Hello! I just signed up on this site today. I've been reading it religiously for over a month now. My brother and soon to be sister-in-law are getting married in 9 months and they've given me the honor of doing their cakes. I'm completely flattered but the only tiered cake I've done in my life was my daughter's first birthday cake (It turned it quite nice by the way). Well, I'm a quick learner and I've got 9 months to practice so I'm not worried! Bride wants a topsy turvey. I happen to know 4 people with birthdays before the wedding - so guess what they're getting from me?
Practice makes perfect I always say.
Anyway, I'm feeling rather brilliant because I'm making cheesecakes for the grooms cakes. 5 of them to be exact. His favorite flavors. I know this because he wanted me to make a pie for him with ALL of these flavors in it (yeck): chocolate, peanut butter, coffee, banana and caramel.
I've got a great recipe for banana cheesecake already, I'm going to modify a chocolate cheesecake to be three layers of dark, milk and white chocolate cheesecake. I'll be modifying the recipe for peanut butter cheesecake I have to have reese's peanut butter cups floating in it, but I haven't found a caramel one yet. I'm actually excited about this because I get to experiment. I'm thinking a brown sugar pound cake crust sound like a nice base - and if that doesn't work then there's always brown sugar shortbread. I've even come up with the fantastic idea of glazing the cakes in ganache to give them a smooth and elegant appearance. I might pipe contrasting chocolate in spirals to make it really fancy. I haven't decided yet. I've already decided to do a chocolate ganache for the peanut butter and chocolate cheesecakes and a white chocolate ganache for the coffee and banana ones, flavored appropriately with Lorann oils. I'm still trying to decide the best route for the caramel one. I'm noticing most of the dulce de leche desserts out there have a chocolate glaze on them. I had been hoping to keep the caramel flavor pure. I'm wondering if dulce de leche is spreadable and smooth? Or should I stick to ganache? If so, in your personal opinion, would you rather have white chocolate or chocolate ganache on your caramel cheesecake? Idealy I'd glaze the cake with dulce de leche, but I'd really like some opinions please.

I like the flavor of the dulce de leche so I would like that on top. It is spreadable and you could probably get it pretty smooth with a spatula.

Thanks! I was hoping somebody agreed with me ;o)