Ewrick's Rabbit Hole

As I’ve been doing some vari­a­tions on the tra­di­tional cheesecake recipe, with more or less success, this post will help remind me of some of the suc­cessful variations.

One of the reason for all of these testings, apart from a taste in exciting new culinary exper­i­ments, is that the typical ingre­dients to make those yummy New-York style cheese­cakes are not that easily found in France.

The Crust Experiments

To do a tasty crust, many recipes use cookies crumbs, con­ve­nient ones are “bis­cuits sablés” (like the Roudor® brand).
» 150 g. (~12 cookies) can be used to make a fine powder.

Mix it with 50 g. of butter — you should get some­thing with the texture of wet sand, quite flaky. The del­icate thing with the crust is that too much butter will leave a puddle of butter when cooked, and may ruin the whole thing.
Press into a pan, and bake it 10 to 15 minutes at 180°C, let it cool thor­oughly before putting the batter inside.

All in all, in the recent version I’ve made, I’ve dropped the crust alto­gether, because it tends to make the whole thing a bit heavy on the stomach…

The Batter Experiments

To replace the cheese, I’ve tried some things that can do:

• 1 kg “fais­selle” (cheese-strainer) — tends to make a cheesecake that doesn’t stand very well…
• con­densed milk and yogurts
• 250g of mas­carpone cheese and 500 g of “fais­selle” — seems like the ideal dosage, my favourite…

plus:

• 3 eggs
• 150 g sugar + vanilla extract
• zest of a lemon

Bake around 20 to 40 minutes at 180°C ; it all depends on the size of the pan (thickness of the cheesecake) and the desired con­sis­tancy (creamy to more solid).

Of course let it cool before serving, preferably with some red fruits coulis…

Enjoy…

written by Yuki \\ tags: cheese, lemon