Red Velvet Cheesecake

I had been fiddling around with this idea since I saw the Cheesecake Factory Red Velvet Cheesecake at Sam's Club the first of this month. I just could not see paying that much for something that I could make myself. Then I had to figure out exactly how I was going to make it!

Don't get me wrong. I have the best Red Velvet Cake recipe in the world (my Mama's :-)!
http://lynn-southernwithatwist.blogspot.com/2010/10/judys-red-velvet-cake.html

I'm not real strong on the cheesecake baking though. With that knowledge, I enlisted the help of Michele at La Belle Cuisine (labellecuisine.com).
http://www.labellecuisine.com/features/In%20Pursuit%20of%20the%20Perfect%20Cheesecake.htm

The marriage of these two recipes is a match made in heaven!

I'll state the obvious first... I went out and bought 3- 9inch aluminum cake pans (with straight sides) so I could get exactly the same size layers. My cake pans are all different (many with slightly angled sides), so this was a good thing! I baked the red velvet layers and started to work on the cheesecake. I have the cake down pat, but the cheesecake is where I need to concentrate! I used a half recipe (without the crust!) following the Dense and Firm Cheesecake instructions. After cooling, I put the cheesecake in the freezer. Freezing allows you to handle and transfer it to the cake.

I let the cake layers cool completely in the pans and wrapped them to assemble later. (I don't advise this, but I started on this to late at night to finish it!) Take the cheesecake out of the pan and place it on the bottom cake layer.

Top layer on now. Notice the handprint on the top of the cake... It is raining today, and the cake layers got rather sticky! LOL

The icing recipe is included with the red velvet cake recipe. The only change that I would make would be to add icing to the cheesecake layer.

All done...

And now it's time to have a piece!!! Yummmmmmm!!!
(Craig says that it's scrum-dilly-icious!) And all ready for Valentine's Day!