Mise en place: French for everything in place. Be sure to have all your necessary ingredients near you

Tools needed often times is a stand mixer, rubber spatulas (to scrape sides of bowl), small sauce pan for melting butter (this is for the crust) and a springform pan; 9 inch is the standard size for cheesecakes and takes about 90 minutes to cook in a 350°F oven

Ensure ALL ingredients (even the sugar) are at room temperature. Setting them out 30 minutes to an hour before preparing is good.

Beat ingredients at low speed, over mixing is not pretty

When it comes to the eggs, add each egg one at a time. I normally mix by hand using a rubber spatula only for this step

Be sure to wrap tinfoil around the bottom and sides of the springform pan. This is for the bain marie: which is a hot water bath. Boil water and add to a larger pan and insert springform pan with prepared filling inside OR insert springform pan inside larger pan and add boiling hot water

A standard 9" cheesecake bakes for 90 minutes at 350°F. It is important that you do not open the oven for the first 45 minutes. This could lead to the cheese cracking

Be sure to add cheesecake in the middle rack of the oven

When cheesecake is done, it should be a little jiggly in the center like jello

IF your recipe calls for cooling cheesecake in the oven, open it and leave it for however amount of minutes or hours it calls for. Otherside, let it cool at room temperature and store in the refrigerator to harden. Do not remove sides of springform!

Cover and Refrigerate your cheesecake for more than five hours. Remove sides when your are ready to serve. According to some websites, cheesecakes are best served at room temperature. Enjoy!

Note: if you find a "no-bake" cheesecake recipe that has eggs as an ingredient, one way to sooth the uneaziness is by dropping the egg (s) in boiling hot water for 30 seconds to 1 minute. I heard this would allow the egg to reach the temperature where it is safe to consume