Sunday - January 03, 2010

impress the ladies

Other than chocolate, nothing seems to excite the female sense of epicurean adventure more than cheesecake. It’s some kind of forbidden pleasure that they will go out of their way to find. It’s not enough to always have some on hand. Any cheesecake will not do. You need to have good cheesecake. Great cheesecake. And they’re damned expensive. But why buy when you can build? The things are bloody easy to make. And a man who is dependable, skilled and inventive in the kitchen ... may not always wind up doing the dishes alone.



Stuff you will need:

• Teakettle full of boiling water
• really big ass frying pan, like the one you can do up 8 pieces of fried chicken in. Figure 12-14” across and almost 3” tall
• large mixing bowl
• electric mixer with clean beaters
• a baking spatula. Those silicon ones are great
• aluminum foil
• 9” non-stick spring form pan
• a lemon zester, aka your wood rasp

The non-stick spring form pan is about $8-12. You can get one at Walmart. Or at Amazon. You won’t use it for much other than making cheesecake. Yeah, so?


The recipe:
a generous 1 1/3 cups of cane sugar
4 large or extra large fresh eggs
a generous 1/4 cup of sour cream (about all the sour cream you can splotz onto a tablespoon)
4 8oz packs of cream cheese. Get the Philly brand. Do NOT cheap out with the store brand
1/3 cup fresh heavy cream
2 teaspoons of quality vanilla. Double strength Bourbon vanilla is the total shizz
a fresh lemon, washed and dried, stickers removed
1 or 2 pre-made graham cracker crusts, or a box of graham crackers for the adventurous
a partial stick of butter straight from the fridge



Part 1:
Set the oven to 325°F and put the giant frying pan in the oven to warm up.
Put the spring form pan together. The base fits in the little groove in the ring, and the ring tightens down like one of those old lever oil filter wrenches with a snap shackle.
Scrub the inside of the pan with the stick of butter. You don’t want any large glommy bits, but you want to give it all a good covering.
Take 3 lengths of tinfoil off the roll, and wrap the bottom of the spring form pan. Each length goes on at a 60° angle to the previous piece. Scrunch the top of the foil around the top of the pan, but not down into the pan. Scruch the foil fairly tight against the sides of the pan. You do this because all the spring form pans are advertised as water proof, and none of them actually are.
Remove the plastic lid from one pre-made crust, and bend the tinfoil edges back. With one smooth motion, invert it into the buttered spring form pan. Remove the tinfoil. The crust will break, but you now have a nice even layer of crumbs on the bottom of the pan. If you bought the 2nd crust, break bits off and stick them in the butter on the sides. If you’re advanced enough to make your own graham cracker crust from scratch, you don’t need me to tell you what to do. Just don’t over do it with the crumbs. A little 1/8” layer is fine.
Set the pan aside.


Part 2:
Open up all 4 packs of cream cheese and drop them in the big mixing bowl. Go at them for a minute or two with the mixer. Cream cheese is pretty solid stuff, so use a higher speed than necessary. All this step does is further soften it up.

Measure out your sugar and pour half of it in. Start mixing. After half a minute you will notice that all the cream cheese has climbed right up the beaters and the side of the bowl. Stop the mixer, and use the spatula to push everything off and back down. Mix again. Repeat as needed for about a minute. Add the rest of the sugar and mix some more. Suddenly it will smooth out. Stop mixing.

Crack in an egg. Avoid getting any shell in the bowl. Mix it in for 15 seconds. Add another egg. Mix. Add another egg. Mix.

Pour in the heavy cream. Drop in the sour cream. You used the good brand of sour cream, right? The real stuff, not the low-fat plastic crap that was on sale? Good. Splash in the vanilla. If you use a bit much, that’s fine. The above recipe already calls for double the original amount, but it’s almost impossible to have too much vanilla. Don’t test that theory here. Try and keep it to 2 tsp or less. Mix things up again. Vanilla smells like angel sex, but tastes like crap. And it’s 96% straight grain alcohol.

Take the lemon and add 1-2 teaspoons of zest. Zest? WTF is “zest”? It’s lemon rind. How do you get it? Take your wood rasp to the lemon. Seriously. No, not the Stanley Surform. This thing. It’s a wood rasp, but it’s also the world’s most kick ass zester. And cheese grater. And ice sculpture tool. If yours actually lives in your toolbox, make sure to wash it first when nobody is looking. Hold it over the bowl and scrape off the outer rind of about 1/2 the lemon. Maybe 2/3 if it’s a small one. Don’t plane the lemon down so far you hit the insides. Mix the zest in.

You now actually have a bowl full of custard. So mix it thoroughly at the highest possible speed for another minute to get it as smooth as you can. Try not to splatter the stuff onto every last square inch of the kitchen. Remember that spatula? Sure comes in handy, don’t it?

Pour the mix into the spring form pan. Move it around, like your laying out paint into the roller tray. Unless you have an assistant with you, you’ll have to figure out how to hold the bowl over the pan and use the spatula to scrape out the bowl.

Ok, that’s about it. The water should be boiling, the oven is up to temp, the pan is ready, and so is the mix. Let’s do it.

Part 3:
Open the oven. Slide out the rack with the frying pan on it. Put the spring form pan in the frying pan, but off to one side. Gently pour the boiling water into the frying pan - this is the important bit! - while not pouring any water into the spring form pan that’s full of batter. Fill the frying pan up with water until it’s the same level as the batter in the spring form pan. Now center the pan. Smoothly slide the rack back in, close the door. Set a timer for 70 minutes. ( the original recipe calls for 55-60, but if you were extra generous with the heavy cream and the sour cream it will need a bit of extra time) Check the cheesecake at 50 minutes. It should be pale and watery looking. Check it again at 55 and 60 minutes. Is it done? At 70-80 minutes it will be slightly brown in spots on top, and most of the water will be boiled off. Some people prefer theirs less done than this. Does it look set? Not hard set like yesterday’s concrete, but set as in “solid but still jiggly, like Jello or thereabouts when you smack it lightly”. If it isn’t, cook it for another 10 minutes. When set, turn off the oven and prop the door slightly open with a spoon or something. Leave it to slowly cool off in the oven for another hour. Then take the whole thing out of the oven, take the ring form pan out of the frying pan, peel off the tinfoil, and leave it on top of the oven for another hour. Ok, fine, if you’re Mr. Fancy and have actual cooling racks, use them. Just leave the cake in the spring form pan. When it’s cool, cover it with plastic wrap, and put it in the fridge on the middle shelf. Come back tomorrow and it will be ready to eat. At that point you can slide a thin plastic knife around the perimeter and unlatch the ring and remove it. It’s ready to go.

Fancy folks, or those really looking to impress, can top one of these with fresh fruit. A nice mix of hulled and sugared strawberry halves, some blueberries, maybe some raspberries if you can find them. Lay them out in a nice design, gently pressed into the top of the cheesecake. If you’re using sugared strawberries, give them at least 2 hours to sweeten up first.  You don’t have to top the whole damn cheesecake with fruit. Just make sure you don’t use the nasty bruised berries. Pick the good ones, and give them a rinse in cold water, then dry on paper towels.

And it comes out grand, every time! Now that you’ve made this great hulking thing, she’ll want the narrowest possible slice, as if you can carve cheesecake like proscuitto. But she’ll want another slice probably. And several much larger slices to take to her girlfriends at the office. Who will be ever so envious. And you will get a big gold star. Or something equally desirable.

Being an old married guy, I would never think of telling you single dudes what to do. But ... if you have her over for dinner, make the cheesecake together before the meal. It only takes 20 minutes. Have a couple aprons ready, and everything cleaned and dried and organized ahead of time, and the cream cheese out of the fridge for an hour beforehand. It will be her job to wield the spatula the 3 or 4 times it’s needed, and to taste the custard to see if it needs a little more sour cream or lemon. You do everything else. While it bakes, serve dinner. While it cools, serve dessert. Your entire house will smell like cheesecake baking. This is a GOOD THING. Don’t waste the moment. And yes, on the weekends, it’s perfectly fine to have cheesecake for dessert after breakfast. They do need to mature overnight for the best flavor you know. Gold star, indeed!

Posted by Drew458     on 01/03/2010 at 09:44 PM   
Filed Under: • Fine-Dining •  
• Comments (11) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

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