Orange-glazed Strawberry Cheesecake

Visiting my family for the holidays, I was asked a week ago to find a tasty use for the the excess amount of strawberries and oranges which my mother had recently acquired.  Not spending too much time on creative thought, I decided to fall back on what I know and love best, with a twist.  This time, I would put an actual orange into a cheesecake.

Having never baked with fresh oranges as ingredients, the only question on my mind was: how exactly...?  So I did a little research into the parts of oranges that typically make their way into prepared foods.  I learned about orange zest and how orange juice can be used without irrevocably watering down a mixture.  After some time on the Internet, I actually found just the idea I needed.  So with a sharp paring knife and a hand-juicer, I got started extracting the useful bits from an orange.  Zesting, it turns out, was tedious and fun at the same time, not like grating carrots (which was only tedious and no fun).

With this creation, I was actually lucky to have opportunities to put my product to the test with three groups of taste-testers in nearly back-to-back evenings.  So, on vacation and with time to spare, I decided to reach for perfection.  I think I got somewhat close for a journeyman baker.  Read on about my three iterations of strawberry orange cheesecake, with shortbread crust, and topped with orange glaze!

First cake: I thought it looked like a Rorschach inkblot test.  I was told by my first set of taste-testers, friends from high school, that it looked like bacon.

Second cake: Fixing the errors from the first cake, I put the strawberry puree in the center of the cake and cut down on sugar in the orange glaze. (No picture)

Third and final cake: Stepping things up to the next level, I asked my mother for help decorating the top of the cake with fresh cut strawberries in addition to using strawberry puree in the center.  Having used less than half the orange glaze for the previous cakes, I added all of the glaze to this cake by carefully brushing it over the surface, covering the strawberries, and letting it seep into each nook and cranny.