First, it should be noted that baking is very easy to scale up or down, and this is done by maintaining the ratios of ingredients. If you look online for cheesecakes for example, you will find recipes calling for anywhere from 24 to 40 oz. of cream cheese, how do you compare these recipes?! Well, the answer is to convert all the ingredients to ratios. The easiest way to do this is to convert all the units into a common mass unit for easy comparison. For me, I converted all values from the recipes I examined into grams (with the exception of eggs, you can't have a fraction of an egg... well not easily anyways). After examining the top rated recipes from the web, I found something they all had in common, the cream cheese to sugar ratio ranged from 1:0.28 to 1:0.32. This was interesting to find that through all the large range of cream cheese quantities, this value stayed about the same.
Next, I found that recipes either call for sour cream or heavy whipping cream, and the quantities of each of these vary considerably. I found that the typical recipe calls for anything from 1/3 cup of whipping cream to 1 cup of sour cream, this correlates to ~60 grams of whipping cream to 240 grams of sour cream. At first I did not know how to compare these two completely different styles of cheesecake. The sour cream it seems would make a tangier style cheesecake while the whipping cream would make a richer tasting cheesecake, but I was shooting for something in between. Therefore, I needed some way to determine how much of each to add to my cheesecake. This is where it gets interesting. Analyzing the fat content of the whipping cream (36.6%) and the sour cream (16%) I found that each recipe calls for approximately the same amount of added milk fat to the cheese and sugar mixture. Typically a weight of milk fat equaling 2.5% to 5% of the cream cheese mass was used. The difference between these would probably be how 'rich' the cake tastes, with the 5% added milk fat being rich and the 2.5% being less rich. I'm not 100% sure on that, but that was my guess.
I did the same thing for each ingredient, and deduced that the optimal cheesecake would contain the following ratio of cream cheese : sugar : added milk fat : vanilla : # of eggs : flour. 1: 0.3 : 0.19 : 0.044 : 0.0017 : 0.005 : 0.025. (Note that it seems like flour is somewhat optional and was not present in most recipes that implemented whipping cream. Also note that the ratio indicated for vanilla is for teaspoons since weighing out vanilla seemed a little ridiculous, and for eggs will yield the number of eggs you will need.). So, for all you bakers out there, to make the perfect cheesecake, take the number of grams of cream cheese you are using, and multiply through all of these ingredients to determine how much of each you need! Easy as that!
For me, I used 32 oz of cream cheese (2 lbs, or ~907 grams), which yielded the following recipe:
32 oz (907 g) Cream Cheese
270 g (1 1/3 c) Sugar
120 g (1/2 c) Sour Cream
5 Large Eggs
60 g (1/4 c) Heavy Whipping Cream
1.5 tsp Vanilla
25 g (3 tbls) Flour
1 tsp Lemon Zest (optional)
Alternatively, you could change to using sour cream or whipping cream exclusively using the ratios and percentages I outlined already. If you have any questions on how to do that feel free to ask :)
Now, I had to move on to the crust. Here I didn't feel like it was as important to find the ideal crust, as most crusts were just graham crackers and butter. I did, however, add my own flair to my crust. Since I am all about flavor, I decided to add a hint of strawberry flavor to the otherwise fairly bland graham cracker crust. I would also take this opportunity to start making a fruit additive to place into my engineered cheesecake recipe. I placed 8 oz (1/2 lb) of strawberries in a small sauce pan, and added 1/3 cup of sugar and 1/2 tsp of vanilla and cooked them over medium heat until the strawberries started to soften and a nice syrup was formed in the bottom of the pan. It isn't too crucial as to how long they were cooked at this point. I took that syrup and pored about 1/4 cup of it into my crushed graham crackers. I mixed it in well, and I got a nice consistency with some balling up of the graham cracker as seen in this picture.
This may have contained a sufficient degree of binding to make a crust (maybe a good idea for a low fat crust!), but me being a butterton decided to add 4 tbls of melted butter to the mix as well for good measure. I patted the butter/strawberry syrup/graham cracker crust into the bottom of a 9" springform pan and placed it into a preheated 350 degree F oven for 10 minutes. When shaping thecrust to the pan be sure to cover the entire bottom surface, and go up the sides slightly. Do not worry too much about the crust not being 100% uniform, this is not a big issue. My final crust is shown here. Once baked, let the crust cool back to room temperature before adding your cheesecake mixture. This wasn't an issue for me as I baked this while figuring out how I was going to make my cheesecake.
Now to the good part. The cake. I added all 32 oz of my cream cheese, and creamed it together with flour and sugar. Once it is well mixed, I added the whipping cream, and mixed it until the mixture was creamy and smooth (I tasted it at this point, definitely tasty :) ). Next I stirred in 5 egg yolks until thoroughly blended. On the side, I had whipped the egg whites until they formed soft peaks. I figured this would make my cheesecake a little fluffier, so I figured it wouldn't hurt. I then gently folded in my whipped egg whites and subsequently added the sour cream, lemon zest, and vanilla, and stirred until homogenous. Now, remember those strawberries I used for the syrup for the crust? I took those strawberries and added another 1/3 cup sugar and 1/2 tsp vanilla and started cook them over medium heat yet again. I cooked the strawberries until they were tender and I mashed some of them with my cooking spoon at the same time to create a nice mixture of cut berry and small amounts of pulp.
I allowed my berry concoction to cool to near room temperature, and added it to my cheesecake batter. I stirred it in so it was mixed, but not too thoroughly so there were some swirls of strawberries seen. I placed this batter into my springform pan, and put it into my oven at 350 degrees F for 60 minutes. While baking I observed that my cake swelled over the top of my pan, which may have led to some of the cracking I observed after it was allowed to cool. But, to be honest, I don't care too much if to top of my cake cracks because I plan on placing a nice strawberry topping on the top, hiding the cracks :)
This is the final cake after it was allowed to cool. You can see the cracking around the top and center, but like I said as long as it tastes good I'm okay with it :) I'm sure there are some cheesecake gurus out there that will frown upon some of my techniques, and I would love to hear your input. I'm always looking to improve upon my baking skills.Hopefully this was helpful to you aspiring bakers looking for new ways to create your own recipes. I will reemphasize how I go about things. First, gather a list of various recipes. Next, convert everything so you can compare the relative amounts of each ingredient that are used. Create ratios of each ingredient. The ratios of the key components are what you need to create the base, the rest is up to your imagination! I decided to use the whipping cream and sour cream to add the proper amount of additional milk fat to my cheesecake. I then added the minor ingredients lemon zest, strawberries, and vanilla. These are not necessary, but will change the flavor of your invention. You can apply this method to any recipe you can find! So go out there and be creative! Don't conform only to the recipes that are out there! Be creative! I hope you are enjoying my baking adventures as I share them through this blog. The next posting will be on the completion of the topping of the cheesecake.
Oh, and here is the final recipe for the crust for those that were interested:
2 cups Graham Crackers
4 tbls Butter
~1/4 c Strawberry Syrup
Strawberry Syrup
8 oz Fresh Strawberries
1/3 c Sugar
1/2 tsp Vanilla
Swirls
Remaining mixture from syrup plus:
1/3 c Sugar
1/2 tsp Vanilla
Happy baking!
Jake
Very Scientific. I love it.
ReplyDelete