Eight Years Without Cheesecake

With Valentine’s Day just behind us, and everyone being overdosed on chocolate and rich desserts, the last thing you may want to be reading about may be the decadence that is NY-style cheesecake.

Lemon and Orange Cheesecake with Shortbread Crust

Unless you are like me, that is, and have gone easy on the chocolate – or, unless you are like me, and the thought of proper, creamy, tender and oh-so-good real New York-style cheesecake makes all else not matter.  I am (last I checked) myself, and therefore I believe that cheesecake is always in time, occasion and season.  So if you are a fellow Cheesecake-worshipper, keep reading.  On second thought, even if you are an infidel among us Cheesecake-believers, you should stay and hear the gospel as well.

So what about the eight-year deprivation, you ask?  Well, as it happens, I adore cheesecake.  In fact, I ate it on any occasion that called for dessert when it was available, back when I lived in the USA, the holy land of cheesecakes.  You may not know it, but Americans actually have a restaurant chain called “The Cheesecake Factory”.  I am not kidding!  And as far as I am concerned, it has to be American cheesecake.  No, I am not interested in the ricotta cakes, or the Swedish traditional ostkaka, give me the tall, creamy but definitively non-gloopy beauty that is NY-style cheesecake any, any day of the week.

Except that I have not lived in USA since 2004.  That is… 8 years, people!  And in that time, between Sweden and UK, I have not had any cheesecake, because I refuse to have any that is less than what cheesecake, in my mind, should be.  And you know what?  Eight years is simply too long to go without cheesecake!

So, having gotten thoroughly cheesecake-frustrated, I have decided that I’ve had it, and I think I’ve completely talked T’s head off about the real cheesecake that I so desired, and in the end I ended up promising him to make the real thing myself.  Because, if you want something done right, you bloody well should.

There is a lot of talk, both in word-of-mouth and on the net and even in cookbooks about how difficult it is to make a cheesecake.  Some people say you have to cook it wrapped in foil on a water bath (really, wtf people, haven’t you heard of the invention of the this thing called an oven thermostat?!  It’s been around for several decades!*), and nearly all preach about how hard it is to mix, and how it will get air bubbles and oh god oh god crack and burn and explode and collapse and… guess what?  After reading a bunch of different sources and then making the actual cheesecake (I write this in a cheesecake-satiated glow after eight years of deprivation!), I came to the conclusion that it is all a bunch of over-hyped hoopla.  Similar, in some ways, to the way people describe sourdough bread-baking – anything to preserve the elitism and scare newbie bakers away from their holy grail.  So, pfft at them!  Making a cheesecake is really really easy.  You need to think about it, and there are some instructions you really ought to follow and not try to improvise, and you need to chill it overnight – but that’s really that!

And if the top cracks a tiny bit – who cares?  If you are serving it to guests, it should get topped with something anyway (melted, chocolate, caramel sauce, good tangy preserves or fresh berries – whatever takes your fancy!), and if you are just cutting a greedy slice to share over the morning coffee, then you can cut along the cracks.  Or simply ignore them.

So, if I have managed to impress upon you that to prepare this dessert royalty you really do not need much effort, what do you need?  Well… first of all, you need time.  Cheesecake must be allowed to set overnight in the refrigerator.  Which means you need to bake it the day before you are going to serve it (or several days – it keeps easily over a week in the fridge if wrapped properly!).

What else do you need?  Ok, here we go:

• An oven.  One of those modern ones with a thermostat knob.
• A mixing bowl.
• A mixer or a whisk and a really strong arm.  I use a small, handheld mixer and it works just fine.
• A springform pan, with bottom inserted upside-down (yes, I mean that!) – meaning, lipped side down, flat side up.  The upside-down bottom ensures there is no “lip” on it once the cake is ready, and it can be easily sliced, or transferred off the flat surface onto a plate.

Recipe is adapted fairly heavily from a saved recipe card that I got mailed as a promotion back when living in USA.  Adaptations include not being able to get my hands on brick cream cheese, not using egg whites, and removing flour from batter (because I like my cheesecake better without).

Ingredients:  (This will make one standard 9-inch form)

Shortbread crust:   Yes, I like that, but if you prefer crumb crust, it’s just some digestive biscuits crushed with a bit of melted butter.  In my personal and highly biased view (as in, it’s going to go into my mouth-biased), lightly spiced shortbread crust is far superior!

• 200g plain all-purpose flour (1.5 to 1.75 US cups)
• Small pinch of salt (1/5 tsp)
• 2 tsp ground ginger (optional, can be replaced with nutmeg or omitted)
• 1 tsp vanilla sugar
• 1/4 tsp baking powder
• 1.5 dl confectioner’s sugar
• 2 egg yolks
• 150g butter, cut into small pieces and slightly softened

Cheesecake batter:

• 1kg full-fat cream cheese.  In Europe that translates to 5 little tubs.
• 200g 10% (full-fat) quark cheese (Kesella or other brand – can be substituted with 10% Greek or Turkish strained yogurt)
• 1 dl full fat creme fraiche (I believe that is 34% fat here in Sweden).  This can be substituted with full-fat sour cream.
• 300ml caster sugar (I used golden caster).
• 2 teaspoons vanilla sugar or 1 teaspoon real vanilla extract.  I used sugar this time, as my vanilla extract isn’t ready yet (I make my own, it’s easy).
• Zest of 1 lemon+1 orange.  If you like your cake less citrusy, you can use either orange or lemon or half of each.
• 1 tablespoon (15ml) lemon juice from aforementioned lemon (try to avoid bottled lemon juice here, it does not taste nearly as good as fresh).
• 3 egg yolks
• OPTIONAL! 3 tablespoons of flour – I did not use those, but they can help the cake set and lessen the chance of cracks.  (Or so I am told.)

Method:

Make and bake the shortbread crust.

• Preheat oven to 175C.  Cut a circle of baking parchment to match the bottom of springform pan.
• Grease the pan and line the bottom with parchment.  Flour the sides thoroughly.
• Mix together all dry ingredients of crust except sugar.  Whisk to combine.
• In another bowl, mix sugar with butter until completely combined and light in color.
• Add egg yolks and mix until incorporated.  You may need to scrape down the sides of bowl at some point here.
• Add all the dry ingredients and mix on low speed until mixture resembles crumbs.  Remove mixer and squish with hands until dough comes together (should be very easy and quick).
• Place clumps of dough into the prepared springform pan, and push at it with your fingers till it is sort of uniform thickness on the bottom and up the sides.  Fork the bottom thoroughly to help avoid puffing up in the oven.  IF the bottom begins to puff up, open the oven, and fork it carefully at the edge of puffed up area.  That should deflate it.  Continue to bake as normal.
• Bake in preheated oven for 15-20 minutes (watch it) until the top edge is just beginning to color and the crust is entirely baked through and opaque.
• Cool on rack without removing from the pan, until completely cool (this may take an hour).

In meantime, bring out the cheesecake batter ingredients out of the fridge and allow them to come to room temperature or close to it (don’t go nuts if it is a bit cool to the touch after sitting on the counter for that long, really).

A useful note on mixing the batter, which comes next – use low speed of mixer.  On low speed, you have far, far less chance of introducing excess air bubbles into it, and it is more than powerful enough to mix softened cream cheese, etc.

• Preheat oven to 250C (475F).  Yes you want it that hot!
• When the crust is completely cool, make the batter:
• Place all the cream cheese into a bowl.  I shook each little tub over the sink a bit to get rid of excess water that is sometimes found in the tubs.  Mix the cream cheese on low speed until it is smooth or close to.
• Add sugar, lemon and orange zest, and quark.  Mix to incorporate.
• Add egg yolks and mix in.  Add lemon juice and creme fraiche and mix until the batter is homogenous.

• Pour the batter into the cooled crust.  Some people suggest banging the cheesecake or such, but I did not bother as the batter mixed on low speed is not very bubbly at all.  It should more or less come up to the top (or over, which is fine) of your crust.

• Put your cheesecake on an oven pan to catch any drips, and slide that into the oven so that the cheesecake is roughly in the middle of it vertically.
• Sit and watch cheesecake for 12 minutes on 250C.  It may start to puff on sides a little bit towards the end of this period.  To reduce the chance of surface singing during this step, I turned the oven setting to only use the bottom element after preheating on top+bottom setting.  If the surface starts to brown at any point during this step, go to next step immediately.  Otherwise, proceed to next step at end of 12 minutes.
• Without opening the oven door, turn oven to use top+bottom elements (no fan setting if possible), and turn the thermostat to 95-100C.  Bake cheesecake at this setting for an hour and a half to an hour and a quarter, until the surface is set, but the center of the cake wobbles under the surface a little when it is jiggled gently back and forth.
• Turn oven off and use a piece of cookware (loaf pan?  Rolling pin?)  to prop the oven door ajar, or take the cake out of oven and set it on a rack to cool.  I used the oven method as it is supposed to reduce cracking.  I suppose I can use the take out onto rack method another time and see if that cracks more, but either is supposed to be fine.
• If using the oven to initially cool the cake, take cake out after another 15-20 minutes and continue to cool on the rack.  When pan is cool to the touch, carefully run a thin spatula or spreading knife around the crust to loosen it from the sides.
• Allow to cool until just warm to the touch before wrapping the springform pan in plastic wrap and placing in refrigerator.
• Refrigerate overnight or for at least 6 hours to set the cake completely.
• The next morning, check that the sides of the crust are not attached to the springform pan sides, carefully unlock and remove the sides.  Now you can either keep the cake on the bottom of the pan, or slide a thin spatula between the parchment paper and the pan bottom to loosen it and use the parchment to grab the cake and slide it over onto a serving plate.

The cake will keep for days in the refrigerator, but please do replace the pan sides (to prevent it from mashing and cover/wrap with plastic wrap to prevent it absorbing odors you and I would rather it didn’t – like garlic for example.

Now, I imagine this would have gone amazingly well with a topping, but after trying just one bite, my boyfriend decided he just liked it plain, and that the lemon-tinged lushness of this did not require any additional dressing.  So, I didn’t.  Does not mean you should not, you know.

The batter for this is very accommodating to added flavoring.  I think next time, I will get my hands on some pumpkin puree (or make it if I must), and make proper pumpkin-pie-spiced pumpkin cheesecake.  Or else go crazy and try a pineapple or mango flavored one, or plain with caramel and chocolate shavings… who knows?  The point is, because it is not baked on water bath, it sets much, much easier and less problematically.  If you are adding fruit or vegetable puree, I would suggest using the optional 3 tablespoons flour with the batter to help set the cake with lower cheese to batter ratio.  Or you know, you can always wait for me to test it first.  I promise you, I will.

Cheesecake baked in this manner, is both, easy, and incredibly forgiving, and yes, it tastes, looks and feels exactly like the really good luxury American cheesecakes that I had missed so much all those eight years.  The moral of the story is that if you want something done right, do it yourself.  I should have.  Years ago.

* As I understand it, the incredible necessity of the foil-wrapping cheesecake and cooking it in a tray of water in your oven harkens back to the times when you baked your cheesecake just outside your cave in the fire on that lightning-struck tree stump.  Yes, back then you’d have certainly needed a water bath to ensure it did not suffer from heat spikes when you tossed another log into the fire.  Or you know, if another tree branch got tossed in by the wind.  But really, with an oven that has 10-degree increments on a thermostat, saying water bath (and consequent mess, boiling water splashing, possible leaks and ruined soggy cheesecake) is necessary is just so much of you know what.

Honey-Ginger Tea (for when you’ve got a cold or just feel under the weather)

Oh, October, how beautiful you are, bringing the harvest, my lovely favorite quinces, beautiful colored trees, and the sniffles to my boyfriend’s nose… oh wait, that part is not so nice.  At all.

It’s also totally true that if you treat a cold, it goes away in a week, and if you don’t, it takes seven days.  However, no one ever said that said week has to be totally miserable.  I’m a big believer in not taking antibiotics for every sniffle you get – and an equally strong believer in yes, taking decongestants orally (so they don’t dry out your already abused nasal membranes).  I also know there’s a lot to be done to make a person with a cold much, much more comfortable than they’d be otherwise.  Like, by offering them a blanket, a book, a box of those (oh miracle invention!!!) tissues with balsam in them, and a cup of something warm to drink.

This incarnation of our kitchen's honey jar comes from Gotland

And this is definitely the cup you want to offer.  Or have offered to you, if you are on the receiving drippy end of the cold situation.  Unless you are allergic to honey, or hate ginger or both, in which case, go suck on a sugared lemon.  I mean it, I do that occasionally myself – but if you don’t hate ginger or honey, then you ought to make this.  In fact, if you’ve got a large teapot and the person who’s dripping is not yourself, make the large teapot and share it.  It’s really, really nice when you aren’t sick, too.  I’m eyeing the remains in my boyfriend’s cup right now and regret using the small teapot.

The recipe is essentially what it says above – a good piled spoonful of best-quality honey (you can really taste it in this!) you’ve got, and a finger of ginger, peeled and sliced thinly across the fibers.  I normally keep ginger root and lemons in my fridge, and we always have at least one type of honey around.  A good local set minimally-processed honey is a staple, and sometimes we also splurge on something like Provencal lavender honey, or Tasmanian leatherwood honey (mmm, now I want to order some of that again!).  So, chances are that I have the ingredients for making it on hand at any point, since ginger root keeps nearly forever in a plastic bag.

This (entire piece sliced) is enough for small teapot

Plunk the honey and the ginger into the pot.  Add a slice of lemon if you are so inclined (today boyfriend wasn’t), pour in freshly-boiled water, stir the honey off the spoon, close pot, cover with towel and let stand about 10-15 minutes.

A cork stand under pot helps keep the heat better, but it's not necessary

Why let it stand?  This isn’t an instant drink, people!  It’s raw root that you are steeping in boiling water to leech some of its juice and essential oil out.  It takes a bit of time, and the hotter you keep the pot, the better.  So stick that cozy on it, put a towel over it, whatever.

After the time (I recommend the full 15 min) is past, stir the contents of the pot and pour into cups.  If your pot is worth the ceramic it’s made of, it’ll still be hot, so don’t go burning tongue on this (ouch!), but you don’t want this to go cold – you want to drink it as hot as possible, because it’s nicer to your sore nose and throat, and also tastes better that way.  At least in my opinion.

Now, I sincerely hope you don’t get a cold.  Or a flu.  Which doesn’t mean you won’t, but hey, best wishes and all – it also shouldn’t deter you from making and drinking this, because it’s just nice as a good-night non-caffeinated drink.  I mean, even a faithful worshipper of caffeine such as myself can appreciate something I can guzzle down at half past midnight with no danger of having trouble sleeping afterwards.  Besides, it tastes good.  Really really good.

So yeap.  Make it.  I suspect it will go really well with some fairly plain shortbread cookies alongside it, too – the flavor is very warm and more than a little spicy, so you don’t actually need anything too strongly-flavored alongside.

Capturing The Scent Of Summer

It’s 8am and my hands smell of elderflower and lemon.

Elderflower aka Fläder (Sambucus nigra)

Why?  Because it’s Midsummer, and it is both, traditional and opportune to go hunting for the short-blooming elderflowers, and capture the scent of summer.

For the uninitiated, Midsummer is a major Swedish holiday celebrated the weekend after Summer Solstice (June 22nd).  It involves a lot of drinking, normally at summer houses or parks or anywhere, really, food (salmon and various seafood is traditional).  It is a fertility festival, and therefore sex is also encouraged, though, of course, not obligatory.  Swedes are just not dogmatic enough to make it so, you know?  Other traditions of note are dancing around a flower-decorated phallic symbol while pretending to be little frogs (don’t ask, I don’t know, but seeing old men do it ought to be prescribed as anti-depressant treatment – I’m not depressed, but that much laughter has got to be good for anyone!).

Among other things, it is around Midsummer that Elderflower (aka fläder, or Sambucus nigra) flowers for about a week or two – the bloom may come earlier further South, or later in the North, but here in Stockholm, it is in full bloom right now, and the scent is simply put, amazing.  How does it smell?  It’s hard to describe, but citrusy, spicy and aromatic is the best I can come up with.  If you are really curious, buy a bottle of elderflower cordial and sniff it – then up that by an order of magnitude and lushness, and that is what fresh elderflowers smell like.  Better yet – unlike the (usually expensive) cordial, if you are lucky enough to have a bush around, they are also for free (or for the price of effort of going up to the bush with a bag and ripping the freshly-opened inflorescences off into said bag).

Where am I going with it?  Well, not very far.  The bush is just across the street from our house, after all!  And then, to the kitchen.  Where I have a few pressure-lid glass jars mildly sterilized by rinsing them out with boiling water, a lemon, and a bottle of vodka.  Today, I am making elderflower infused vodka, and elderflower lemonade.

The general directions for infusing vodka with fruit are in this post, but elderflower has a few specific quirks that I feel I should address before getting to the recipe and directions.

One, elderflowers open at sunrise, and so should be harvested before noon, and preferably early in the morning, because after the heat of the day starts, the fragrance deteriorates and fades.  Hence the trip out to the bush before 9am.  The inflorescences snap off easily, so you do not need anything but your hands and a bag or basket to collect them into.  You also do not need much – the scent is strong, and you can only pack so many of the flowers into a jar without squishing them.

…Which brings me to point two – elderflowers are as delicate as they look.  The flowers and fragrance deteriorate quickly if they are heated, or left open to air, or distressed in any way.  Which, by the way, is why I still haven’t figured out how to make elderflower syrup – how would I do it without heating?  On the other hand, I do know how to make elderflower-infused vodka.  And lemonade.

Let’s begin with the boozier option!

So, what do you need?

• A jar with a press lid (glass with a rubber band to seal hermetically), sterilized by a boiling-water rinse.  I use a 500ml jar.
• A glass bottle (for putting the finished product in – I save the bottle the vodka came in)
• A coffee filter (single-use paper, or a multiple-use plastic, which is better)
• A funnel
• for 500ml jar, 350ml plain vodka.  Otherwise, increase proportionally to size of jar and desired quantity of alcohol.
• 1/3 of a lemon.  Obviously, more of said lemon for larger amount of alcohol/bigger jar.
• 6-9 elderflower inflorescences (enough to pack into the jar nearly to capacity without squishing) – size of those varies, so get extra (you can always use the remaining ones to make elderflower lemonade – recipe follows)
• 1 tablespoon sugar (optional)

What to do?

• Make sure your jar is cooled down to room temperature (do not use hot).
• Scizzor the flowers off the larger stems into the jar – they will fall apart into 2-3cm clumps.  Cut enough flowers to fill the jar to within 2cm of the top (for my low jar – it can be as much as 5-7cm if you are using a large jar, say 1L).  Prod lightly with fingertips but do not pack hard, nor, little green apples forbid, squish them!
• Cut off 1/3 of a large lemon and squeeze the juice over the flowers.  Slice off a thin ribbon of zest (no white pith if you can avoid it) and add to the jar.
• Pour in your vodka and make sure the flowers are all covered.  You can prod them into the liquid with a finger or the back of a chopstick if they are not cooperating.
• Seal the jar and put in the back of the refrigerator for 2-3 weeks.  You can take it out and shake it occasionally but do not open during that time.
• Once the 2-3 weeks are up, remove jar from fridge, filter through a coffee filter and pour into a bottle using a funnel.
• If using sugar, add that to the liquid by putting it into the funnel and rinsing down into the bottle.  In case of using sugar, bottle should stand in a dark spot (fridge or pantry) until sugar is dissolved.  If no sugar is used, the vodka is ready to use immediately – or as soon as you get it ice-cold in your freezer!

Elderflower Lemonade (or, a way to use up all those extra flowers you I have picked so greedily)

(Which, as an added bonus, does not take weeks to be ready!)

• Snip remaining flowers into a pitcher or large jar.
• Slice a couple of slices off the remaining lemon and reserve.
• Squeeze the rest of the lemon into the pitcher on top of the flowers.
• Add 2-4 tablespoons of sugar per 1-1.5L, depending on how sweet you like it.
• Fill the pitcher with cold water, or (if you are using a closing jar or if your pitcher has a good lid) sparkling water.
• Drop the lemon slices on top of the flowers in the pitcher, and cover.
• Place in the refrigerator for 4-6 hours.  Filter through a mesh sieve before drinking – this will be a little more cloudy than the coffee-filter filtered alcohol.
• If the day is very hot, serve over ice.

Elderflower Lemonade

Happy Midsummer!