Cheesecake has a long history. The classical Greeks already made it for daily consumption with fresh, unripened cheese. They were the first to use rennet of plant origin to curdle milk, which used to be sheep’s milk, and they preserved the cakes, which they ate with honey, in wells of cold water or coolers.
The Romans adopted the recipe and improved it by introducing eggs into the cake, making it fluffier. “The soldiers ate cheese in their daily diet but when a relevant general arrived at the camp they were served cheesecake,” explains Eva Vila, from Vila Viniteca, an expert on the subject. They added egg to the Greek cake and made it more sophisticated. Its recipe spread throughout Europe, and each area adapted it to its tastes, products, traditions and climate.
In Catalonia it is typical to make it with mata and honey, in Italy with mascarpone and in Asturias it results in quesadilla pasiega. The cottage cake is crowned with red berries from the forest in Germany from where it traveled to New York, a city that saw the birth of the now so popular cheesecake, with a crunchy cookie on the base. Which version are we left with? They are all valid, but there are basic rules that we cannot ignore. Are all cheeses good for making a cake? Do you have to beat the mixture for a long time? How long does it bake? These are the 6 mistakes you should not make when making cheesecake.
The truth is that this is a relative error because the history of cheesecake is so long, there are so many varieties and it has spread so much throughout the world, that it is made with a multitude of cheeses. It is even possible to make it with a consistent cheese, such as Manchego, “if you cut it into small pieces and add liquid cream or cream to make it fluffy,” explains Eva Vila from Vila Viniteca. If we follow the Mediterranean tradition, the cheese chosen should be the one the Greeks used, mata or another fresh and soft cheese (as it is made in Catalonia) or Ricotta (cottage cheese) or mascarpone (Italy), the favorites of our expert along with with French Brie, “with a rich buttery texture.” If we buy the Ricotta fresh instead of in terrines “we have to check that it does not have too much liquid or the result will be liquefied.” In England, cheddar cheese is usually used and in Germany, cottage cheese.
Eva Vila points out that there is more tradition of cheesecake in the north of Spain than in the south, the cheeses being more sheep’s milk in the Basque country and cow’s milk in Cantabria and Asturias, where the rather liquid quesadilla pasiega is widely made. .
A separate point is the use of cream cheese in terrine, common in Spain since the 80s. “It became fashionable to make the cake with Philadelphia cheese, which was born at the beginning of the 20th century in New York trying to imitate Camembert cheese, and today it belongs to a well-known multinational. “It was baked in the microwave because it was very fast.”
A cheesecake is not a potato and cheese cake, therefore it should not contain potatoes, but rather wheat flour or cornstarch. “If someone has an allergy to cereal flour, they can use an alternative such as chickpeas, but never potatoes,” says Eva Vila. The original recipe from Mediterranean Europe does not include nuts either, although there are those who include them.
If we want to be traditional and ensure the circulation, we must have good eggs (white and yolk), flour, butter (never – but never – lard), natural or Greek yogurt (preferable to heavy cream), sugar and zest of lemon peel. In northern Europe, the cake is drunk with whiskey to make it more caloric, and there are also those who put jam and chocolate on top to decorate it. Or the red fruits “so typical of central Europe.”
A cheesecake does not need a biscuit base, but the invasion of cheesecake has made it a common element, now almost essential. Well, if you decide to make it, you must crush Maria-type cookies in a bowl and add butter at room temperature to the dough little by little.
Although you can use a food processor, Eva Vila prefers to use manual whisks over electric ones “because we want it to be very crispy, and with electric whisks we introduce too much air,” explains the cheese expert from the gourmet store and wine bar. Barcelona Vila Viniteca. When the cookie has stuck well to the butter, it is time to stop mixing. Then it is essential to put it in the refrigerator so that it rests for a while. The quantities, 125 grams of cookies and 75 grams of butter.
As with the cookie, using electric whisks to beat the cheesecake ingredients can cause our cake to fill with air, rise, and then collapse. Since cheesecake is a flat cake, it is preferable to beat by hand “constantly,” explains Eva Vila, although in Japan they prefer to add yeast and make it rise.
If we choose to make a cake with a base dough instead of biscuit, to make the dough that will line the base of the oven mold we will put the flour in a circle (180 g) and in the center we will place the sugar (60 g), the margarine (60 g), the whole egg and a pinch of salt. “We mix it with a fork and then with our hands until it becomes a thin, soft paste,” explains Eva Vila, who gives us the recipe from her grandmother Carmen, “very classic in style, that is, very Greek.”
Following your guidelines, we will make the cake filling with three eggs, separating the yolks from the whites. We mix the yolks with the sugar (100 g) in a bowl, then add the cheese (for example 400g of Brie) and the grated lemon peel. When everything is well mixed, it is time to add the whipped egg whites and the butter or margarine. And if you want, also pansas.
If we have chosen to make a basic cookie, it will not be necessary to make a dough to place in the oven mold. In this case we will make the cheese filling to go in the oven: Eva Vila advises us to mix 3 beaten eggs with mata (400 g) and sugar (50 g) and blend them well. When they are ready, mix them with Greek yogurt and add vanilla that we have previously infused with 125 g of milk and heavy cream. Once this is done “we have to gradually add about 80 g of flour, which is very important to have passed through the sifter so that it does not form lumps.” This recipe is ideal for children’s diners.
If we have made a cheesecake with a biscuit base, the biscuit does not go into the oven. We place the cheese mixture with its ingredients in a mold (“aluminum ones work very well”) for 30 minutes at 170º, and when it is done we unmold it and add it to the cookie “with a little butter.” If we have opted for the other option, we will put the base dough in the mold, and on top of it the cheese filling. It will be in the oven for 40-45 minutes at 150º. It is very important to check if it is already done by poking it with a toothpick or a crochet needle (like Eva’s grandmother did). If it comes out clean, you’re done. “The trick works very well although you don’t have to open the oven too many times,” says Vila.
As we said at the beginning, when it comes to cakes, anything is possible. Although we have focused on the traditional recipe, and have included the coolest version of the cookie, it is also interesting to note that cheese allows us to play with multiple variations, even when molding it. This is the case of the cheesecake (with a cookie base) that Romain Fornell makes at the Le Léopard restaurant in Barcelona, ??in the form of Dalinian red lips (those by Mae West that are a sofa in the Figueras museum). The artistic recipe has a French base since its content was learned to make with Frédéric Robert, Alain Ducase’s pastry chef in the late 90s.
Essentially the cake is a sweet mixture of cream, Philadelphia cheese, sugar and beaten eggs. “With a third of each ingredient (much less sugar) an emulsion is made that is placed in the freezer to gain consistency,” explains the chef. Fornell’s cake is not baked (like tiramisu), it is placed in a lip-shaped mold, covered with red white chocolate and served with strawberries. Tasty surrealism.
