Cheesecake

If you are lactose intolerant, close this right now because you'll hear your tummy growl just reading this. Phew! Now that we've got that out of the way then we can proceed. If you are in the population that is lucky enough to consume a dairy cake masterpiece then you're in the right place. Here's what you'll need:

Ingredients

So instead of listing out all the ingredients I thought of a cool way to describe all that in proportions. For those of you who aren't familiar with baker's percentages it's a really neat way of stating every other ingredient relative to the amount of flour (yes this is a rant but I have an endgame, promise). For example If you plan on making a pizza dough, you'd set the amount of flour you'd use at 100% for easy calculation lets say you're using 100 grams of flour then 60 grams water (60% hydration) 2 grams yeast (2% yeast). I think you get the general sense of this.

For this recipe I used 100% cream cheese, 44% sugar, 80% yogurt, 21% cream, 80% sugar, 13% flour, 0.3% salt, vanilla extract 1%, 4 eggs (I will not weigh eggs like a psycho, I refuse to cross that line). I know this might be a little confusing so here are the actual amounts I used:

Filling

Cream cheese- 560 grams (2 cups)

For those of you who would prefer to make your own cream cheese instead of paying a fortune for it at the store, here's how you do it. Heat up milk in a big pot (6 bags of milk to get this amount of cream cheese), heat it up patiently, continuously stirring until it almost comes to a boil (for those of you with a thermometer this would be 92 degrees Celsius) and immediately take it off the heat and put in 5 tablespoons of distilled white vinegar (you don't have to use your fancy tasty vinegar's on this, it's only purpose is to curdle the milk, it doesn't contribute much to the flavor) then you should see curds float up and separate from the whey. Strain it through a fine mesh sieve with an optional layer of cheesecloth and squeeze most of the whey out. Then blend in a food processor into a fine smooth texture and voila you made your own cream cheese. As for the whey I'm sure there are some things to do with it but I honestly just drain it away.

Sugar- 250 grams (1 cup)

Cream- 120 grams (1/2 cup)

When it comes to cream, the stuff at the store is great but expensive. I usually use powdered milk but i make it 2 or 3 times thicker than normal milk, this is not cream but a much easier and convenient alternative.

Yogurt- 450 grams (2 cups)

Salt- 2 grams (just a pinch)

Vanilla extract- 5 grams (1 teaspoon)

Eggs- 4 large eggs

Crust

Biscuits- Cheesecake crusts are traditionally made with graham crackers but you can really use whatever you want, just make sure to remove any cream from the biscuits if it has any. I personally used fingers (relax! fingers biscuits. Not that kinda blog *wink wink*) you could also use Moya [not sponsored] I just like it a lot. 300 grams (1 cup)

Melted butter- 75 grams (5 tablespoons)

Sugar- 15 grams (1 tablespoon)

Preparation

We start by making the crust, this is also the hardest part of the recipe. Dump the biscuits, sugar and melted butter in a food processor and pule till it resembles wet sand. Pretty complicated right (A hint of sarcasm makes baking that much better).

Put the biscuit crumbs in a spring-form pan(those pans with the releasing sides) you could try with a normal cake pan but you'll have a real hard time getting the cake out of the pan (maybe try letting the parchment paper flair out the sides so you'd lift it out. Whichever pan you're using press the crumbs to the bottom and spread it out evenly. Next you have to blind bake the crust in a 180 degree Celsius oven for 10 minutes. This is an important step because it prevents the crumbs from floating into and mixing with the cake batter, so instead of a crust you'd have cheesecake with biscuit crumbs in it. No Bueno!

After you pulled out your par-baked crust out of the oven (careful not to let it burn), let it cool while you prepare your batter.

To make the cheesecake batter, in a large bowl mix your cream cheese and sugar then beat with an electric mixer on high speed for about 5 minutes or by hand with a whisk until you are very sore and you have convinced yourself that you've burned off all the calories you'll eat with this cake. That's self love right there. If you take some of the mixture between your fingers and rub it you shouldn't feel any grains of sugar.

Then add in the cream, yogurt, flour, salt and vanilla at once and keep beating (maybe add the flour in batches so it doesn't dust your whole face (learn from my mistakes, will ya) after those ingredients are mixed, add and mix in one egg at a time until all 4 are used up. And don't overmix! If you do, you might run the risk of a dense cheesecake. Heath my warning.

Then pour the batter into the pan with the cooled crust and put in the preheating 180 degree Celsius oven. But there's one more thing you need to do, the air in a conventional home oven is dry, meaning your cheesecake would crack and not look so pretty. If you don't want scarface cheesecake, pour a few cups of boiling water in a separate cake pan and put it at the bottom of the oven. This will make the air more humid and assure your cheesecake will come out perfect.

Bake it for 1 hour at said temperature, turn off the heat and let it sit in the oven for another hour (this assures that it finishes cooking properly) then refregirate for 4 hours or overnight. Cheesecake is best eaten cold.

I know this is a little complicated and time consuming but it is absolutely worth it. Make this recipe sparingly unless heart attacks are your thing.

Here are a few videos that helped me develop this recipe:

As always:

Keep Cooking❤️

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