Oreo Cheesecakes and wedding gifts

Wow, what a week last week!  It seemed like every day we had something going on or I was working on some project (one of them too 4 days by itself to complete).  Not to mention with the closing ceremonies of the Olympics this weekend, the past two weeks have been pretty well dedicated to catching up on the day's action when I'm not at work (recorded all of NBC's coverage).  All while trying to keep up with my favorite almost 3 year old and going into work on Saturday.  My first and most important project of the week was working on wedding gifts for Luke and Sherri (fabulous to see them).  Since I am slightly obsessed with Pintrest, I decided on wedding invitation ornaments (invitation of morbidly shredded with a paper shredder and stuffed into a clear glass ornament or in this case 2 and tied with a pretty ribbon instead of clear fishing wire) and wedding date number picture (photo's are taken of the wedding date throughout town and put into a 3 hole frame)...

Thanks to Scott for the 24 picture of a house in Madison photo shopped

Thought I did a good job on the wrapping.  :-)

Warning:  Next segment is NOT gluten free...

Then, my BIG project of the week was a gauntlet challenge by Harley of remaking the new Oreo Dream Cheesecake as made by the Cheesecake Factory for Oreo's 100th birthday.  And since this just came out a few weeks beforehand there were no copycat (semi-homemade) recipes yet.  After reading the reviews on what all the layers consisted of I devised what I thought was a plan.  I also decided to tackle each of the layers separately due to my limited time at night to complete this and so the layers that needed to set could.  Night one consisted of layer one, the chocolate cake bottom (used a regular cake mix, put 1/2 in 9 inch round, made cupcakes later out of the remainder) and layer 2 (cheesecake layer with whole Oreo's inside, used this recipe minus strawberry topping and graham cracker crust).  Now obviously since I was making it at night the second layer was where I had to stop so it could set overnight.  Day 2 consisted of making layer 3 Oreo Mousse (using white chocolate pudding instead of regular chocolate) and spreading it on the cheesecake layer still in the spring form pan.  Its about this time I realize the mousse layer is going to be too thin to spread the topping (chocolate icing) on top so I decide to freeze the mousse/cheesecake layer to make is solid.  Day 3 consisted of putting all the layers together and icing the cheesecake all around with chocolate icing which was challenging at best due somewhat sliding around the mousse layer...

Day 4 was doing chocolate covered Oreo's with a dollop of vanilla icing on top and Oreo's with vanilla icing on top with a chocolate chip then a few hours later lining them around the cake, putting crushed Oreo's in the middle, and sticking chocolate chips around the sides which was somewhat of my own touch on top but looked great...

...for about 30 minutes until the topping which was too heavy for the mousse layer and the icing started sliding down the sides.  Oh well...still tasted good and looked about as close as you can get...

I then got a great surprise for all my hard work and that is the real thing Harley brought back from Nashville...

Cosmetically it looks way better.  If anyone has any suggestions on how to make the mousse layer thicker feel free to let me know.  I think that will solve my problem.  Otherwise, its a keeper...