Cheesecake

Polish Cheesecake

A cheesecake is a dessert which is either made of, or has a soft topping of, ricotta cheese, quark, twaróg, or more usually cream cheese, sugar and sometimes other ingredients such as eggs, cream and fruit, on a cookie or graham cracker crumb crust. Various other flavorings may be added, such as vanilla or chocolate, and a fruit topping, like strawberry is frequently added. Some types of cheesecake are custard pie, rather than a true cake, which leads many novice bakers to cheesecake failure. The above mentioned ricotta topping is used widely in Italy and is whipped with other ingredients to a consistency such as that of whipped cream. Often the base is more pastry like, and the cheesecake is far lighter than a traditional uncooked cheesecake.

Cheesecake is one of the most common desserts in the world and perhaps one of the oldest involving dairy other than milk. The first recorded mention of cheesecake was during the ancient Grecian Olympic games in the occidental world. Marcus Porcius Cato (Cato the Elder) wrote of cheesecake preperation in his farming manual De agri cultura.

The word cheesecake is also used to describe the creamy, cheesy flavor of the cake. In that usage, there's cheesecake yogurt, ice cream, brownies, and cookies.

New York City is regarded as a source of excellent cheesecake. Junior's, in Brooklyn, is the traditional place to get good New York-style cheesecake.

Styles of Cheesecake

• New York-style cheesecake relies upon heavy cream and cream cheese to add a richness and a smooth consistency. It is baked in a special 5-6 inch tall spring form pan in many restaurants. Some recipes rely on cottage cheese and lemon variation for distinct texture and flavor.

• Sour cream-style cheesecake is thought to have originated in the mid 20th century in the United States after the mass homogenization of milk and the loss of cream as a widely available ingredient. It still uses cream cheese but has no heavy cream. It is the most widely used recipe for cheesecake outside New York-style in the United States. Unlike other cheesecakes it can be frozen for short periods of time without ruining the texture. Most factory made cheesecakes use this method because of this.

• Farmer's cheese-style cheesecake is the contemporary implementation for the traditional use of baking to preserve fresh cheese and often is baked in a pie shell along with fresh fruit like a tart.

• Roman-style cheesecake uses honey and a ricotta-like cheese along with flour and is traditionally shaped into loaves. Some recipes call for bay leaves, which may have been used as a preservative. It is still baked in areas in Italy that kept culinary traditions alive after the fall of Rome.

• Italian-style cheesecake is a modern version of Roman cheesecake. It uses ricotta cheese, replaces the honey with sugar, omits the bay leaves, and adds other modern ingredients such as vanilla extract.

• Greek-style cheesecake.

• Dutch-style uses gouda cheese.

• German-style cheesecake uses quark cheese.

• Brazilian-style cheesecake usually has a layer of goiabada (guava marmelade).

• Canadian-style cheesecake is increasingly using maple syrup either to flavor or to top the cheesecake in haute cuisine restaurants.

• Japanese-style cheesecake relies upon the emulsification of cornstarch and eggs to make a smooth flan-like texture and almost plasticine appearance. It is a very popular vending machine food in Japan because it is one of the few milk products that can easily be made shelf stable.

• Vegan-style cheesecake concoctions abound, but few would agree that they have been succesful in rendering the sweet creamy texture associated with the dairy version with substitutions such as silken tofu for cream cheese.

• Cottege Cheese and Lemon variations of the recipes do exist.

Other uses of the word

Cheesecake may also refer to a female sex symbol, particularly when the subject of a pin-up picture; more generally, it can refer to any particularly attractive woman.

Peter Kay, the comedian, famously uses cheesecake as a metaphor for the confusion of the old and ignorant.

It is also the official food[1] of the ReactOS project

Culinary uses and challenges for different types of Cheesecakes

Almost all modern cheesecakes in the United States use cream cheese; in Italy, cheesecakes use ricotta cheese and Germans use quark cheese. The type of cheese not only affects texture and taste but the ability to incorporate certain types of ingredients. When cheesecake batter is too thin many cheesecakes will not be structurally sound and will fall apart at the table. One way to get around this is to use unflavored gelatin or a little cornstarch beaten with the eggs.

A sour cream-style cheesecake uses close to a 1:1 volume ratio of cream cheese to sour cream to make the traditional texture that crumbles like a good roquefort cheese with a distinctive sunken center and a golden-colored top from the Maillard reaction. An extra egg white brushed on the top can achieve the same effect in less time if you desire the cheescake to be "gooey" when set.

Never use any fruit that has live protein eating enzymes such as papaya, pineapple or mango without first cooking them or the cheesecake will not set.

External link

• Kosher Cheesecake recipes chabad.org