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
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Generously butter the bottom and sides of an 9-inch springform pan.
- Mix graham cracker crumbs with butter. Press graham cracker crumb mixture into the bottom of prepared pan and refrigerate.
- 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.
- 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.
the best cheesecakes i have had were in germany. moist & not too sweet. their secret ingredient (and staple that can't be easily found here) is quark (or curd cheese).
ReplyDeleteif you are looking for rich & decadent, i have a bailey's cheese cake.
otherwise, one by emeril that uses ricotta, cream cheese and lemon seem to be a hit with my guests.
ren-yi,
ReplyDeletethat sounds so good. who would have known... curd cheese? I will have to hunt down a recipe and some curd cheese to try that out!
i wouldn't mind giving emeril's a try too! thanks for the tip!