Inside Out Cheesecake, or, Thick-Crust, Perfect Cheesecake

If you're just tuning in, the Cheesecake Saga is an ongoing monthly project here on the blog, and in my kitchen. When I emptied out Eleanor's recipe box to sort through her recipes, it became immediately apparent that she had over a dozen recipes for plain cheesecake.

Thinking that was far too many recipes for plain boring cheesecake, I did some research and found that, unanimously, those who knew Eleanor best told me that cheesecake was her favourite dessert. In honour of Eleanor's favourites (and to avoid getting stuck making a dozen cheesecakes at the end of the Recipe Box Project), I decided I'd make one cheesecake each month. This cheesecake is number 8, and so far we've had some major flops as well as a few resounding successes.

I know you wouldn't think it based on the recipes I post here, but we honestly don't eat that many sweets in this house. I make a lot of desserts, but they usually go to friends or work or straight into the freezer after I have enough tastes to write a post about them. But the cheesecakes? Well, you can't freeze a cheesecake, you can't cut a cheesecake recipe in half (though that hasn't stopped me from trying), and try as you might, you can't preserve a cheesecake for more than a week in the fridge.

So what you need is a cheesecake test panel. Friends (like the Golden Girls), co-workers, or really anyone you can find who is willing to eat a slice of cheesecake as often as you make them. Lately all of mine have been going into work with Judson, who has an easier commute (and hungrier coworkers) than I do. This has an unexpected bonus in that they've tasted almost all of the cheesecakes I've made lately, so not only do they know which ones are intrinsically delicious, but they've also made up a scale for the best ones. (I don't think any of them would tell me if one of them was terrible, but I do enjoy the 'BEST ONE YET!' commentary I occasionally get).

Let's be honest. You could bake this crust up by itself and i'd happily eat it.

Over the last few months I've been afraid that I was so burned out on cheesecakes that I wouldn't be able to enjoy one more single slice for the rest of my life... but then this one came along, and I was devastated that I hadn't saved more than one slice for myself. You have to make this cheesecake. Even if you're on the fence about cheesecake in general, this will change your mind. The filling is custardy and sweet without being overly heavy, and the extra thick crust (on the top AND bottom!) makes it more like a crumble than a cheesecake. Plus, the inclusion of crushed pecans in the crust makes it more complex than just a simple graham cracker number, and the crispness perfectly complements the with the soft, melt-in-your-mouth filling. If you've been waiting for a cheesecake to make from this saga, this is it. It's even overshadowed my previous favourite, the slightly easier but much less interesting July cheesecake. Plus, the top crust covers up any bubbles or cracks that the top of your cheesecake acquires in the baking/cooling process, so it even looks nice if you take it somewhere (and, let's be real, you're not going to eat that entire thing yourself!).

There's a couple of substitutions included in the recipe as written below, because I don't think pot cheese still exists (though I would love to try to strain some cheese through a sieve), and I can't find zweiback anywhere in this country (and when I asked, I got crazy looks at the regular grocery store AND the Polish grocery store).

You can find the first seven (!) cheesecakes in the Index here, and you can find my very favourite one here.

The verdict:

5 spoons out of five. If you've been waiting for a foolproof, delicious, unique cheesecake to make from this project, bake this one, stat. Eleanor wouldn't steer you wrong, and neither, obviously, would I.

The recipe:

Thick-Crust, Perfect Cheesecake

the directions:
crust:

Beat egg white until stiff and set aside.
Whiz cookie crumbs in the food processor until mostly smooth.
Add nuts and pulse twice more just until broken up.
In a medium bowl, mix cookie/nut mixture with sugar and melted butter.
Separate half of the crust mixture and reserve for the upper crust.
To the remaining half, add the beaten egg white and spread in the bottom of a springform pan.

filling:

Preheat oven to 176C/350F.
Beat egg whites until very stiff.
Set aside and beat all other ingredients until very smooth.
Add egg whites and fold together gently (mixture will be very bubbly and airy).
Pour into prepared crust, sprinkle the other half of the crust mixture over the filling gently (some will sink, so just sprinkle evenly and gently).
Bake 45 minutes until the middle is just set, then turn off oven, leave the door cracked and allow to cool for 60 minutes in the oven.

the ingredients:
the crust:

1 ½ c rich tea or zwieback crumbs
½ c pecans, coarsely chopped
½ c sugar
½ c butter, melted
1 egg white

 

the filling:

1 ½ c sugar
16 oz mascarpone
16 oz cream cheese
1 c heavy cream
2 ½ tbsp flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla
7 eggs, separated

Treasure Cake

When I was a kid, we lived in Eleanor's house for awhile after my mom inherited it. I had my mom's old room, there were palm trees in the front yard, a grapefruit tree in the backyard, and a Spanish tile roof that sounded just amazing during thunderstorms. (There was also green shag carpet which devastated me when my parents removed it). The palm trees dropped tiny nuts that I loved to collect and pretend were pirate money, because clearly it took very little to amuse me. I'd collect giant buckets of them and bury them in our yard or in the playground across the street, and I thought they were awesome. I guess pirates and buried treasure are always awesome, but there's something especially awesome about them when you live in Florida where real pirates made their living and real pirate gold is still being found (at least according to every old man with a metal detector walking the beach after every tropical storm).

So obviously I was excited when I found this recipe for Treasure Cake. Surely it would have something to do with pirates, right? Even Judson got excited that it would be like a king cake and we'd get to bury toys in it. Alas, I thought, when I realised that the 'treasure' was actually just chocolate chips.

We've discussed, ad nauseum, how I, of the world's largest sweet tooth, somehow managed to marry a man who is completely indifferent to the wonders of desserts. Clearly I come by this sweet tooth legitimately, as there's nothing Eleanor loved as much as desserts...

...Which is why I was surprised to find this recipe in the box. I mean, it's a dessert, but it's kind of on the low-end of awesome desserts, since there's no frosting and barely any chocolate (or so I thought). Let not this description deceive you: this cake is a treasure

Hear me out on the list of attributes:

• It's frosting-free, which means you don't have to plan ahead in order to take it to an event (or even just to have it with dinner), because there's no cooling time to accommodate frosting it.

• This also means there are fewer dishes to wash.

• And it's significantly lower in sugar and fat than a frosted cake would be.

• Plus, maybe it's the beaten eggs or the relatively high amount of baking powder, but this cake rises in the oven to more than twice its original size... which means it somehow strikes the perfect balance between fluffy and cakey.

• And... if it's your birthday or a day for treating yourself, this cake makes a killer breakfast paired with a dark black cup of coffee.

• And last, it's stupid that it's taken me this long to realise it, so I'll just come out and say it: I'll take chocolate chips over chocolate cake any day of the week. Something about melting chocolate and then stirring it into the batter makes it lose that perfect chocolatey flavour, whereas sprinkling chocolate chips throughout a thick, buttery batter like this one leaves you with pockets of decadent melted chocolate, just bitter enough to counteract the sweetness of the cake.

Basically, if you don't like sweets, this is totally the dessert for you. And if you DO like sweets, then this is the kind of thing to make for a party where you don't know the audience very well and you don't want to alarm them by bringing something too heavy, decadent, or sweet (like the time I showed up to a party of grown-ups who didn't like sweet things with a giant platter of baked s'mores, which no one touched and I had to take home and eat all by myself, more's the pity).

The verdict:

5 spoons out of five. If you're going through a cooking funk like I have been the last few days, this is the perfect, easiest recipe to get you out of it. It's simple, delicious, and versatile, plus, the recipe divides easily into two layers, or you can leave it all in one pan for an insanely high-rise cake. It's definitely best on the first day, but it last 3 days before getting dry.

The recipe:

Treasure Cake

the directions:

Preheat oven to 176C/350F.
Grease 2 round layer cake pans (or one, if you want your cake high like mine).
Cream butter, sugar, and vanilla thoroughly.
Add eggs and beat until light and fluffy.
Mix and sift together flour, baking powder, and salt.
Add to egg mixture, alternating with milk.
Beat until smooth and well-blended.
Mix in the chocolate chips with the last of the flour.
Pour into cake pan(s) and bake 30 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in the middle comes out clean.

the ingredients:

1/3 c butter
¾ c sugar
1 tsp vanilla
2 eggs, well beaten
2 ¼ c flour, sifted
3 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
2/3 c milk
¾ c chocolate chips (or 1 c if that's how you roll)

Chocolate-Peanut Crinkles & Oatmeal-Chocolate Chippers

Not all cooking disasters are spectacular, call-the-fire-department, buy yourself a new oven kinds of disasters. Some are weird, some are just boring, and then there are the ones like these cookies, which taste fab, but can't be considered anything but a miserable failure because... well, take a look at them.

These are a riff on the lemon-glazed cookies from earlier this summer, themselves a riff on the 'basic drop cookie' recipe I posted all the way back in July. But while those cookies were perfectly delicate and crumbly, rounded and fluffy and moist and delicious, these ones were... not so much. Oh, don't get me wrong: the texture and flavour of the oatmeal cookies was so good I ate three (or what would have been three) in the time it took me to get them off of the cookie sheet, but, as you can see, they melted into one cohesive unit and didn't exactly look appealing after they were done.

I made these cookies in two batches: first the oatmeal and then the chocolate, so I assumed that the oatmeal disaster was (somehow) going to be unique to that batch and that the other one would come out just fine. It did not, and I was thoroughly disappointed.

Here are all the things I think could potentially have gone wrong:

• I overmixed the butter/sugar. My butter was really cold, so it didn't 'cream' very well... my solution was just to keep on mixing it, so by the time I added the dry ingredients, the mixture was pretty runny. Maybe that was part of the problem?

• I used goat butter. Judson is convinced that goat butter can't be used for any of the same tasks as standard butter, but I convinced him to let me buy it because I wanted to see if it tasted any different. It doesn't taste any different, but maybe the fat/sugar content of it is enough of a change to mess with the cookie's texture?

• I just messed up an ingredient, plain and simple. I was halving both of these recipes at the same time, so it's completely possible I just screwed up a quantity without realising it (though that wouldn't explain why both recipes turned out iffy).

That said, I can't bring myself to give them less than 2 spoons because they were just so damn tasty. If you (like me, and like all reasonable people) dislike peanut butter cookies because they're always too dry, crumbly, and lacking in chocolate (except for these amazing ones!), then try these Chocolate-Peanut Crinkles. They've got the flavour of a Reese's cup and the perfect amount of saltiness to cut through the otherwise super-sweet and chocolate cookie dough. They're like a grown-up peanut butter cookie-- rich with the flavour of bitter dark chocolate and a tender crispness that falls apart in your mouth.

As for the oatmeal cookies... well, I think it's time to get one thing straight. On this site, we will never make oatmeal cookies with raisins.* There's nothing worse than biting into what you think is a chocolate chip cookie, only to have to endure a raisin. Oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, though, are a food of the gods (along with frosting, cheese, oysters, and most wines), and these were no exception. Super thin and delicate without being crunchy or dry, they go perfectly with a cup of coffee or tea, or even a bedtime hot chocolate. While I can't say they'll be my go-to recipe due to the spectacular failure of their shape, I do think I'll make them again... just not when I'm planning to take them anywhere.

*Unless I find a recipe for oatmeal raisin cookies in the box, in which case I will have to make them, but I will only eat one and it will be begrudgingly.

The verdict:

2 spoons out of five. Based on flavour alone, these get 4 spoons for sure. But since I can't ignore the fact that they melted into one solid cookie in the oven, I'm docking two spoons.

The recipe:

Chocolate-Peanut Crinkles

the directions:

Preheat oven to 190C/375F and grease a cookie sheet.
Cream together sugars, butter, shortening, egg, and vanilla until light and fluffy.
Do not overmix.
Add chocolate, peanuts, flour and baking soda.
Blend well.
Drop from a teaspoon 2 inches apart onto prepared cookie sheet.
Bake 8-10 minutes.
Let stand 30 seconds before removing from cookie sheet onto cooling rack.

Yields 2 dozen cookies.

the ingredients:

½ c sugar
¼ c brown sugar
¼ c butter
¼ c shortening
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1 ½ oz unsweetened chocolate, melted and cooled
½ c salted peanuts, chopped roughly
1 c flour
½ tsp baking soda

---

The recipe:

Oatmeal-Chocolate Chippers

the directions:

Preheat oven to 190C/375F and grease a cookie sheet.
Cream together sugars, butter, shortening, egg, vanilla and milk until light and fluffy.
Do not overmix.
Add flour, baking soda, chocolate chips, oats, and walnuts.
Blend well.
Drop from a teaspoon 2 inches apart onto prepared cookie sheet.
Bake 8-10 minutes.
Let stand 30 seconds before removing from cookie sheet onto cooling rack.

Yields 2 dozen cookies.

the ingredients:

½ c sugar
¼ c brown sugar
¼ c butter
¼ c shortening
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
2 tbsp milk
1 c flour
½ tsp baking soda
1 c chocolate chips
1 c quick-cooking oats
½ c walnuts, chopped