In the comments to the cake post I promised to post my cheesecake recipe. I don’t have any pics of one of my cheesecakes to post. Anyhow, the base recipe is below. Before we get to it, just an item or two:
- since this is the base recipe for a plain cheesecake, if you want to change it up, just make this recipe and then add to it whatever you want. For instance, if you want a chocolate swirl cheesecake, then make the ganache recipe from last week and swirl it in before baking. If you want a strawberry cheesecake then either add your preferred strawberry preserve, incorporate it thoroughly, and then bake. For chocolate dipped strawberry cheesecake – add the preserves, bake, and once its cool poor the chocolate ganache over it. You get the idea.
- For a savory cheesecake base just follow this recipe bet do two things: a) leave out the sugar and b) replace the ground graham cracker crust with a ground sourdough bread crust. Then just add your savory ingredients and bake.
Plain (base) Cheesecake Recipe:
3 8 ounce blocks of cream cheese
8 ounces of sour cream
3 eggs
1 cup of sugar
1 teaspoon of vanilla
1 cup of crushed graham crackers
1 tablespoon of melted butter
Preheat oven to 350. Melt the butter and then combine with the crushed graham cracker crumbs to make the base. Cover the bottom of a nonstick cooking sprayed 10 inch spring form pan and pat down until the base of the pan is evenly covered with the graham cracker crust. Place the pan with crust inside into the freezer.
In your stand mixer (or a large mixing bowl for use with a hand mixer) add one 8 ounce block of cream cheese and whip until smooth. Then add one egg and whip until it is incorporated. Repeat with the remaining two blocks of cream cheese and two eggs. Add the sour cream, vanilla, and sugar and mix until incorporated. Pour into the chilled crust. Bake at 350 for one hour. At the one hour mark turn the oven off and let the cheesecake sit in the cooling over for one hour. After the cheesecake has cooled in the oven for one hour, remove and let cool on the countertop for one hour. Then refrigerate until chilled.
Bon appetit!
RaflW
No water bath for the pan? I’d be more inclined to make cheesecake if I can skip that step
Adam L Silverman
@RaflW: No, I don’t use a water bath. I’ve done it both ways with this recipe and really couldn’t tell any difference. And even if it calls for one and you don’t use it, I promise not to dime you out to the baking police.
RaflW
That is great to know. I last made a cheesecake when dating a gluten free guy in 2004.
Fast forward a decade+, and the guy I’ve now been with for 9 years is recently off of wheat and I was thinking about cheesecake (the coop has passable gluten free hard cookies that can make a crust). But I found the water bath to be a bit of a pain. So I won’t bother!
TaMara (BHF)
Let’s see music…television…food all in less than 20 minutes. Can’t say B-J doesn’t have a little something for everyone.
mclaren
You should post a crayola drawing of your cheesecake. That would be awesome!
Bonus points for wonky helter-skelter lettering.
NotMax
Softened, room temp cream cheese, please.
Substituting creme fraiche for one of the blocks of cream cheese makes it just a bit silikier.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@RaflW:
A smidgen of TMI, but I’m slowly facing the sad truth that too much wheat makes me gassy and constipated because of the FODMAPs. If you think that may be your man’s issue, check the gluten-free cookies for other high-FODMAPs ingredients like honey, molasses or chicory root/inulin, which can cause tummy troubles of their own.
Amir Khalid
@TaMara (BHF):
Pets. Needz moar pets.
TaMara (BHF)
I used to make this Emeril Cheesecake that had at minimum of a dozen ingredients, including alcohol. It was always a favorite with guests, but man what a pain in the butt to make. This one sounds much easier.
ETA: Also, I pimped your cake last night in the recipe thread. Someone was looking for chocolate cakes and yours looks amazing.
01jack
So, the list should include three eggs, right?
TaMara (BHF)
That is probably what I’m going to dream of tonight.
bago
@ThresherK Yep. 2 seconds in and it’s a Sealab episode.
RaflW
@Mnemosyne (tablet): Yeah, we’re on the FODMAP trip (well, he is and I come along).
I didn’t know about honey. But that isn’t a frequently used ingredient for us.
He had very bad luck with quinoa pasta, which should have been ok. Thankfully spelt is working great for him for breads.
ETA: Inulin is of the devil. I am not aware of fodmap issues for me, but I can clear a ballroom after one yoghurt with inulin. There’s some TMI for ya.
Also means I’m off Kind bars too, which sucks as as they were delicious and the nuts were a much better source of quality nutrition than most snack bars. But they are loaded with chicory root.
ruemara
Funny you’re talking cake. I made a chocolate one for my roommate since it was her birthday (plus she has a terrible habit of burning things at random when she cooks). I needed an outlet anyway. Dark chocolate cake with raspberry preserve filling and blueberry glaze. I had a bit with the evening coffee and it is totally worth going full tilt tomorrow at the gym.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@RaflW:
If you haven’t already, you should download the Monash University FODMAPs app. It’s a little pricey, but they have the most up-to-date research and figuring out FODMAPs is *not* intuitive at all. The downside is that they’re based in Australia, so their foods database is missing a lot of US foods. U.S. dietician Kate Scarlata works with them and has a good website with a lot of information.
Also, agave is of the devil, and it’s starting to show up everywhere. People look at me like I’m crazy when I say, “Actually, white table sugar is better for me.”
Aleta
Reminds me 1st cheesecake I made . ‘Reasearched’ cheesecake in the
J yo of Cooking. (Hmm joy autocorrects to j yo which almost made the ‘j lo of cooking’)
RaflW
@Mnemosyne (tablet): Oh, cool. And $9.99 is not bad compared to the weeks of agony my dude was in in May (before his G.I. doc emailed him a pdf of FODMAP basics).
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@RaflW:
I assume the doc already checked him for celiac and/or Crohn’s? I got checked the hard way (colonoscopy) and it came up totally clear, so that’s when I got cleared to try low-FODMAPs. I’m having a hard time sticking to it, though, because you have to cook EVERY DAMN THING from scratch.
Adam L Silverman
@TaMara (BHF): sorry for stepping on your post.
Adam L Silverman
@TaMara (BHF): Thanks, I’m flattered.
Adam L Silverman
@01jack: good catch, I’ve fixed it. Thanks.
Adam L Silverman
@NotMax: I tend to actually start with the cold and using the wisk attachment on my kitchen aide stand mixer just whip it till its creamy smooth. And the sour cream, in addition to adding flavor and mouth feel, also adds silkiness. If you’d prefer, you could use mascarpone cheese.
Perhaps next week I’ll post my tiramisu recipe.
Adam L Silverman
@Aleta: this recipe comes from an old newspaper clipping my Mom did of a cheesecake recipe back when I was in high school. She doesn’t bake much, but saw this in the paper, and figured it couldn’t be too hard. If I’m recalling correctly that recipe came with a variation for adding carrots and raisins. I think the title was something like “Carrots meet raisins in cheesecake”.
Aleta
@Adam L Silverman: interesting. Carrots would be beautifully colorful , esp 2 colors of carrots.
NotMax
@Adam L. Silverman
Lucky you.
J R in WV
@Adam L Silverman:
Great Post!! Love that you’re multi-talented, too.
Some years ago we were driving back from Western Mass to WV, and while driving through Scranton Pa on the interstate at dinner time, I saw a neighborhood Italian restaurant off to the right. In Scranton I-81 is way up on the hill – we drove on to the next exit which dropped us way down into town, which was deserted in the evening. Huge plants, etc.
So I wasn’t optimistic about driving around in a strange town looking for a restaurant, but I found it. Great food, ate a ton. Then:
Best tiramisu ever! So can’t wait for the recipe(s).
If anyone is interested, I do a popular pineapple upside-down cake in a giant skillet for parties.
I don’t do desserts often, but there isn’t any point in not doing them well!
I’ll be buying some cream cheese next grocery trip! Has anyone ever tried whipping some cream a little bit before beating it into the cheesecake mixture?
Thanks again, Adam, for the cheesecake recipe. You are a great addition to the site!
satby
@NotMax: I have to confess, a Kitchen Aide stand mixer was my 50th birthday present to myself. Worth the hefty investment, 10 years later it looks brand new, and I use it for baking and for soap and lotion making (with dedicated attachments and bowls, because those two activities don’t mix, you’ll pardon the pun).
Schlemazel
@J R in WV:
Please share the recipe if you can.
I still oweya blue cheese and walnut cheesecake recipe to BJ. My new Chromebook was supposed to be here Friday but has not and I ain’ a gonna try to post that from this damn 7″ tablet.
ThresherK
@satby: Your KitchenAid hasn’t lived until it’s outlasted the store you bought it at. Mine is from Lechmere, circa 1995. And 99% of its use is from me, 1% from my wife.
PS I’m a bit surprised nobody brought up parchment paper. I usually go with the Alton Brown method: Parchment at the bottom of a cake pan, not a springform. If the top of the cheesecake is solid enough, the parchment turn-over trick means the crust comes out in one piece. And it makes the water bath, if one chooses, guaranteed leakproof.
RaflW
@Mnemosyne (tablet): He’s been diagnosed with IB for a long time, and was already avoiding some foods like whole wheat, beans and such. He has said specifically that they’ve ruled out celiac.
So far it hasn’t been that bad for us, he can eat at Asian restaurants, mexican food, etc. I like to cook from scratch and some things are actually better now – I revised my pan fried breaded cod and found the starchy wheat-free ‘flour’ makes much better breading than wheat breadcrumbs did.
And I make pasta sauce and we have two pots of water – he loves the noodles we found him but they’re expensive and I am happy to eat my fav imported Italian white wheat pastas. It’s working out, thankfully.
mclaren
Something badly wrong with this recipe:
That’s physically impossible. Cream cheese has the consistency of modeling clay. Stick it in a mixer without any kind of liquid as thinner and cream cheese will break up and spatter all over the walls of the mixer, or flying out onto the ceiling if you’re using a bowl mixer.
You need something else, probably the sour cream, to dissolve the cream cheese in so that it will whip until smooth. Otherwise, never gonna happen.
Adam L Silverman
@mclaren: i do it all the time. Simply stop the mixer and scrape down the sides, start mixing again, and repeat as necessary. Its really only an issue for the first 8 ounces as you add one of the eggs before the second 8 ounces of cream cheese and it starts to emulsify (or whatever the technical term is) the cream cheese. What you’re doing is whipping air into the cream cheese, which warms it up, makes it pliable, and smooths it out.
Juju
Interesting recipe. I’m surprised there is no other cheese than the cream cheese. I have a Chicago cheesecake recipe handed down from the Chicago Polish branch of the family. I make my cheesecake in my 1980 cuisinart food processor. It keeps everything contained. I’ve never had any desire for one of those big Kitchen Aid monsters. To me, they are counter clutter, but ymmv. I’ve never done the water bath method and my cheesecakes always turn out nicely, though sometimes the top cracks. I am a bit odd. I make cheesecake but I never really cared for it and I haven’t had a piece in years.
grumpy realist
Zap the cream cheese in the microwave for 30 sec to a minute first. This will soften the cream cheese up enough that you don’t need an electric mixer and an eggbeater will do.
I turn my nose up at cheesecake because I have a recipe for cream cheese pie….family recipe. Supposedly handed out when you bought a $50 WWII bond, which is how it reached our family.
(Analyzing the recipe, it’s graham cracker crust + cheesecake middle + very thick sour cream topping.)
Tim in SF
If you are ready to step up your game, don’t buy the blocks. Those things are half cream cheese, and half gummy binders. Buy this, instead.
http://bonlemon.blogspot.com/2011/09/something-tasty-gina-marie-cream-cheese.html
If you’re making a cream cheese frosting, it’s even more important to get good cream cheese, not that terrible Kraft garbage.