Ultimate Cheesecake Cookbook, The
CHAPTER 1
THE CHEESECAKE GOSPEL
READ BEFORE BAKING!
Cheesecake is the easiest dessert to make!
How did it get such an awesome reputation? Bakers lie. When you find out how easy it is to make cheesecake, you'll stop paying $25 for theirs and start baking your own.
Bakers pass on anxiety-producing instructions that tell you to let your cheesecake sit in the oven after it's baked for 78 minutes with the door ajar. Utter nonsense! If the cake is done, it can go right into the fridge. If it isn't, it should be baked longer.
Even worse are those recipes that tell you to put your cheesecake pan in a pan filled with boiling water--a baking principle we think was devised by the marketing director of some pharmaceutical company who hoped to double the sales of adhesive bandages and first-aid sprays. We've never removed one of those from the oven without acquiring several blisters when hot water sloshed out of the pot and onto our delicate arms.
Cheesecakes should be custardlike in the middle and creamy around the edges. Why do people overbake them? Mostly because they're afraid they'll fall apart when they're shifted from the metal bottom of the springform pan onto a serving plate. On the other hand, if you're taking a cheesecake to aparty or picnic, transporting and serving it on the original metal springform bottom usually rewards you with yet another tambourine ring when the bottom disappears. Solution: Before you start to bake, put the metal bottom plate that comes with the springform pan away in your closet. Buy a cardboard round from a baking-supply or paper goods store that's the same size as the metal bottoms, and wrap the cardboard round in a sheet of heavy-duty aluminum foil. Use the foil-wrapped cardboard round to replace the metal bottom, and bake on this instead. You can even cut out a round from a corrugated box that's lying around your house. And if the foil-wrapped round isn't a perfect fit, trim the excess cardboard with a scissors or knife.
You can protect your oven from butter leaks simply by wrapping a second sheet of heavy-duty foil around the outside bottom rim of the springform pan and baking away. It's a good idea to do this even if you bake in a springform with the original metal bottom. Butter tends to leak out of these pans unless they are brand-new.
When the cheesecake is ready to serve, remove the cake ON ITS FOIL-LINED ROUND, put a paper doily under it, and place it on a tray or carry it to your destination. Baking cheesecakes on foil-wrapped rounds helps to cement friendships because your original metal bottoms don't get lost in the back of someone's cupboard, and if they do, you know how to replace them and keep your pans viable.
The subtleties of flavorings always make these cheesecakes exceptional. Many of these baked cheesecakes have been featured in restaurants and have won prizes through the years. Now we're passing all our secrets on to you in this book. Every one of these cheesecakes can be stored--uncut and boxed--in the refrigerator for seven days, and they can all be frozen for several months. We suggest that you freeze leftovers after you've served the cake at a dinner party. Left too long in the refrigerator, the sour-cream glaze on baked cheesecakes deteriorates first. It develops an unappetizing yellow tinge and dries out around the edges, so that you don't want to eat it, although you really could. If you freeze the leftovers, the glaze stays creamy. It's very little trouble to cut when it's frozen. Just use a sharp knife that you've run some hot water over and wiped dry.
Finally, we want to answer the question that people always ask us: Which cheesecake is our favorite? Our reply has always been the same: whichever one we happen to be feasting on.
THE ULTIMATE CHEESECAKE COOKBOOK, Copyright © 2001 by Joey Reynolds with Myra Chanin. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York. NY 10010.
