My go-to New York-style cheesecake recipe. Simple, creamy, delicious. This is the basic recipe I use, and the possibilities for flavour variations and toppings are endless! You can make half the filling of the Lemon Tarte or just pour caramel sauce on it. I once made a Thanksgiving version of it, where I simply mixed half of the filling with pumpkin purée and gingerbread spice. I also made it chocolate-y once. But it seems, the basic one still has the most success. Enjoy!
Equipment
- Hand-mixer or KitchenAid
- 23cm springform
Ingredients
Filling
- 900 g Philadelphia cheese must be full fat, *see note
- 120 ml sour cream can be substituted by heavy cream
- 4 eggs *see note
- 1 egg yolk
- zest of one lemon
- 200 g sugar
- 1 tbsp Maizena (cornstarch)
- 1 package vanilla sugar
Crust
- 250 g ground Plazma cookies *see note
- 65 g melted butter
Instructions
To make the crust
- Preheat your oven to 180°C (350°F). Wrap the bottom of a 23-cm springform pan with a baking sheet.
- In a medium bowl, mix together the ground biscuits and melted butter. Mix until all is combined – it should look a bit moist. Press the mixture into the bottom and half way up the sides of the prepared pan to form an even layer of crumbs.
- Bake for 8-9 minutes until golden brown. Allow to cool completely on a wire rack. Meanwhile, prepare the filling.
To make the filling
- Lower temperature to 130°C (260°F)
- Use a hand mixer or kitchenaid with paddle attachment to beat the cream cheese on low speed until smooth and lump-free, 1-2 minutes. Add sugar, vanilla sugar, cornstarch, and pudding powder, and beat until blended. Scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl as necessary. Add the eggs, one at a time, and beat until fully combined. Add sour cream and lemon zest and beat just until combined and smooth. IMPORTANT: The goal is NOT to overmix and add too much air (you will see small air bubbles if you do), but also not to undermix and not have things evenly incorporated. In both cases, the cheesecake will not come out as creamy as it should. Trust me, I had to learn the hard way.
- Pour batter over cooled crust and spread evenly.
- Bake the cake for 60 minutes (start checking it after 45 minutes…it should not be dark on top and there should not be cracks, in which case its overbaked). Turn off the oven after the 60 minutes and set a timer for 10 minutes. After the 10 minutes are over, slightly open the oven door and leave it in for another 10 minutes (this will prevent the cake from cracking). The sides should be set, but the center still wobbly at this point. If your kitchen is very cold, you might need to increase both of those times.
- Transfer the cake to a wire rack and allow it to cool to room temperature. Cover the cake with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight or for at least 6 hours.
Notes
*Important: eggs and milk products need to be at room temperature, otherwise your cheesecake will crack in the oven. Basically this cake is like a new-born baby, it will scream, if you expose it to sudden changes in temperature.
**Biscuit ground: the original New York cheesecake is made with ground digestive biscuits. I found the ground Lane (or Serbian Plazma) cookies which they sell in Switzerland at Migros/Coop to be perfect, no added sugar or anything required. But feel free to buy digestive cookies and grind them up, the butter amount should stay the same, perhaps just some added sugar is needed.
***The Philadelphia cheese needs to be full-fat. I tried with low-fat and it just is not the same, it ends up more spongy than creamy. So if you are a health-conscious person, you just have to sit down, have a conversation with yourself, agree that life is short, put that conversation into a box in your brain. Then go make the cake with 900g full-fat Philadelphia.
