Cheesecake

My first time making cheesecake was a few years ago; the Christmas after we were first married.  We spent that Christmas in San Francisco and I think I was feeling extra homesick for a full on Christmas meal and extra anxious to use my new Kitchen Aid mixer or something because why I decided to make a full cheesecake for just the two of us is now beyond me....  I digress.  I made a cheesecake and followed the directions explicitly making sure that the cream cheese was at room temperature.  (Which for those of you who don't know, this is a cardinal rule of cheesecake making), but somehow I still screwed it up and the final texture was that of cottage cheese.  It still tasted right, but the texture was all off.  My sister (the baking one) claimed, "Yeah, I knew you'd screw it up." (Why I love my sisters.... they tell it like it is.)  And I hate to say she was right... Baking is still not my strong suit although I will say I have evolved... with cheesecake making at the very least.

I have since learned it's a bit of a fickle thing to make and I hardly had any experience of eating it, much less making it, growing up since I acquired most of my baking skills from my mom and she wasn't that big of a fan of cheesecake.  As her and my grandma say "it's not sweet enough".  So I put my cheesecake fantasies to bed after that Christmas until I heard about this epic cheesecake from my husband's family that comes from his Great Aunt Lona.  I never met Lona, but her cheesecake recipe lives on.  Johnny's family was talking about it over Christmas one year and I asked his mom to send me the recipe as everyone was raving about it being the absolute best cheesecake that they had ever had.

I was still a bit apprehensive of another failure, so put it aside for a few months until Johnny's birthday came around.  I decided to make it as his 'birthday cake'.  I spun it as "let me make a family recipe for you", but the truth is he's quite agreeable and I'm quite convincing.  Plus I was dying to try it after hearing the Aunt Lona story and after finally getting the confidence to give cheesecake-making another try.  Perhaps this was due to my tarnished ego from my sister's comment (tear).  I made it then for the first time and it was an instant favorite.

Johnny's birthday landed on Easter that year so we had plenty of family in town to help us finish it.  (I did learn my lesson there, no more enormous desserts for two.)  After cooking a huge Easter Brunch, dinner the night my family came in and a birthday dinner for Johnny, my dad claimed that it was the best thing he ate all weekend.  My brother loved it so much he asked for it for his birthday cake and I made it for my dad again for Father's Day which was the same weekend as my brother-in-law's birthday, so made a double batch (which I would not recommend, very messy!).  He has now requested it again and also had a slice for breakfast the other day... Okay, you get the point.  Everyone loves this and you will too!

The funny thing about this recipe is Aunt Lona would not be pleased.  I screwed it up.  As in, I screwed it up but I have no interest in making it the right way because the wrong way is so good.  The recipe was a family recipe and, like the recipes that have been passed down in my family, was quite loose.  The ingredients listed 2 - 1/2 lbs of cream cheese, which I read as two AND a half pounds of cream cheese, but what it meant was two 8 oz packages of cream cheese since that's how you buy them.  I wondered why the first time I made it, it was practically overflowing out of the pan and I had to put the extras in another dish wondering if I had had the wrong size pan.  In the end it turned out great so I forgot all about the pan-size-to-filling ratio.

Later, my mother-in-law told me how the first time she made it she did it 'wrong' (meaning the same mistake that I made) which was when I then realized that I had indeed even made a mistake.  After careful thought I decided that I don't dare change my version at the risk of disappointing so many!  It turned out so delicious I decided to just modify my 'mistake' version of the recipe so that the filling would be the appropriate amount for a 9'' spring form pan.  All of this required very careful and meticulous math skills which only a spreadsheet loving lady like myself could figure out, but phew, it's done and the modified version has now been tested several times as well so rest assured, yours will not be overflowing.

As you may well know I don't make many things without a sauce to match.   And Aunt Lona sadly didn't provide one although I'm quite certain I would NOT have screwed that one up since sauce is indeed my strong suit.  I used a blueberry one I found in one of my Barefoot cookbooks and I have to say that it goes quite well although you can certainly use whatever type of sauce that you like best.  A mixed berry sauce would work well as would even just some fresh cut fruit if it is in season.  I made it this year for my dad's birthday and since my family isn't big on change especially when it comes to food, so I just kept it as is, including the blueberry sauce that I originally debuted it with.  I have included it here if you want to make it as well which I would very strongly recommend because pretty much everything is better with a sauce.

Maybe at some point I should try a taste-off, but when you have one version that is so unbelievably delicious why mess with a good thing?  I love this recipe because it is not one of those cheesecakes that are unbelievably dense.  It is quite light for cheesecake which comes from the whipped egg whites.  I'm sure the original way with much less cream cheese would be even lighter as well and maybe someday I'll find out but for now I'm sticking with my version.

Trish's Tips:  So many... First of all this is great for entertaining because you have to make it in advance. The sauce can be made ahead as well.  I figured out that the mistake I made the first time I made my cottage cheese like cheesecake was not scraping the bowl after each addition, so although it is a bit of an annoying step, it is extremely important to have a consistently creamy texture.  Otherwise the batter and bottom of the bowl hold the harder unmixed cream cheese and it chunks into the creamy stuff.  The concept of a water bath:  This is what true bakers will use.  You wrap your cheesecake pan in loads of tinfoil and then put it on a cookie sheet that you fill with water and bake it that way.  This supposedly keeps your oven moist and prevents the cheesecake from cracking although I'm not sure what it does in terms of texture as I don't do it.  I tried it before and felt so wasteful using all of that aluminum foil and it leaked anyway.  So try it if you are a perfectionist, but if you are using a sauce it covers the crack anyway.  I just put a pan of water in the oven on the shelf below to at least keep the oven moist and tell myself that this helps, although I'm not sure that it really does.  Seriously.  Room temperature.  People.  As in, leave the cream cheese out the night before or at least for 4 hours.  The eggs I will take out an hour or so before as well as the heavy cream.  If you haven't beat egg whites before you may not know what "until stiff" means.  First off your bowl must be impeccably clean and dry as anything, ANYTHING will interfere with them whipping.  When you scoop out your whisk and they stand straight up that means stiff, they first will be soft peaks which means that you will lift the whisk out and it will slightly come down on itself like a little wave.  After gently, gently folding the egg whites in at the end it's okay if it doesn't look like a totally consistent mixture, it will turn out and is better than over mixing and deflating the whites... okay, that's it.  happy baking!

soft peaks

stiff peaks

Aunt Lona's Cheesecake (almost!)

Ingredients:
Crust:
2 cups honey graham cracker crumbs (about 1 1/2 packets or about 14 grahams)
8 TBL (1 stick) melted butter (plus additional to grease pan)
2 TBL sugar
1/4 tsp salt

Cheesecake:
3 eggs
36 oz cream cheese
6 TBL sugar
4 1/2 tsp flour
1/4 tsp salt
3/4 tsp vanilla
3/4 cup heavy cream

Directions:
Before beginning make sure all ingredients are at room temperature.  Heat oven to 325.  Using a 9'' or 10'' spring form pan, lightly grease the pan with butter.  Pulse in a food processor all ingredients for the crust.  The mixture should look like wet sand.  Using your fingertips or the flat bottom of a drinking glass or measuring cup, firmly press the mixture over the bottom and up the sides of a spring form pan. (It doesn't need to come all the way to the top.)  Put the crust in the freezer while you complete the next steps.

Separate eggs, putting egg whites in the bowl of a mixer and egg yolks in a separate bowl.  Beat egg whites until stiff.  Move to a separate bowl.  (No need to clean the bowl, just scrape well.)

In the same (now empty) mixing bowl, beat cream cheese until creamy, about 30 seconds.  Scrape the sides of the bowl and the beaters well with a rubber scraper.  Gradually add sugar, flour, salt and vanilla.  Beat until smooth and creamy, 1 to 2 minutes.  Scrape the bowl and beaters well again.

While beating, add egg yolks one at a time or if they have broken drizzle in slowly.  Scrape the sides of the bowl and beaters after each yolk.  After it is well mixed, on low speed beat in heavy cream.

By hand, fold in egg whites and scrape the batter into the crust and smooth the top.  Fill a separate pan with water and put on shelf below cheesecake.  (This will emulate the 'water bath' that I have chosen not to use.)  Bake for 1 hr 15 minutes to 1 hr 30 minutes or until the edges start to brown and the center is only slightly jiggly.  Refrigerate for at least four hours but preferably overnight.

Blueberry Sauce:
Adapted from Ina Garten
This is much less fickle than the cheesecake.  Add more or less sugar depending on how sweet you like it or more or less blueberries depending on how thick you like it.  Play with it, try other berries as well.

Ingredients:
Juice of 2 oranges
1/3 cup sugar
4 half-pints of fresh blueberries or about 16 oz of frozen blueberries
grated zest of 1 small lemon
2 tsp cornstarch
1 TBL freshly grated lemon juice

Combine the orange juice, sugar and cornstarch in a medium saucepan and bring to a boil, stirring occasionally.   When the mixture is translucent and thickened, stir in the blueberries and simmer for 4 to 5 minutes, just until a few berries have burst but most are still whole.  Stir in the lemon zest and lemon juice and let cool.