Cheesecake with American frosting

 

    Cheesecake. Doesn't the term excite your tastebuds enough to make you want to learn how to bake when you might not have baked a cake in your entire lifetime? It certainly excited mine enough to bake it! The irony of it all is that this is not even your traditional flour and baking soda cake, but it comes perfectly shaped like a cake and cuts flawlessly like one, nonetheless. I am going to go ahead and name this "cheese, some more cheese, no, empty the entire tray of cheese and bake it in the oven for no reason at all and I'm all good with a lifetime subscription to it if you have one." And that lifetime subscription for you is the recipe below. I hope knowing this recipe and baking the cake makes you as happy and satisfied as it made me. Also, sit back with an extra cup of coffee, this one is longer than my usual posts:)

Ingredients for the base:

Ghee/clarified butter

McVities digestive biscuits for graham crackers

Roasted nuts

 

Procedure:

Form a base layer inside the baking tray with the mixture of beaten biscuits and nuts and ghee. Ghee holds the dry ingredients together. Refrigerate for an hour or bake at 170 C for 5 minutes until the base hardens.

 

For the filling:

Cream cheese

Milk/cream for heavy cream

Ghee/clarified butter

Eggs

Flour

Vanilla bean

A pinch of salt

A cup of sugar

 

Procedure:

Whisk the filling ingredients together, pour it in the tray with the base and bake in a pre-heated oven for an hour or 45 minutes at 170 C until the top of the cake rises and turns lightly golden. You might not want to test by poking into the cake as that tends to crack the top layer when you further bake it but if you must test, make sure you have a frosting nice enough to cover up the crack. Although, there is nothing wrong with a little crack that shows how well the cake has risen, hence showing how well the cake is done.

  

For the frosting- Rachel Allen’s American frosting:

Sugar

Egg whites -2

Vanilla bean

Boiling water

Procedure:

    Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks appear.

    Heat the sugar until thin strings/webs form.

    Mix with egg whites and cardamom, and whisk until stiff.

Notes:

Spread the icing over the cheesecake or that crack you’ve managed to earn XD. I certainly did, 30 minutes into the process when I wanted to test if my cake was done.

References: For the icing- Rachel Allen, For the cheesecake- Preppy Kitchen.