Who does not love cheesecake?

I think cheesecake is one of the greatest inventions on earth, lol.

I love cheesecake and been buying this from one cakery to another just to find out which one is the best. Basically I love strawberry cheese cake, chocolate cheese cake and oreo cheesecake.

One day, it slipped in my mind to make the home-made cheesecake in my kitchen. I thought it was one difficult recipe with strange name of ingredients till I google and found out some recipes that were actually using easy to find ingredients-but somehow it is expensive.

Namely ‘cream cheese’, when I first made cheese cake back on October 2010, the price was 24k and now in August 2011 is already 28k for only 250grams. As you know referring to the name, this cake needs lots of cream cheese unless you want to make the small one. I have tried the international brand of cream cheese till I decided just to use the domestic brand which tastes okay. It’s just slightly different with the international one.

I guess I have tried making cheese cakes with different recipes and techniques to finally find one great recipe according to me and never fail. This is a bit different with cheese cake found mostly in Jakarta cakery except for one restaurant-franchise from Malaysia. I love this classic cheese cake recipe. Yummmm *and I’m craving in the afternoon of Ramadan*

You can please check the link for the recipe and below you can see the techniques you must follow *it’s a must!*

1. Make sure all the ingredients are in room temperature. Any cold items are not allowed to be used.
2. Use powder sugar. If you don’t have one, just use the food processor to grind your granulated sugar.
3. The water-bath (au bain marie) technique requires this to be in the oven for more than an hour. I’ve tried the non-water bath techniques and even the non baking cheesecake which taste not good enough.
4. This cake doesn’t use any baking powder so don’t expect the cake is getting bigger than it is. As long as it doesn’t shrink and crack, then you have successfully made it.
5. Beat the eggs in a different bowl before you mix it with other ingredients to make the cake is higher than if you don’t beat it separately.
6. Always use the lemon zest and lemon juice (just a bit for a great balance of the cake)
7. Make sure the bottom of the pan is covered with heavy duty aluminum foil in order to avoid any leakages and the water goes inside the pan. I’d prefer put another bigger pan below before putting in water bath *have failed many times because of this*
8. Follow the instruction during the baking, when the time comes up, check if it ‘s done (bake well), if not, bake it another 10 minutes and check every 10 minutes if it requires more time and also make sure that the water is available in the water bath. You can add more hot water when it’s dry *remember, hot water not cold one, to avoid any temperature differences that will cause the cake to fail*.
9. At the beginning, when we preheat the oven, also put the water bath inside so that it reaches the same temperature with the oven.
10. Those who says that we have to put the cake in the oven after finish baking for hours before taking it out is just non-sense for me. Perhaps one hour to let it warm in the oven is just fine, then take it out, let it cool completely and put in the fridge. Best to be served overnight.
11. Make sure to beat the ingredients just for them to be incorporated. Don’t over beat.

I guarantee once you can make cheese cake by your own, no more buying it in those expensive places. You’ll enjoy the tiredness of making it and the happiness when you eat it the day after. Well you can eat it directly after it cools or even when it’s still hot (I tried once) but the taste is not that good. It doesn’t blend well as what we expect it to be.

I know there are lots of techniques to be followed but trust me, been there-done that with the failure making one great cheesecake.

I’ll try to remember if I’ve missed any techniques to be shared with you.

Btw the link of the recipe requires the sugar amount that is too sweet according to me and I have adjusted it to my like-I don’t like something that’s sugary. I guess this amount of sugar can override the sourness of the cheese. Since I use domestic brand cream cheese, instead of using the amount written in the recipe, I add some more. Well, you can play with the recipe as you like but after reading and comparing here and there, you should note that for the amount of 225-250grams of cream cheese requires one egg. Eggs are needed to tie the ingredients and small amount of flour in the recipe is used to avoid any cracking.

Some says that we shouldn’t leave the batter too long in the room temperature before putting it in the oven and I guess with those techniques above, it should be just fine. It’s not a big problem.

Okay then, have a go and try to make this delicious cake in your kitchen and please share me how it goes,:)

Good luck.

Update :
I believe that cream cheese now is more expensive than 3 years ago but baking it in your kitchen is such a pleasure one can feel.

My favorite cheesecake's picture