junior's cheesecake

I've decided I'm not any good at making cheesecake. The cake usually comes out in one piece and quite edible but its just not like a slice of eileen's or brooklyn diner's, which I can shovel down my throat in less than a minute. Although I'm not a big fan of cheesecake, I will continue to (attempt) baking them since it happens to be one of my husband's (and my mother-in-law's) favorite desserts.

A couple of years ago, a co-worker of mine (at the time) had made a ginormous cheesecake for passover, which (luckily for us) resulted in a nice portion of leftovers. She generously brought it into the office to share with us. It was the most amazing homemade cheesecake I've ever had. Like I had previously mentioned, I'm not a big fan of cheesecake but I had a second helpful nonetheless. So I had to pry and ask her to share the recipe. She nonchalantly says "its one from the ny times". Quickly, I ran to my seat and went straight to the nytimes website. After a few minutes, I've discovered that the nytimes has published quite a few cheesecake recipes. Disheartened, I gave up and turned to google, where I ended up settling for a junior's cheesecake recipe adapted by molly o'neil from New York Cookbook.

Back to the drawing board... or google in my case in search for yet another cheesecake recipe!

junior's cheesecake
adapted from new york cookbook

ingredients

• 1/2 cup graham cracker crumbs 
• 2 tablespoons butter, melted
• 3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar
• 3 tablespoons sifted cornstarch
• 30 ounces (3 3/4 large packages) cream cheese, softened
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup heavy (whipping) cream
• 3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 teaspoon lemon extract

directions

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Generously butter the bottom and sides of an 9-inch springform pan. 
2. Mix graham cracker crumbs with butter. Press graham cracker crumb mixture into the bottom of prepared pan and refrigerate.
3. In a large bowl, combine the sugar and the cornstarch. Beat in the cream cheese. Beat in the egg. Slowly drizzle in the heavy cream, beating constantly. Add the vanilla, lemon extract and stir well.
4. Pour the mixture into the prepared pan. Bake until the top is golden, 40 to 45 minutes. Cool in the pan on a wire rack for 3 hours. 

Final notes: Next time I would try to cover it with some foil to prevent it from browning on top and I would also add more lemon extract or even lemon zest.