I had seen these on the internet and wanted to make one. Now that the cost of eggs has decreased slightly I figured I could afford to use 5-6 eggs on a dessert. There were so many recipes to choose from so I went with King Arthur Flour. It had the shortest list of ingredients. I did however add vanilla extract and baked it at a slightly lower temperature than the recipe called for. Here is the link: https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/basque-style-cheesecake-tarta-de-queso-recipe

• 3 8-ounce packages cream cheese at room temp
• 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
• 5 large eggs at room temp
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 cup heavy cream (I used 1/2 cup half-and-half and 1/4 cup evaporated milk.)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla

Interesting pan preparation: crumple sheets of parchment paper and line the 9-inch springform pan in an overlapping fashion to fully cover the bottom of the pan and then fold up and over the sides over the edge of the pan. Preheat oven to 450 degrees. I used this temperature because I thought 500 was too hot and the other recipe I used for reference had the oven set to 400. Hubby suggested the in-between.

KAF wants the batter mixed until it is smooth and lump free. They suggest an 11-cup capacity food processor. Mine is only 9-cup. So with all the ingredients in the bowl I mixed it in my stand mixer and then used an immersion blender to smooth it out which is the alternative method suggested by KAF. This makes a lot of air in the batter which may account for how light it tasted. Not a bad thing!

Poor into the prepared pan and bake. I set the timer first for 25 minutes but the top was not “burnt” so added 10 more minutes and it was nicely browned and not too jiggly in the middle.

Remove from oven and let cool on a wire rack until room temperature before removing from pan. They don’t tell you how to remove the cake smoothly from the parchment paper so mine broke a bit.

I chose to make the Hot Cocoa Drizzle from https://www.halfbakedharvest.com/vanilla-burnt-basque-cheesecake/ just because, with the only substitute being evaporated milk for the heavy cream.