake.

This cheesecake was a lot of work, as you can see from the recipe, and to be honest I liked it, but I didn't love it. I'll get to that later though.　

You start off the process with a cake dough for the crust of the cake. It ends up being quite thick, so once it is ready, you really have to push it down into the cake pan.

The next step is the actual cheesecake part. It's pretty simple, just mix it all up and you are ready to go onto the next step,

the cinnamon filling bit. Again, not difficult at all to do and this part is actually quite quick. Just mix it up and you are all good.

The instructions say to put the cheesecake batter on top of the cake batter, then drop a few spoonfuls of the cinnamon mixture on top and swirl it in. I did this and was not even close to finishing up the cinnamon bit. I don't even know if I had used half of it at that point.

I swirled as instructed, but decided to add in some chopped up pecans as well. Then I gave it a good stir, trying to stay a little bit away from the cake base.

Once that was mixed in, I added the last of the cinnamon on top, as well as the last of the batter and gave another swirl.

Then I popped it in the oven and checked it at one hour and the insides were still super liquid. :(

I ended up having to bake it for about 40 more minutes, I think. I put foil loosely over the top of it, but the top bit still ended up having a few small burnt spots. Dear me.

The final step is to make the cream cheese frosting that makes cinnamon rolls so super delicious.

And then you drizzle it on the cake. Again, I only ended up using half of the frosting, if that. I still have some left over.

At the party the cake was quite a hit, so I was stoked. As I said above, however, I didn't love it. I thought there was too much cake batter. Also the cake batter bit was really dense - almost dried out. This might be because I baked it for ages, but I really have no idea.

That being said, it certainly didn't deter me from eating it. I just saved the delicious cinnamon cheesecake bits for last.

I definitely want to try this again, but I think I will do it differently next time. I think I will use a regular cheesecake cookie crust and then mix almost all of the cinnamon mixture into the cheesecake batter from the beginning. Then at the end put a few drops of the cinnamon mixture on top and swirl it around, just for looks. I will certainly be keeping the cream cheese frosting. I guess this will make the cake more of a Cinnamon Cheesecake than a Cinnamon Roll Cheesecake, but I think it will suit my tastes more!