#RecipeShed – In search of the perfect New York Cheesecake

Mark I
Mark I

A week or so before her birthday, my wife started hankering for a baked cheesecake.  Not just a cheesecake, had to be a baked one.  So I started thinking… Who knows about cheesecake? And pudding in general…

The go-to book…

And there it is.  Page 44.  The New York Cheesecake. Roughly speaking, it goes something like this…

Ingredients:

  • 175g digestive biscuits, crushed
  • 75g butter, melted, plus extra for greasing the tin
  • 1kg full-fat soft cheese
  • 275g caster sugar
  • 4 eggs, lightly beaten
  • 40g plain flour, sifted
  • 300ml sour cream
  • finely grated rind of 1 lemon

Instructions:

  1. Grease a 23cm loose-bottomed/spring-form cake tin, blitz the biscuits in a food processor (or whack with a rolling pin, your call). Melt the butter, add the crumbs and mix well.  Press the mix evenly over the base of the tin.
  2. Place on a baking sheet and bake in a preheated oven (180°C for conventional, 160&degC for fan) for 10 minutes. Leave to cool on the baking sheet, keeping the oven on.
  3. To make the filling, beat the soft cheese and sugar together in a bowl, mix in the eggs. In a separate bowl, beat the flour into the sour cream and the lemon rind, then fold this mixture into the cheese/eggs using a large metal spoon.  Pour over the biscuit base in the tin.  Bake for 45 minutes.  Leave for 3-4 hours until completely cool
  4. Run a knife around the edge to separate cake from tin, transfer to serving plate. Devour.

The picture at the top of the page is the Mark I.  Followed the recipe to a T, even giving it another few minutes when it didn’t look completely set.  It was, well, alright. Pretty good for a first stab but not great.  Slightly grainy, not a lot, but definitely a tad overdone.  But it set the benchmark.

The Mark II
The Mark II

Not deterred, for the Mark I was delicious, I tried the recipe over the page – Cinnamon cheesecake, also baked.  Again, good, but not great. A solid 6/10, must do better.  So my wife and I hit the internet and did some research.  What’s the tips?  What’s the tricks…  This is what we found…

  • Don’t over-beat things.  I’d used the electric hand-blender for any mixing steps so I’d beaten in far, far too much air.
  • Especially don’t over-beat the eggs.
  • Ingredients should be at room temperature – eggs, cheese, sour cream, the lot.  Otherwise the cold forms lumps.
  • The cheesecake should wobble at the end of cooking – don’t bake until it’s completely set! (another Mark I mistake)
  • First hour’s cooling – switch off the oven and leave the door open.  Slow cooling is better and reduces (but can’t always eliminate) cracks.
  • Run the blade around the edge when it comes out of the oven, not at the end of cooling

Followed these tips and along came the Mark III…  9/10… Maybe 9.5/10. Even better the next day after it had chilled in the fridge overnight.

IMG_20130215_175340
The Mark III

The Mark IV is cooling now…

Comments

2 responses to “#RecipeShed – In search of the perfect New York Cheesecake”

  1. Jo Avatar
    Jo

    Yom Yom. Really looking forward to mark 4!!!
    But how to say…. Need to keep trying, we will cope being the guinea pigs?

  2. […] having the juices mopped up with the last of the bread.  Fortunately I had planned for the and the New York Cheesecake in the fridge was wheeled out as emergency pudding.  We are all now extremely […]

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