New York Cheesecake – all-time classic

Okay guys, we all modern human beings here, so I’ll confess – I hate cooking. In contrast, my husband is just amazing at cooking! We are family without socially imposed gender roles hehe (don’t tell my mother-in-law though). As for me, I just love all the baking things. Over the years we have divided our kitchen responsibilities – my husband cooks pasta and lasagna, I bake cakes.
So here’s my go-to cheesecake recipe.

Ingredients

Note: all ingredients should be at room temperature

For the crust:

• 100g butter
• 300g digestive biscuits
  

For the cheesecake filling:

• 130g sugar
• 600g Philadelphia cheese or any other cream-cheese
• 3 eggs
• 200ml fresh cream (20%)
• 2 tsp vanilla extract (optional)

Step 1

Important note – the butter should be soft. But I don’t recommend melting it in a pan, it’s better to keep butter in the room for 30-40 minutes beforehand.

First, ground the biscuits to the fine crumbs in a food processor or with knife.

In a medium bowl mix together buscuits and butter until you get the texture of wet sand. Use your hands!

Step 2

Heat the oven to 180C.
Poor our mixture of biscuits and butter into the 23cm springform cake tin. Firmly press it down into the bottom and up the sides, it should almost reach the top. I like to use a small pre-freezed glass cup to pack it in.

Bake for 10 minutes then set it out to cool while preparing the cheesecake filling.

Step 3

Now the fun part!

In a big bowl mix together our Philadelphia cheese with sugar until light and smooth. I recommend using fork and not hand mixer, as we only need to mix it, not beat. If you over-beat the mixture, the final cheesecake can be appeared with bubbles like cheese holes. So only fork.

Then add eggs, one by one. Mix thoroughly and don’t rush. Again, use fork. You can add vanilla extract on this step.

And lastly, add fresh cream (panna fresca in my case). Mix gently.

Pour the cheese mixture into the springform and tap the tin against your counter a couple times to bring up any air bubbles that might have been caught in there.

Step 4

Now it’s baking time.
I know in some recipes they advise to pour boiling water into roasting pan and place springform with cheesecake into it, but I have a much easer way to do it.
Just follow my 2-step-baking-process.

1. Heat oven to 200C with rack in lower third of oven. Bake cheesecake for exactly 10 minutes. Don’t overbake it!
2. Reduce oven temperature to 110C and bake for an hour and 40 minutes. It may require more time depending how liquid was your cheese mixture – you just need the center of cheesecake jiggles slightly, but not be too liquid.

The top of cheesecake shouldn’t be brown and there shouldn’t be any crackles. Also if it puff up much it’s also a sign you’re over heated your oven, so decrease the temperature.

Once it’s done, leave the cheesecake in the oven, turn off the oven, and crack the door open. Let it sit in there for an hour.

Then chill cheesecake in refrigerator for at least 8 hours – it’ll get even better!

You can serve cheesecake with raspberry sauce or (my favorite one) leave it as is.

Enjoy!