Cheese Cake

Cheesecake is my all-time favourite cake, next to chocolate cake. I usually like my cheesecakes rich and pure, void of other elements like coffee (Cedele's coffee cheesecake is good though), Oreos (pine garden!), cocoa, Bailey's, blueberries etc etc. I used to love Coffee Bean's Chicago Cheesecake (it had been about $5.60 or so when I last ate it) until my mum got this recipe from her colleague and we realised that home-made cakes are definitely cheaper alternatives, which doesn't necessarily compromise on the taste (in fact it enhances the taste at times due to the generosity of certain ingredients when you bake for yourself).

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Cheese Cake

Ingredients:

3 eggs
50g butter
150g sugar
1 tbs flour
2 tsp fresh lemon juice
150g sour cream
12-15 digestive biscuits
500g Philadelphia cream cheese
1 tsp hot water

Use a circular baking tray which has a removable base.
Prepare a larger square baking tray for the water bath.

Method:

Preheat oven at 180°C.

Break 15 digestive biscuits into smaller pieces and blend them with butter. The number of digestive biscuits used depends on how thick you want the cake base to be.

Press the mixture onto the base of the circular baking tray and spread it out evenly. The mixture should not be crumbly, add more butter if it is crumbly.

Put the biscuit base into the freezer for about 5 minutes.

Combine the eggs, flour, cream cheese, sour cream, sugar, lemon juice in a mixing bowl and mix them well at medium speed. The end product should be smooth and glossy. Pour it into the circular baking tray.

Prepare water bath. Wrap the circular baking tray with at least 2 layers of cling wrap and 2 layers of aluminum foil wrap to prevent water from getting into the cake. Place the circular tray onto the square tray and pour hot water into the square tray until about half-filled.

Bake the cake at 180°C for about 45 minutes till the top part of the cake looks slightly brown.

When the cake is ready, leave it to cool (around 3h), then refrigerate for at least 5h before cutting. To assist the cutting of the cake, pour hot water over the knife for each cut.

-I used about 55g or so of butter.

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Pressing the biscuit base onto the circular tray base.


Beating the mixture into glossiness


Emptying the mixture into the circular tray, not wasting any drop~ And this is what I meant by wrapping the tray with cling wrap and aluminum foil.


Just out of the oven! It's the brownest cheesecake I've made~ Usually the top part doesn't really get brown. Probably cos of the change in oven. Yaay :).


The very first slice~

YUMM. Thought the biscuit base looked much more oily than I remembered, but the taste was goood:). And the biscuit base was firmer and less crumbly:). When you put a fork through the cake, you don't find a lot of crumbs all over your plate :).