Hello everyone!
For months I have been enjoying your posts and learning from all of you. Thanks for sharing! I hope to be able to give back a tiny bit of all that I have received…but this post is to ask for your help.
For many years I have baked Rose´s Celebrations cheesecake for my husband´s birthday (minus the decorations). He loves it so much that he doesn´t want anything on top of it or on the side. But to my surprise this year he says he might like to try a variation. Honestly, I can´t imagine how to modify such a perfect recipe without failing. It is a heavenly cake. So I thought that maybe some of you had tried a mocha or coffee cheesecake variation (he is a coffee lover) and would share your experience. Any other ideas are of course welcome.
Thanks in advance for your help!

Welcome Marina - do you make the Orange Election Day Cheesecake?  You could omit the orange curd glaze and replace the orange zest with instant espresso powder.  There are a lot of recipes online - you can check some of them to give you a good idea how much espresso powder to use. 

I like to top my cheesecakes with this wonderful lightly sweetened sour cream topping which alone is fabulous, but pairs extremely well with fruit:

16oz sour cream
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla (or vanilla bean paste)

-Stir together and pour over cheesecake when it comes out of the oven (turn oven off); return the cheesecake to the oven for 5 minutes.  Cool and chill as directed.

Thanks Patrincia for your input.
Yes, the recipe is Orange Election Day Cheesecake.  I usually omit the orange curd. That is how plain he likes his cheesecake. I will follow your suggestion and do some searching on the instant coffee proportions used in other recipes and see what turns out. Your sour cream topping sounds yummy but I rarely find sour cream here :(
For the cheesecake recipe I deal with this by substituting sour cream with natural yogurt+whipping cream (after a couple of days it turns into a bit too rich sour cream). It works, though the results are not identical to those achieved when using sour cream. But I am not sure it would work for your topping. Anyway I am keeping the recipe for that special time when I will have access to real sour cream.
Once again, thanks!

Adding a strip of biscuit roulade around and under the cheesecake looks so fancy but it is simple to execute, just needs a little bit of extra time.

Most people love serving cake with ice cream.  In the case of cheesecake, the effect is the same, but reversed:  you will love serving cheesecake with cake!  Of course, the cheesecake needs to be light and tender, as Rose’s are.

Enjoy the picture on this post, my friend Emily made Rose’s wonderful cheesecake baked on a layer of biscuit roulade.

By the way, have any of you tried Lekue’s silicone spring form cheesecake pan?

http://www.realbakingwithrose.com/2008/05/hector_builds_a_bridge.html#comment-99970

Thank you for pointing that post Hector, I must have missed that one and it sounds great.
I was following the mocha idea by considering combining a chocolate cookie crust (already baked chocolate wafers) with coffee cheesecake (still had to do some searching to decide how much to add to the cheesecake) but maybe I will follow a different path…still have a few days to decide. By the way, your mango roses are amazing. Mango is my favorite fruit and it looks lovely as roses.
A couple of months ago I made the mango passion tart for the first time and even though it was delicious beyond words it was not as pretty as I expected. I don´t know if my mistake was on the angle or maybe the mango slices were too thin…or not too thin enough. I guess I will have to make many more mango roses.
Have you ever thought of making a video of you making/piping roses? (mango and buttercream?)

Almost forgot to answer: no, I have not tried Lekue’s silicone spring form cheesecake pan…

marina….we are rose fans!  until I get to video….my piped roses are more petals like full gardenias, works well when arranging in large groups or like a cake carpet fully covered.  my techique is to always use two toned frosting and also not make the center core with plain tube.  it wil make sense what I say when you learn or read about how to pipe roses using the traditional way.

regarding mango rose, YES, I developed my own technique.  cut 4 pieces only from one mango, like if you where trying to dissassemble to take the most meat from the seed:  following the seed, cut each side first which gives you the biggest pieces;  then cut the 2 opposite ends or smaller pieces.  then thinly slice each piece moderatelly thick!  I always start forming the rose from the center, then care to avoid slices that fit too well because you do want each slice not to be perfectlly aligned with next each other.

note that each ‘petal’ has a slanted angle, which is where the mango peel was and aways form the top face of the rose!

hope this make sense!

Hector, thanks for sharing your techniques for making roses… i know i will have to make tons of them to make some decent looking ones, but since it’s mango season, mango roses could become a fancy way to eat fruit and practice at the same time.

Marina, have fun and enjoy the mango.  Once more:  use a euro peeler or y-peeler to remove the mango skin.  This will leave the mango inner skin (the tougher sheet encasing the softer mango inside).  This inner skin is what shows on the top face of the rose and what is always in an angle.

After peeling the mango, follow the flat seed (mango seeds are always flat).  Hold your mango vertically with the stem down.  Cut as close as possible to the flat side of the seed, this will give you the 2 bigger pieces.  Now, hold your mango flat (against one of the cut sides), and cut as close as possible to the edge side of the seed, this will give you the 2 smaller pieces.

So now, you have 4 pieces.  Lay them on your cutting board with the mango inner skin facing up.  Process to slice, like in juliene.  Keep the slices together and work in order, so you gradually lay the petals in proportion.

On the larger pieces, grab exactly half of the slices and turn them 180 degrees, this way you have all slices with the same angle.  It is the same angle of the inner skin you need to follow when laying the rose.  I really need to put this on video!

To start, find the smallest slices (from either the big pieces or small pieces), and form the rose center.  It is a little hard to flex the mango, often I mush them a little.  Keep working your way out, gradually using from smaller to larger slices.

Again, pay attention to the angle of the inner skin.  If you see that the rose petals dissapear when you add a petal next to it, it is because the angle was inverted.

You know, taking some florist design workshops help, just make your own style!