The Beginner's Guide to Cheesecake

1. Introduction: cheesecake is one of the most popular desserts out there. It's on every restaurant menu there, bakeries dedicated entirely to it. You can buy them and grocery stores. You can even have them shipped to your house. I don't know anybody that doesn't love cheesecake. I'm Amy Kimmel, and in this course I'm gonna teach you the skills you need to make a perfect cheesecake at home. Cheesecakes differ from other types of cakes. In just a few ways, I'm gonna show you how to make a cheese cake batter that's perfectly smooth also teach you how to use a water bath to prevent cracking entries cakes. And then I'll teach you when to take the cheesecake out of the oven for a perfect consistency. If you've never made cheesecakes before or you've had trouble in the past, then this is the course for you. You will learn the foundational skills by making a simple yet elegant vanilla cheesecake. Then I'll show you a few easy changes to May to get a really rich get light chocolate cheesecake. Then we're gonna take it up a notch, and I'll show you how to do a raspberry and lemon swirl, cheesecake and Finally, we'll take a look at using a different type of soft cheese ricotta. Not only we learn the recipes in this course, but you also get the techniques you need to come up with your own cheesecake creations. I love making cheesecake, and I especially love eating cheesecake. So if you're the same than don't wait, enroll now and I'll see you in the course. 2. Equipment : I wanted to take a moment to talk about some really important equipment for making nice cheesecakes. The first thing I want to talk to you about is pans. Now I like to use spring form pans. Not everybody uses these. Some people use regular cake pans. That's up to you. But I think for beginners these air a lot easier to use because you don't have to worry about flipping your cheesecake out of a pan. He's just popped off, and you can lift your cheesecake right about now. The most important thing with your spring form. You want to find ones that have a tight fitting bottom, some pans for some reason, the bottom. We'll kind of move around within the mold, and you definitely don't want that. You want them to be very snug because we're gonna bake our cheesecake in a water bath. And if it was on snug, the water could get in there and make crust soggy, and the cheesecake filling might not completely set. The next thing you need to have pan wise is a larger pan that's gonna fit your spring form . Hand something bigger, you know, depending on if you're using many is. You could fit a few into a pan to bake. Just want to make sure that there's enough space around the edges of your pan for water to come up so you don't want it to be super snug fit. I just use 1/4 sheet pan with an eight inch spring form. If you need to get 1/2 sheet pan, you don't use whatever you have. If you have a casserole dish, you know that works great, too. You don't have toe go away out of your way to find something really fancy. And if you just don't have anything on hand, you can bake it without a water bath. It is just gonna make the cheesecake a little more rustic. The next thing I have that I have found is extremely useful is I have these slow cooker liners and these air just large plastic bags that really help. You can wrap the size and bottom of the pan, and it keeps the water out. If you don't have that, you can't find those. Get the large roll of aluminum foil. You could pick this up with the grocery store. Simple. Actually, I found this in the same aisle as the aluminum foil. But you want the long roll, the shorter one. There's more likelihood that the water will get into your pan. You know, a couple other really great tools. I have a kitchen aid mixer that's really good for getting a nice, smooth cheesecake batter you don't have that you have a handheld mixer works just as well spatulas and you are set. Now let's get into the next lesson and actually make some cheesecake. 3. Cookie Crumb Crusts: you can't have a cheesecake without a crust. Well, technically, you can. But where's the fun in that? I'm gonna show you a couple different options for crusts. Typically, when you think a cheesecake, you think of a cookie crust or a graham cracker crust. So that's the 1st 1 we're gonna take a look at. And it is so simple. Literally. Graham Crackers Butter boom Done. Now you have to auctions. As far as preparing the graham crackers, check out the recipe. I have the weights and grams for the exact amount you need to make a perfect eight inch cheesecake crust, but I'm just going to show you quickly. If you don't have a food processor, you can actually put your graham crackers unless you purchase pre made crumbs. You can already purchase graham cracker crumbs, which are perfect for cheese cake or pie crust, but you can put it in a larger block bag, take a rolling pin, beat it a bunch and then roll it out and you'll get a really nice fine crumb. Or I like to throw it in the food processor and get a really nice find crumb. If you have some larger pieces in your graham cracker. Don't worry about it. It's not gonna hurt anything. You want your butter to be melted, so I'm gonna go ahead and melt this, get the graham crackers going all crummy, and come back and show you how to finish this. So to do this manually, like I said, incredibly easy. You do want to make sure that your Ziploc bag is close to go on a get crumbs everywhere, take out your anger and then just roll it, shake it up a little bit, get some stuff moved around. Make sure you're getting all the big pieces. Shake it up. Make sure I got everything you can use a food processor for. This is simple to if you don't even wanna have toe wash your food processor because you could throw away the bag after. All right. So I got a bowl. I had some things out into my bowl already melted. The butter is in, like 45 seconds. Cold butter, right There we go and just makes it up. You guys, this is so incredibly simple. What I love about this course is your gonna find out how incredibly simple cheesecake actually are to make. There's my crust. Alright, so I've got my eight inch spring form. I put a little piece of parchment in the bottom, and this is just gonna make it so easy to get the cheesecake out and off that bottom after it's done, baking is going to give you that little bit of barrier to release it from the pan. And I don't have it the whole size of the bottom of my pan. You could see because I don't There's like, a little lip in here on the inside of these pans, most of them. And so I don't want to come up that and kind of make it awkward with the crust. I'm just taking my spatula. I'm gonna push it flat into the bottom. Now, this is not a cross that comes up the sides. If you want one of those than I recommend making a much finer graham cracker crumb and you'll have to increase the amount of graham crackers that you put in the bottom. That's just gonna be a nice bottom crust. Perfect. And then I'm just going to throw this into the oven. At 3 54 10 minutes, pulled out. Let it completely cool. And then it will be ready for she's cake batter. So this isn't before original cheesecake. And I'm gonna go ahead and get the lemon cross done, and the lemon crosses the exact same thing. And that's gonna be far. Are lemon raspberry cheesecake crust? Look at this crust. All right, so this has been in for about 10 minutes. It's bound up a little bit on the edges. I'm just gonna let it cool down completely before I add my cheese cake batter. You don't want it to be hot because that it could on the evenly cook your batter. So this will cool in, like, 20 minutes or less. Really? Doesn't take a long time. Actually, it should be cool by the time you finish your cheesecake batter. So just set it aside. It'll set up firm up, and it will be ready 4. Whole Cookie Crusts: All right, you guys bring in a little crazy with our crest. Just kidding. There's nothing crazy about this. This is ridiculously simple, but it's something that you just don't see that often. But I'm gonna show you because I love this. I love the way it looks When you slice into that cheesecake in this course, you're gonna be learning how to make a chocolate cheesecake. So of course you want a chocolate crust were really familiar with the cookie crust, so I'm not gonna stray away from that. But what I'm gonna show you is just so stinking simple. I have Oreos, you know, just chocolate and vanilla sandwich cookies. And instead of crushing them up or doing anything to them at all, I am simply going to put them in the bottom of my pan side by side. And if you have to break, one should only be one. There we go. So now when you pour that she take batter over this bacon and then you cut into it. Your bottom crust is gonna be the inside off those cookies. And what's even better is that our chocolate cheesecake batter is gonna be like a slightly lighter chocolate color. And you got these dark black chocolate cookies with white filling Contrast. So awesome. You're gonna love this. I can't wait for you to try this. 5. Pate Sucree: I'm gonna teach you how to make a pat. Sucre que pasa? Cray is a French style dough, and it lends itself perfectly to cheesecakes because it's basically sticking with the cookie theme. It's like a shortbread cookie if you were to eat it by itself, but it's also really flaky and buttery and delicious. So what pairs really, really well, with the creamy, tangy filling of a cheesecake. Super simple to make Onley five ingredients, and you can actually just make it by hand. You don't need any special equipment to make this recipe now. The rest I want to show you right now is a double batch that's gonna make to crust. If you use it for a pie, it makes your bottom and top crust. If you make it for a chart or a cheesecake, it'll make you to total tarts or cheesecakes. So if you don't want to cut it, the recipe in half that's included with the course. So first things first. I've got all my ingredients ready to go. I've already got my vanilla, and with the egg, I know it looks a little weird, like, why does that look so gross? It's because the vanilla is already in there, so don't worry about it. My butter is cold right out of the fridge. I want it cold. I'm gonna explain why. Sugar? Flour? I did not safe to my flower. And the reason is because the sugar is going to sift the flour for me. So I'm just gonna take my hand. Please wash your hands. Really? Really Well, if this freaks you out or you gonna be feeding a lot of people with this, go ahead and use food Service gloves. All right, so just get that mixed up. Brother's gonna go right in. And now you can do this with a kitchen aid. You don't do this with a food processor. It's up to you. Why do I do it by hand? Because I enjoy it. I truly just enjoy making this crust by hand. So that's why I always do it by hand. And I don't think that it's completely different or that I really noticed a big difference if I use a machine to do it or an appliance to do it. But you know this has love. Whereas the kitchen aid, as much as I love my kitchen in my kitchen Aid does not give me Christos Love, so I'm just breaking up these large pieces into smaller pieces. And I did already cut up my butter just to help myself out rather than throwing whole sticks in here. And I'm gonna coat that butter in the flour and sugar, and I'm just gonna keep breaking it down and coating right. This is called the rub in method makes sense, right, cause you're rubbing the butter between your fingers to break it up. And what this is gonna dio is we're just creating as the butter melts in the oven, it's going to give off steam. And that steam is gonna help the flower the gluten structure rise up a little bit. It's gonna give it a little bit of lift. And so everywhere that you have these sheets of butter, you're gonna get layers in your dough. So that's why this gets so flaky and delicious. And of course, you've got butter and vanilla in here, so it's also going to be tasty. Now, if you were making something else say you're making ah, France Japan tart. You could use almond extract instead of vanilla if you want to, you know, just be really crazy and used this sweet crust for a savory application. You could omit the extract altogether. Sometimes I like to balance, you know, sweet and savory like if you're making a chatter and onion key, Sure. Something like that. Like a little bit of a sweet crust. I would think it's, you know, fun to kind of surprise people when they eat something that you made. So what we're looking for is to break it down enough till the largest pieces of butter are no bigger than the size of a pea, and it's almost there. Now, if you do this on the kitchen ater in a food processor with the food processor you would want pulse it very gently. Keep a good eye on it. If you over work this at this point, it will turn into a paste. So if you you know, put in the kitchen and don't walk away from it, you'll come back. It's a paste. Granted, I'm gonna tell you, you can still use it. Is it going to be the same quality? Absolutely not. Have I done that before? Absolutely. Yes. And have I still used it if I'm in a pinch and I don't have time to redo my dough and I don't have a choice. Yes, it's happened to me. It happens, But just a heads up. Keep an eye on it if you're gonna be using the food processor or a mixer. So this is looking pretty good. And you can see it starts to become a course meal and no longer looks just like you. No flour and sugar. Okay. I'm gonna start fiddling with this. This is good, right? In Goa is my egg and vanilla. Now, here's the tricky part. I say Turkey, it's really not tricky. Don't let me scare you. Okay? I was broken. My yoke, I am mixing this in is going to stick to your fingers a little bit. So don't Don't worry. That happens. That's totally normal. You did not mess it up. I am just lightly tossing this. I am not getting in there and continuing to rub it all together. I don't want to do that because I'm just going to ruin all of that beautiful layering that I just worked so hard on. So I'm just tossing this together gently and all that is that's going to do is moisten the flour with the egg and get it to come together. So once the clumps start to look bigger and you don't have any weird spots of for big spots of egg in there, Okay, so now I want to get some plastic wrap. My pats to credo is gonna go right on the plastic wrap. I know you might be thinking, Um, that's not really a Joe. That's just a big pallet, crumbly stuff. Make sure all your crumbly zehren there. Take your corners gently lift and press. I think the opposite corners lift and press anything falls out. Just put it back in and you can see everything has been hydrated with the egg, and it's sticking together. And if you're looking at your dough and you're saying it doesn't look mixed, sexy streaks of yolk and I see fits of butter Perfect. That's exactly what you want. So just format into a basic roundball. Okay, wrap it, flatten it slightly into a disc, and this is going to go on the refrigerator. I like to make my job the night before because I can let chill overnight. You want it to be cold. You don't want to try to rule it out like this because again you're going over the door. We're gonna ruin everything that you just did. So this needs to be well chilled before we roll it out So we can keep the integrity of that butter and flour structure so into the fridge discos. And then I will show you how to roll this out and make a beautiful crust when I were a lot , my patsy Cray or any tartar pie dough. Really, I like to rule it out between two sheets of plastic wrap. That way, I don't add any flower. Typically, you would dust your surface of flour and rule it out. But then you're adding flour on your drying out your dough. So I want to avoid that. The amount of butter in the dough will keep it from sticking to the classic graph. And with it on plastic graft, it'll be insanely easy to move into the pan. So I'm only using half of my brick here. If you made a double bath like I did, you could just double wrap this and freeze it. Or if you're gonna make another crossed out of it right away. Just put back in their fridge greater. So I actually want to work this a little bit and get it slightly softened. Its pretty firm from bringing in the refrigerator. Okay, because I want it round before I start rolling it out. That should be about good. It's basically round. Don't overwork it. Here we go. Have a good, heavy rolling pin you can use whatever rolling pin you have. I'm going to just give it some taps and that's gonna flatten out the tops lately so you can get it going just rocking my rolling pin back and forth to get it four flat. If your plastic crap is bunching up, you can just flatten it back out. And if you've got pieces that are kind of trying to get away those pieces, they're still really firm and cold. So there just breaking off like cold butter does. So we just want to smush it back together. We want to roll this out fairly large because because we have to cover the bottom insides of the eight inch spring form. And when I'm rolling out dough, I would always lift up before I hit the edge you don't wanna see right there with the edge really often. Lifting up you don't want to roll down over the edge is because it pinches them Donald and sends them out. And you want your crest to be really uniforms throughout. Okay, Once you get there, you can see I've got a lot of extra around the sides. That's what I'm looking for. My door was still pretty cool. We don't want it to be warm, cause then it's gonna I wanna crack as you're trying to move it. Just peel one piece of plastic wrap off, pick up two of the ends carefully, like weigh it down in the pan. You want to take a moment to attach that crest to the sides of the pan? Now you want to make sure that your crust is coming at least close to the top everywhere we don't wanna have Anywhere with the filling is gonna not be contained by crust. So at this point, if you want a really nice even edge, you can just run a paring knife around the side around the top were even slightly under the edge of the pan to get a nice even ed that's up to you. I personally like the rustic look of the crust. Just this with different edges and kind of looks a little broken. Or I just think that it gives a more interesting look to the cheesecake. So at this point, we're not gonna docket. We're not gonna blind make it. The actual feeling that we're gonna put in here is going to bake longer because it's gonna be more filling. So he crossed will have plenty of time to bake with the filling in it. So at this point, all you need to dio is put your crust into the refrigerator just to wait until you're filling is ready, and then we can fill it, put it in to take 6. Vanilla Base: So in this lesson will just take a look at a basic vanilla cheesecake batter that you can add any flavour to to create any cheesecake you could imagine. So so far I have all my ingredients ready to go. I have cream cheese. You want 16 ounces, which is to regular grocery store size blocks. There's gotta be sugar eggs, which help it set and become an actual cake. And I had sour cream to mine because it gives it a nice tang and kind of round out that sugar of it. Now this is a vanilla base so you can use vanilla extract. I'm gonna use vanilla bean paste. And if you've never used vanilla bean paste before, I buy from Olive Nation because they have pretty good prices and their products are really good. I always love their products. Um, and it's just been ill abuse. You get the flavor and you get the visual appeal of the vanilla beans, but you don't have to do any of the work actually splitting and scraping a pod yourself. So I like Teoh by that, and it's just vanilla beans suspended in a sugar and alcohol mixture. So it's a little bit thicker, but you can buy vanilla bean paste from any company you find with any type of vanilla bean you find. I like Madagascar vanilla beans, but cohesion are good as well, so if you find that so let's get started. Mixing together are based Cheesecake recipe. First up is get your cream cheese in the bowl. You wanna make sure your cream cheese is soft and at room temperature I typically take mine out and let it sit for about two hours. If I know I'm gonna be making a cheesecake. The rappers that they come in um, are not microwavable. So if you dio one to microwave that she cream cheese just a little bit doing five second increments, you don't want to melt it. If you melt it, you can't really use it, so I recommend just sitting it out a couple hours before you're ready to go. And that way it will be nice and room temperature. And so the first thing I want to do is get this beating and really smooth. Once it's broken up pretty well, Gonna add in our sugar and adding in the sugar at this stage is really going to help smooth out the cream cheese. The little Granules gonna mix together, and that's how you get your really smooth cheesecake. Base is in this step. You want to make sure that there are no lumps and that it's just nice. And if you do have, if you're seeing lumps. If your cream cheese was too cold for some reason, then you can also pass it through a sieve before you add it to your pan. If that becomes a an issue, you always want to stop and scrape your paddle. Indra Bowl. I don't want any sugar or cream cheese clumping and stack up on the paddle so this point you just want to stop and check your batter. See if there's any you'll be able to see on the sides of the bowl. If you see any white lumps of cream cheese still in there, then mix it for another 30 seconds on medium speed. We wanna make sure that there's no lumps at the stage before we add the rest of our ingredients. Good. So I am just going to start adding in my eggs. I'm sure poor them right in from the side of the bowl with this on low speed abdomen wanted a time mixed until mostly combined before you add the next one. All right, I have a lot of stuff clean to my paddle and my bull. So take a moment. Scraped skin, okay, And the this point we can add our sour cream. And if you make a truly old fashioned cheesecake with the sour cream on top, it just compliments. Atmore and vanilla bean paste. I feel like you could never add too much Phan Ilott Anything which is actually true. I've accidentally dumped Ah, lot of vanilla into things before, but, you know, add the amount that you like when it comes to vanilla. I always add measurements with my recipes, but really it's to taste. I personally love vanilla. I love the fragrance of it, so I tend to go a little heavy on Manila. But I also know that the cost of it has gone up significantly this year. So, you know, find a balance what you like. So my vanilla bean paste, it's just going to go right in, and this just gives me the really intense vanilla flavor. In addition to the vanilla beans Way go. That is our vanilla cheesecake base. Once you've completed your luxurious cheesecake batter, it's gonna go right in on top of our crust. Remember the graham cracker crust that we already Baby, this is just a really classic graham cracker across vanilla bean cheesecake, right in over top. All of that goodness scraped the bowl or really well, and I like to give this a little shake on. What that's gonna do is that there's any air bubbles hiding in there from mixing the batter . It's gonna bring them to the surface. And then that way, you're gonna have a really consistent cheesecake throughout and to as your baking it. Those bubbles are gonna come to the surface anyways and they're gonna pop, and they're gonna leave kind of little craters in the top of your cheesecake. But we're baking this for appearance were taking the proper steps to make sure that there aren't any cracks in the top. So we don't want popped bubbles either. So just give it a good shake. You could see little bubbles coming up. Just go ahead and pop those okay, that looks pretty good. This is ready to be downed a water bath and baked 7. Chocolate Cheesecake: chocolate cheesecake is really incredibly easy. I've already prepared the cheesecake base. All I'm going to do is at 1/3 of a cop of cocoa powder. How'd your favorite kind? I like her. She's, um I also like you're a deli. Um, you know, I would say if you're making a chocolate cheesecake, it's the one time that you'd want to splurge and, you know, pay for the little bit praise here of cocoa because you're really gonna That's the flavor you're gonna taste. So you wouldn't. I want it to kind of blend in like you would in a brownie or something. You really want that chocolate flavor? You want it to be one that you really really, really like. So just gonna mix. I like to beat mine fairly well to make sure that there's no clumps of cocoa. And there it can kind of be a bugger like that. So just gonna makes it really well, make sure that they all break down and dissolve into the liquids in the batter. Just check it by running some over the side of the bowl and you'll be able to see if it's really smooth or not. And it looks really good to me. Remember, we did the cookie Foundation. So that's the crust I'm using for this chocolate cheesecake. I've already laid my cookies down in the bottom, and the batter is gonna go directly in the thing you want to keep in mind that because we added a dry ingredient to the cheesecake, the cocoa to debase recipe, it's actually we'll have a higher tendency to dry out so you don't want to bake your chocolate cheesecakes as long you've ever gone to a restaurant or bakery and gotten chocolate cheesecake. And you thought, This is really dry. It's over baked, so we don't want to do that. Just bake it. It's gonna bake about 15 to 20 minutes less than the original cheesecake would take to bake , so you want to keep an eye on it. It's gonna set up a lot faster 8. Raspberry Lemon Swirl: the swirl cheesecake is really, actually pretty simple to make, and in this version I'm gonna show you how to do a raspberry swirl with a lemon cookie crust. I've already prepared the cookie crust with just some crispy lemon cookies and butter, and that's already baked. I just use Storebrand, but I I recommend getting crispy cookies. You confined soft lemon cookies and those could work. But if they're too soft and maybe have too many oils, you know, substituted fats they might not set up correctly. Or you might have to change the ratio of butter. So I always use preserves when I'm making my flavored swirled cheesecakes on. The reason is, is that it's really just easier to make, and it's. The preserves already have stabilizers in them, so it just helps set up and keep nicer in the refrigerator. It doesn't add a lot of extra liquid and make your cheesecake difficult to handle or longer to bake, so I have some high quality raspberry preserves. I always get organic just a really good brand, because you want something that the flavor is really gonna shine through. So, you know, I would recommend since kind of a small amount that you kind of splurge a little bit and get a good quality preserves. You can use any flavor you like, So I've already done my base. She's cake recipe, and I took out about 1/3 into that third of my base. I'm going to add about 1/3 of a cup of preserves, and you can, um, you know, high quality preserves. Typically, don't come seedless if the organic. So if you want to pass your preserves through a strainer to get out the seeds, that's up to you. I personally don't mind seeds and even kind of like them, but that's 10 million personal preference. So I was gonna stir this in completely. And as you can see, it's giving in a very nice pinkish color. Pinkish purple just makes it really well, and I love that you're going to see the specs of the actual raspberry in there. It's so pretty. So we're going to start out by putting the plain batter. It's the vanilla base, all of it right in. Okay, and then when you pour the raspberry over there, briefly, bring your using. You don't want to pour it all in one spot. You want to pour it overtop in kind of a ring because we don't want to completely cover up the white base. We still want some of that to show through, but I also took some of my raspberry preserves and just put them in as a black bag. I just did it this way to show you because really simple. You probably already have these storage bags at home. And I believe this is about 1/4 cup, so we don't need a whole lot. I was gonna cut the tip from that for the corner off and just do this across the top. Take your butter knife. Make sure you're catching some of that vanilla base with your finding. There's not enough for you. Want more of a contrast? You can just sort of bring it up from the bottom just like that. I'm not gonna mess with this anymore other than maybe finish off my bag there just like that. Then you have all of these variations. You've got the vanilla, the white and the purplish light purplish, and then the really deep red. And I think this is just so pretty and it's gonna be marbled throughout. So just wrap this in tinfoil or your crock pot bag, whichever you have, and bake it thes same way you would bake the base recipe. 9. Amaretto Ricotta: All of my cheesecakes that I make are based off of that simple vanilla beast recipe, and this one is no different. In this lesson. We're gonna be looking at using another type of soft cheese, which is ricotta. Now. Ricotta has a little bit more of a liquid content. That's something to keep in mind. It had a different texture on a different flavor. I still wanna have be tang and the creaminess of the cream cheese, so I'm keeping that. So this would be for my regular based recipe two blocks of cream cheese. Now I'm adding 15 ounces, which is almost the same amount, so it's almost It basically is a double batch, so our cheesecake is going to be larger for this one now. The other things that are very similar are I have five eggs, so if you doubled, it would be six. But we're also adding cornstarch. Cornstarch in a custard has setting properties. Once it gets heated, it's going Teoh help any liquids firm up and just become more become more putting like so we're putting a liquid into our cheesecake. I used the Serono Amaretto. It's my favorite, and this recipe is tailored to the use. Nice little sample bottles. So this is 50 milliliters. So we need the corn starch to soak up the liquid from this and from the ricotta toe help the cheesecake set. I still have 1.5 cups of sugar. I get a little bit of sweetness from the amoroso. So I cut out a little bit of sugar and I have the same amount of sour cream. And as always, I'm gonna add a little bit of vanilla so you can see kind of when you're trying out different recipes with the base you want to really think about. If I ask this, how is it going to effect? If I add liquid, I'm going to need something to help my cheesecake still be able to set. If you had too much liquid, it's like any other cake. It won't really baked properly. It kind of will just never really big. Or if it does, the outside will be really burnt, and it just won't be palatable. So I just want to get you to think about, you know, trying different types of cheeses. You can also try mascarpone. You could try savory soft cheeses like Bree would be really interesting with some apple, you can even, you know cheddar isn't a soft cheese. But you could even add that to distribute cheesecake with some crumble topping or something . So, you know, think about different things that you could do. Don't just think about cream cheese and adding, you know, chocolate or caramel to it. You can really play around with cheesecakes, So to get started with this, we're gonna do it the same way we do our base. We're going to cream our cream cheese and ricotta together. I've already got my cream cheese creamed really well. I just did that by itself to break it up only because the ricotta is just slightly softer. So we would make sure that our cream cheese is really soft. We don't want to add, are really soft to use to a firm cream cheese in case there still any chill in your cream cheese left because then it'll get lumpy. We don't want that. So I really worked me cream cheese and my record does going in. Typically, it should just plop out when you squeeze it. Mix those nicely and you'll notice when you're lifting your spatula up out of the bowl that , um, it's a little bit softer. So in goes the sugar. We're gonna get those creamed together before we add the eggs, just like with the regular cheesecake base, but that so I'm gonna add my corn starch, and now it's gonna give it a better chance at not clumping. Corn starch tends to have for tends to clump a lot and recipes you don't added at the correct time. So I just couldn't get that in there. And then that way to While there's all this liquid in the batter, it's going toe, hydrate it, turn it down too low and an eighth also dropping the sour cream of the point que my matters looking really smooth and beautiful at this point. So I will just add in my flavorings. It always add vanilla just a little bit. I feel like it pounds balances out every other flavor, and if you don't like amaretto, you can leave this part out. But I think it's just absolutely wonderful. So all of that's gonna go in and all you sleep. This cheesecake is not recommended to serve two kids, so please don't do that, got alcohol in it. I can smell the ricotta in the amaretto, a little bit of the vanilla coming up out of the bull. It's really an aromatic cheesecake, but it's really yummy. It's lighter because that recalled, it breaks up the cream cheese a little bit. So this is just a really nice if you're having a fancy dinner party, you know, after dinner dessert. This is one of my go to Okay, My crest is nice and firm and chilled, which is perfect for pouring the batter. And it's not gonna push out through any cracks or anything like that. So the batter is just gonna go directly indoor crust. You'll see it comes up really far, but I don't want to pour in two months. I don't want to go above where my crust is, so this is perfect right there, and this is going to go into the water bath, and this was gonna take longer to bake definitely over an hour. So you want to keep an eye on it? Typically, I would say my takes about 70 minutes to bake 10. Baking Prep: Now that you've got your batter mixed, it's in the pan. It's ready to go. We've got to get our water bath ready. This is a really vital part of the baking process. If you wanna bake this without a water bath, the cheesecake itself is going to rise up a lot. The top is going to crack. There's gonna be more airy like a souffle than an actual kind of more dense, smooth cheesecake. So we're looking more for, like, custard and the purpose of the water bath two is also the water around. The cheesecake is going to insulate the cheesecake water can Onley get so high in temperature once it hits boiling point, so the outside of our pan will never go above that temperature, and it's going to give it a more even bake. It's gonna prevent intense heat from pushing all the steam out and making it rise and giving us that souffle. It's just insulating it, keeping it at a very controlled temperature. So the egg has time Teoh activate and coagulate and set the cheesecake, but not really added volume to it. So that's really what we're looking for. No, I had mentioned before I have slow cooker liners and these were great. I'm gonna show you how to do both. In case you don't have access to those, I have the big roll of aluminum foil. You're gonna want a fairly large fees because we want this to Okay, it's going to completely increase this so you don't want to wrap it into the pan. You want to wrap it out, and you want to do this very carefully also so that you're not tearing the aluminum foil anywhere. We really don't want water to get in and ruin our beautiful cheesecake that we just spent time. If you have aluminum foil, you would just put this in your larger pan and put your water in there and it's ready to bake. Now. My favorite thing, because this is like a foolproof method. Teoh not get water in your cheesecake. These giant crockpot bags removable liners that you could talk down in your crock pot are perfect for any size cheesecake, basically, So it's gonna open it up that my cheese cake down in there, I want to pull this tot you're not leaving any space right? And just gathering it so that it's right under the edge of the pan, gathered all that excess up. I want to twist and tuck. Uh, it's just really nice. And you can even do this over top of the aluminum foil if you're really want that insurance that no water is going to get into your cheesecake. But personally, I just use this method. This is really fantastic, and you could just get, um, a box. This is pretty inexpensive for me. For me, it's a good investment because she's cakes are the in greens that you put into them. Cream cheese is more expensive, so I want to spend a little bit more to ensure that my cheesecake is gonna come out really nice. And the way I wanted to make sure you're a pan for your water bath is large enough that their space the whole way around I have just a little gap on the side. But this is plenty. And then we want Teoh pour water into this. I recommend getting this since the Evan pulling the rack out of your oven, partially not so much literal. Tip out depending on your oven, said this on the edge, and then pour your water into it. You want your water to be boiling and you wanted to come about 2/3 of the way up the side of the pan. 11. Water Bath: so your oven's preheated at 325 degrees Fahrenheit. I have the rack out in my oven enough so that I can access the cheesecake. I haven't sitting in there and then you want to take your hot water. I recommend a Pam has a little lip on it. If you have that and we're just going Teoh, pour that water. That's right in. Try really hard not to get it into your cheesecake. You know, sometimes it happens, but we definitely don't want that. And then just push that right into the oven and it's ready to go. 12. Checking for Doneness: Okay, so this cheesecake has been in for an hour, and what we're looking for when testing or checking to see if it's done is when you tapped the side of the pan. The cheesecake itself is going to tickle. You want to be looking right here in the center. You can tell by the texture. The center still looks a little bit wet, however, if it doesn't look like there's liquid moving underneath. If it's kind of jiggling the same amount as the rest of the cheesecake, then it's done. If you tap it and the surface kind of looks like when you drop a rock in water and it ripples, it's not done yet. So we're looking. It's still gonna jiggle no matter what the custard. But you just don't want it to look like there's liquid under the surface. So this is ready. Teoh, come out when removing the cheesecake. I like Teoh Teik very carefully with the tip. Squeeze really hard together and lift straight up, out and on top of your stove. Could you try and move everything out together? Sometimes you can slash water in your cheesecake, and then you can move this to the sink and jump it out 13. Cooling: I want to get your cheesecake out of heaven and it's on the counter or on top of the oven on a safe, flat surface. You want to take a thin bladed knife like a paring knife. Not about a knife, because it's really it's a thick blade, so it's going to kind of mess your cheesecake up a little bit. I ran under hot water and before the schools, I want to just very carefully detach the sides of my cheese cake from the pan. And if you start to get cheesecake on your knife, brings it under hot water again and come back and finish. And I start by releasing the very top edge with my blade flat against the side and then slowly work my way down the side of the pan until I get to the bottom and it's all detached and you want to do this before it cools. What that's going to do is when it goes into the refrigerator and starts to cool, the cheesecake is gonna shrink Now, As you can see, it's a tache. The size of the pants off the cheesecake starts to shrink. We're gonna get big cracks in it, and we don't want that so detached the size from the pan. Put it in the refrigerator and I recommend letting it chill overnight, and then you can finish removing it from the pan. 14. Whipped Cream: whipped cream is such a good topping for almost every desert. Once you cut a slice and played it, it just looks so nice dollop or piped on top or next to it on the plate. So I want to show you my quick whipped cream or crime. Gentilly. The key to whipped cream is you want to make it fresh. If you make it, I have time and put in the refrigerator. It's going to separate, ate a liquid in it at the bottom, and that's not really desirable. You can re Whippet at that point, but that kind of defeats the purpose. I think so. I just like to make it fresh. When I'm ready to plate, you could make it in small amounts. Large amounts. You can determine how much sugar you want to do. You like it released. Will you do like it? Last sweet. I like my little bit sweeter if you have good quality heavy cream and you really just want the flavor of that dairy to shine through, use less sugar. So I have about a cup of whipped cream in my bowl, which is more than enough to serve up a whole desert some powdered sugar and that powdered sugar is sifted. It's really important we don't want any lumps, and you can choose whatever flavoring you want. If you have, um, vanilla bean paste like I have a mounting that right here you can have that in. You can add vanilla extract, almond extract. You can add a little bit of coffee or espresso powder. You can add juice. You can add all different kinds of flavors to this, really Just keep them in smaller amounts. But you play around with Europe cream. If you have ah, something orange or Citrus, and you wanna add zest to this that would work great to. So we're just going to whip it to firm peaks. - I typically just do mine on medium speed. That works just fine. You're making whipped cream. You want to kind of stay with it, because if you over whip with cream, you're gonna get butter and we don't wanna put butter on our deserts. So right now, this isn't a really soft stage, and I just stopped it to show you you can, um, start toe, watch it and see the different stages. This is a ribbon stage and really, you can use it for plating at this stage, or you can use it at medium peaks or stiff peaks. It's up to you to preference, and it depends on what you're serving it with. Stiff peaks is what I use because it's perfect for piping, and I typically like the pipe moment cream. You can use medium peak for a perfect dollop and then soft peak you can use for plating, such as decorating the plate. Do you make sure to stop and check it again? We don't want it over with us. Like I said, it becomes gritty and then we start to get to butter. So that's in about a medium peak because my peak is falling over. So we're really, really close. I like to whip it on medium speed. To that way, I don't miss that point when it turns into stiff peaks, so it has gotten there. This is really firm, and you'll be able to tell the difference when the tracks in the whipped cream stay longer , hold their shape and it starts to pull away from the bowl as it's mixing. But this is really firm yet still smooth and perfect, and exactly what I'm looking for 15. Removing the Pan: remember when we ran the knife around the edge of the pan after we took it over the oven? That also really helps with getting the cheesecake out of the pan before you're ready to serve. Now sometimes can it. I just don't feel like taking it out. So I'll just take the outside rein and leave it on the bottom of the removable bottom pan and just serve it like that. But I'm gonna show you how to get the whole cheesecake out and onto a serving platter. So you're gonna need a knife, something sharp or, you know, a flat spatula. I have something to heat. You can also use just a burner on your stove. If that's easier to be very, very careful with anything using heat, please don't burn yourself and your means B's apartment. So if you removed or unattached all the edges of the cheesecake, the ring should pop right off and leave you with really nice sites like this. So mine came right out, but I still have this bottom one here that I need to get off. So got to heat it because the butter and the cross has set up and It's sticking with pan. So equipment over. Okay, Don't worry. Your cheesecake is firm in African Handle this, okay? And then we can test it by lifting up a little bit with the edge of the paring knife on the edge of the pan. And this came right off, and you could see I had Parchman in there as well. Seven will just give this a nice flip back. Very carefully. Remove this parchment paper. There you go. She's kick is out of penn. 16. Serving: we've made it to the end, and you finally get to see what it looks like inside the cheesecakes in how to plate them. So when I cut a slice of cheesecake, cheesecake in and of itself is gonna stick to your knife. So my trick is to have a cup of really hot water tall enough for your cutting knife to fit all the way down it down in for the entire blade to fit in. Now, if your water heater does not get your water hot enough, you want Teoh. Heat your water up on the stove. We want to really hot. If any cream cheese or cheesecake tries to stick. Hopefully it's hot enough to just melt it off, and we're not gonna have any stick, and we'll get a really nice clean cut. I already have the whipped cream ready to go. I put it in a piping bag, which is just a regular piping tip that's really optional. You could just dollop whipped cream on, and I have a nice little plate carnival class, which is my favorite glass, and you need a clean kitchen towel. Don't use a dirty kitchen values a clean kitchen Tom. And of course, your cheesecake. The first thing we're gonna do my knife has been sitting in here for about a minute. Take the knife out, wipe the water off and quickly finding the center of my cheesecake. Make my first cut, making sure to go all the way to the bottom through the cross. And you can see there's a little bit of stick Ege. So we're just gonna put that back into her hot water and let it melt off. But you can also see a game. You're really nice cleaning cut, Okay. And then wipe off whatever is left on the knife. Determine how big you want your slice to be. You go right there and always pull straight outs. When you're pulling the knife out, you don't want to pull straight up or anything. It's gonna give it a weird cut. Clean off my knife one more time. You could see the slices already pulling away from everything. So it's completely detached. It's gonna go right on my plate. There we go. It's such a nice clean cut. You can see the definition of the crust and the cheese cake. It didn't catch anywhere. It just looks really smooth. So that's what I'm looking for. And then I just have this little stays here. I'm going to pipe some whipped cream just like that. And there we go. Play the cheesecake. Now you can pipe next to it, but you can also pipe. Sometimes I like to pipe just a border. Or you can pipe a classic dollar bright on top. Whatever. Or you could do it like this if you like lots of whipped greedy, that's up to you. But that is how you cut the perfect Seiss of cheesecake.