The secret to a cheesecake is that it’s not a cake.  The leavening agent is strictly egg rather than baking soda, baking powder, or yeast, and to get a smooth top one must coast over the finish line rather than dashing over it.  I put the cake into a roasting dish partly filled with boiling water and cooked the cheesecake with the residual heat of the oven coasting down from a few hundred degrees.  The cake finished and had a gorgeous uncracked top.

Bad Part: I had no one to share this with.
Good Part: I had no one to share this with.