One of the most legendary desserts of the 20th century, cheesecake, in home cooking can be no worse than in a gourmet restaurant with a Michelin star.
And thanks to the features of the cooking technology, bold culinary experiments are possible with a cheesecake.
Historians say that contemporaries of Pliny the Elder treated themselves to cheesecake. And if it’s well understood, then “cheese (cottage cheese) pies” will be found in Polish, Italian, Turkish cuisines.
And although the American line of dish varieties, led by New York cheesecake, is considered a classic and a model, there is no uniform standard for the recipe of the dish.
You can only name its main characteristics:
- Thin base (cake) from shortbread (almost always) dough.
- A high, light layer of cottage cheese and / or curd cheese.
- Round or square, rectangular (but always strictly clear) shape.
- Before serving, it is customary to keep the cheesecake in the refrigerator for 4-8 hours.
New York
Ingredients:
- 50 g of flour;
- 5 eggs;
- 800 g of Philadelphia cheese;
- 200 ml of 35% cream;
- 4 g of baking powder;
- 360 g sugar;
- 1 sachet (10-15 g) of vanilla sugar;
- salt on the tip of a knife;
- 30 g of corn starch;
- 40 g butter.
Cooking:
- Mix flour with baking powder and salt.
- Beat 2 egg yolks with vanilla sugar and 40 g of regular sugar until the mass is whitened.
- Add flour, salt and melted butter to the yolks.
- Start whipping 3 squirrels with 20 g of granulated sugar when they begin to turn into foam - gently combine with the already mixed ingredients.
- Put the dough in a baking dish (22 cm) and send to the oven preheated to 170 ° C for 12-15 minutes.
- Leave the finished cake to cool in shape.
- In a bowl of the submersible mixer, beat the cheese with starch and remaining sugar. For a better texture of the mass, it is recommended to add cheese smoothly, in 3-4 parts.
- Next, add 2 eggs (without dividing the yolks) and cream to the cheese portion of the pie.
- Put the mass on a cooled biscuit, smooth it and send it to the oven preheated to 170 ° C for 1 hour and 20 minutes.
Curd cake
Ingredients:
- 420 g of cookies (like "Yubileiny");
- 800 g of fatty cottage cheese;
- 230 g sugar;
- 130 ml of 20% cream;
- 300 g of 20% sour cream;
- 1 sachet (10-15 g) of vanilla sugar;
- 3 eggs;
- 160 g of butter.
Cooking:
- Rub the cookies into a homogeneous fine crumb.
- Add melted butter to it.
- Put and take the “dough” from the cookies into the baking dish (24 cm), distributing evenly along the bottom and sides to the top.
- Place the cake base on the shelf of the refrigerator.
- Rub the cottage cheese to a creamy texture.
- Add cream, eggs, 180 g regular sugar and all vanilla to the curd.
- Remove the form from the refrigerator, put the curd into it, smooth it out.
- Place the mold in an oven preheated to 170 ° C for 45 minutes.
- By the end of this time, beat the sour cream with the remaining sugar.
- Remove the cheesecake from the oven and add heat to 200 ° C.
- Pour the cake with sour cream and return to the oven for 5-10 minutes.
Chocolate with raisins
Ingredients:
- 300 g cream cheese curds (like Mascarpone);
- 200 g cane sugar;
- 2 tiles of not very sweet chocolate without additives;
- 160 g of cookies (like "Yubileiny";)
- 1.5 tbsp. l cocoa powder;
- 40 ml Baileys liquor;
- 120 g butter;
- 100 g of raisins;
- 3 eggs;
- 200 g of 20% sour cream;
Cooking:
- Soak raisins in alcohol 2 hours before cooking.
- Melt 25 g of chocolate and 40 g of butter, mix both products with cookies crushed into small crumbs.
- Put the "dough" in a baking dish (20 cm), press firmly and place for 10 minutes in an oven preheated to 170 ° C.
- Melt the remaining butter and chocolate in one bowl, stir in the cocoa powder.
- Beat curd cheese and sugar in a mixer bowl (due to the small volume of ingredients, everything can be combined immediately).
- Add the eggs to the cheese mass, then the chocolate-butter mixture.
- The last to introduce into the mass of sour cream and Beilis (drained from raisins).
- Remove the cake pan from the oven, let cool slightly.
- Spread the raisins on the basis of the cake, put the curd mass on top, flatten and place in the oven, again heated to 170 ° C for 50 minutes.
Pear with Borodino bread
Ingredients:
- 350 g cream cheese curds (like Mascarpone);
- 270 g of Borodino bread;
- 60 ml of milk;
- 120 ml of 30% cream;
- 18 g of gelatin;
- a pinch of lemon peel;
- 4 sweet pears;
- 50 g butter;
- 100 g of sugar;
- a pinch of cinnamon.
- 150 ml of apple juice.
Cooking:
- Dry the finely chopped bread into very dried crackers, then chop into crumbs.
- Peel the pears, cut into slices, put in a small form, sprinkle with sugar and send for 20-25 minutes in the oven, heated to 160 ° C.
- Soak 6 g of gelatin in cold water.
- Heat 150 ml of apple juice to a boil and mix with gelatin.
- Mix bread crumbs with melted butter and distribute tightly in a baking dish (18 cm). Put it on the shelf of the refrigerator.
- Put about 1/3 of the pears in a slightly smaller diameter (3-5 cm), mix them with juice with gelatin and send everything for 3 hours to the freezer.
- Turn the remaining pears into mashed potatoes, add a pinch of lemon zest to them.
- Soak the remaining gelatin in cold water.
- Pour milk and cream into the stewpan on the stove, bring to a boil, add cinnamon.
- Remove the dishes with the milk mixture from the stove, mix with gelatin.
- Put in the bowl of the mixer fruit puree, sugar, cheese and milk with cream, mix everything thoroughly.
- Pour about a third of the resulting mixture onto the cooled bread base of the pie.
- Put on top the pieces of pear frozen in jelly (the layer drops down and this is normal).
- Fill the layer with the remaining mixture and put the cheesecake in the refrigerator. Do not just cool down - solidify until fully prepared.
The curd / cheese part of the cheesecake cannot be made very sweet - in its light acidity its charm, plus, it serves as a background for additives like creams, glazes, layers.
The latter, by the way, can be supplemented with extra cakes in the cheesecake, the main thing to consider is whether they will not be too heavy to suppress its sour-milk part.
It is still not recommended to overload the cheese / air portion with ingredients, such as candied fruit, nuts, chocolate chips, pieces of fruit, etc. For all this, there is a cake and the top of the cheesecake. By the way, it can be stylishly decorated in this way:
- apply a thin stream of strokes with chocolate icing;
- pour a jelly translucent layer with pieces of fruit / berries;
- cover with whipped cream.
But it’s not customary to decorate cheesecake with mastic or with butter flowers.
If the cheesecake contains cheese like Philadelphia / Mascarpone, then the baking dish in the oven must be sent when it is immersed in a larger form, in which hot water is poured somewhere up to half the height of the cake.
Depending on the recipe, some cheesecakes can be stored in the freezer for up to 1 month, and you just need to thaw them before serving (in this form, by the way, these pies are imported in supermarkets, for example, from the USA).
