Jacques and myself received an Israeli recipe book a few years ago and in it was a very easy baked cheesecake recipe. We have since adjusted the ingredients a bit according to our own experience.
What you need for the crust
- Lotus biscuits – finely crushed
- Two egg yokes
What you need for the cake
- 750 gram of Soft White Cheese (like a cream cheese)
- 3 eggs and 2 egg whites – we take the yellow of these egg whites and use if in the crust of the cake
- 200 gram sugar
- 1tsp vanilla essence
That you need for the topping
- 3 x 200gr sour cream
- 40gr vanilla sugar
We bake our cheesecake in a rectangular foil pan and find that this amount of sour cream is enough to cover the entire cake. If you are using a different shape of baking dish you might need less.
Pre heat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
Crush the biscuits finely We normally use our food processor. The recipe calls for egg whites. We normally saved the yolks for later use but most time they ended up being discarded. One day we thought why not use the yolks instead of butter to bind the biscuits seeing as it gets baked. It worked wonderfully, so once the biscuits are crushed mix in the egg yolks. Spread it at the bottom of your baking dish and press it down firmly using the back of a spoon (or your fingers).
In a mixer put your white cheese and sugar and mix it well until the white cheese is nice and smooth. Add your egg and egg whites and mix it again thoroughly.
Add the vanilla essence.
Pour you’re filling on top of your biscuit base. To achieve a nice even bake on a cheesecake you have to bake it in a water bath.
To avoid spills and burns we normally place our baking dish into an oven pan, put it in the oven and then add hot water into the oven pan.
Bake for about 50 minutes.
Recently Jacques watched a YouTube video about baking cheesecakes the video suggested that when baking a cheese cake you should be careful not to over bake it. There should still be a slight juggle in the middle of the cake. This allows the cheesecake to have a creamy texture.
While baking mix the sour cream and vanilla sugar together.
Once the cheesecake is baked, remove it from the oven and spread the sour cream mixture evenly on the top.
Bake for another 10 minutes
Allow it too cool and store it in the fridge.
Miriam, our daughter, asked us one Shabbat when she was eating her portion how we thought some date syrup would taste on the cheesecake. We told her to try it and she loved it. So now when we serve the cheesecake we also bring the date syrup to the table for the guests to also try it.
We have also played with a few additions as an additional topping, here are some suggestions
– A very soft chocolate ganache
This you achieve by warming cream in a pan, (according to the amount you want to use on top of the cheese cake) remove it from the heat and add chocolate chips to the warm cream. The amount of chocolate that you use determines how hard or soft the ganache will be. If the chocolate chips do not melt completely, you can place the pot on the heat again for a few minutes.
I have used a ganache to cover the entire cake as a third layer and also just to use as a decoration on the top.
– We have also used blueberry pie filling as a decoration on the top.
