Cheese Cake - a Shot in the Dark

Under the protective cloak of night we gathered in the kitchen to secretively prepare Mama's birthday cheese cake for the next morning's traditional birthday-cake-breakfast.
Here is what we tried in the shallow beams of flash lights. And, oh my, did it turn out splendid.

First we wrapped a spring form pan in turkey size aluminum foil to make it water tight. 2 layers. No seams. No rips or punctures.

We preheated the oven to 350 F, whizzed up 15 Graham Crackers (roughly 225g) in a food processor, mixed in 2 tablespoons of sugar, a pinch of salt, and 4 tablespoons of unsalted butter, melted.

All that got mixed by hand and pressed into the bottom of the form pan. We placed it into the oven for 10 minutes, removed it, and lowered the temp to 325F.

Then we whipped up 4 packs of cream cheese (about 900g) in a mixer until it looked smooth. A good 5 minutes.
Then we added 1 1/3 cup of sugar and whipped it for another 5 minutes.

Then we added one by one without stopping the mixer a pinch of salt, 2 teaspoons vanilla extract, 4 eggs, 2/3 cup of sour cream, and 2/3 cup of heavy whipping cream.

We placed the spring form pan into a roasting pan, the cheese mixture into the form pan and onto the crust, and the whole thing into the oven.
Then we ever so carefully filled the roasting pan with about an inch of boiling water. Making sure the form pan and in it, more importantly, the cake-to-be was staying dry.
We baked it for 1 1/2 hours.
To keep the top from cracking we turned off the oven and opened its door for an hour before we carefully lifted the cake, form and all, out of the water bed and into the fridge.

Yum. What a keeper. Mama showed up the next morning, dug in, and turned the clock by a year with a big grin from ear to ear.