cheesecake

Another Basque Cheesecake

~ nancyruth ~ 5 Comments

It has been a while since I last wrote. I am going to try to write again but in my retirement I have been embracing the “I don’t have to” about schedules and activities. Yes, I do pay the bills and minimally clean the house and get up and dressed every day, feed the dog, cook sometimes, keep medical appointments, etc. I guess there is a lot of things I do but on my own time. I have not been baking a whole lot in the summer between heat waves and camping trips.

I was perusing the New York Times cooking section and they listed a number of favorite fall baking recipes that looked and sounded interesting. This Basque Cheesecake was one of them. I know I have made a Basque Cheesecake before but that was the King Arthur Flour recipe which I apparently altered slightly. It is somewhere in a past blog post. Here is the link for this one https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1024483-basque-cheesecake.

I gathered all the ingredients. Well, actually, I wandered off to the grocery store to buy more cream cheese. This calls for 4 ½  packages! I had heavy cream from making pastry cream for cream puffs recently. And 5 eggs which, luckily, have come down in price. Line a 10-inch spring-form pan with parchment paper that extends up the sides. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

  • 1 ¾ cups sugar
  • 36 ounces of cream cheese at room temperature
  • ¼ teaspoon kosher salt
  • 5 large eggs
  • 2 cups heavy cream
  • ¼ cup all-purpose flour

Cream the cheese and sugar in a stand mixer. I mixed this for 5 minutes. Add the bit of salt. Then beat in eggs one at a time. Then the cream. Sift the flour on top and mix in. This makes a lot of batter. Pour this into the prepared pan and bake for 50-60 minutes until “burnt” on top. Let cool completely before removing from the pan. This is a large cake so having flat spatulas on hand to help move it to a cake plate will be handy.

Voila!

This is a light cheese cake, not at all dense like New York Style. But it is very pleasant.

Basque Burnt Cheesecake

~ nancyruth ~ Leave a comment

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.

Back to the beginning…

~ nancyruth ~ 2 Comments

Cheesecake. I started this blog with my favorite cheesecake recipe. I have now made it without the chocolate marble. And in my shiny new 8-inch round pan with the removable bottom and three inch sides.

Voila!

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This got rave reviews from my co-workers. As you can see, I did overcook it a bit as evidenced by the crack in the top. That crack is just too big. I was uncertain on how to test doneness in this new pan. But it was gobbled up just the same with several people wanting the recipe. I baked this on the spur of the moment after a colleague was complaining about how his in-law puts the sour cream layer on top of cheesecake which makes it unpalatable for him. I don’t particularly like the sour cream layer either and I knew this recipe is super simple and tasty. Bake therapy for the holiday stress!

  • 3 8-ounce packages of cream cheese
  • 1 cup granulated sugar
  • 5 eggs
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla

Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees F. Prepare your pan with cooking spray or butter. I lined the bottom with parchment paper just to be sure it could come off the bottom so I could take it to work without forgetting an essential part of the pan! I had one molasses cookie leftover so I crushed it by rolling it with the rolling pin. I spread this on the sides only to add color. Roll the pan on the edge and the crumbs roll around and stick to the buttered side. This is optional if you don’t have a cookie. This cheesecake does not require a crust.

Cream the cheese with the sugar. Add eggs one at a time beating well after each addition. Add the vanilla and mix well until smooth. Pour into the prepared pan and bake for 50 minutes. It rises up over the edge so I was not sure if it needed more time to bake so I left it to bake for another ten minutes. Don’t do that!

Enjoy! Happy Christmas and holidays to all!