Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street Television

- Today on Milk Street, we're going to take the water bath out of making cheesecake-- it's about time.

And we start with a Basque cheesecake, which has that wonderful, almost burnt top to it, but a really creamy interior.

And then we're going to do a ricotta semolina cheesecake, which is so much better than the regular New York cheesecake.

For example, the ricotta replaces cream cheese.

It's lighter, and we also whip some egg whites to really make that a great, fluffy interior.

And finally, we ask and answer the question about does darker bakeware actually bake faster than lighter bakeware?

And the answer may surprise you.

So please stay tuned as you make two of the world's best cheesecake recipes right here at Milk Street.

- Funding for this series was provided by the following: - MOWI Salmon comes ready to cook, ready to grill, ready to season, or pre-seasoned and ready to eat.

In an assortment of flavors for an assortment of people.

MOWI Salmon.

- We pass down traditions here.

We create and connect.

We enjoy special moments-- some simple, some grand.

The heart of your home is the kitchen.

The heart of your kitchen is The Galley.

- Basque cheesecake is such a dramatic and beautiful cheesecake with that gorgeous burnished top and the creamy filling on the inside.

So when we worked on this, we really wanted to replicate that.

But the biggest challenge that we had is to get that really beautiful brown top without the inside of the cheesecake overcooking.

Also trying to figure out how long to keep it in the oven.

Should it go longer and lower, should it go shorter and higher?

So that was all of the things that we worked on to get this just right.

So one of the great things about this cheesecake, it is made in a pan that's lined with parchment paper.

It doesn't need a water bath.

A water bath is great for cheesecake, but it's kind of a pain in the neck.

So first we have our sugar.

We added a little less sugar in this, so it's not quite as sweet.

And a little bit of lemon zest.

And if you zest right over the bowl, all of those oils go right into the bowl and not on your cutting board.

So that looks pretty good.

And also a little bit of salt.

Salt, again, makes every dessert taste a little bit better.

So I'm just gonna let that go for a second.

So I'm gonna add our cream cheese at this point.

With any cheesecake, you really want all of your dairy to be at room temperature, because if anything is cold, that's when you get kind of lumps of cream cheese.

So make sure everything's at room temperature.

That's really important.

So I'm gonna put this in.

So I'm gonna beat this until it's nice and creamy and there are no lumps.

And the sugar really helps with that.

It kind of breaks it down a little bit.

Okay, that looks pretty good.

So I have four eggs here and three egg yolks.

We took out some of the egg whites because we found having more egg yolk gave us a creamier filling.

So I'm gonna whip that up a little bit.

And I'm gonna slowly drizzle it into my cream cheese.

I'm gonna do this in, like, four or five additions, but I'm gonna stop the mixer occasionally and really use the spatula to make sure it's incorporated really well.

There's always that dimple at the bottom of the bowl.

Sometimes if you don't get that, then you get, like, a chunk of cream cheese, which is not really what you want.

Okay, that looks pretty good.

So the next thing I'm going to add is some crme frache.

We decided to use crme frache because it gives a really nice tang to this.

We're going to add it slowly, a couple of tablespoons at a time.

So, as you can see, there's only five ingredients in this.

So that really wasn't the challenge.

The challenge was the baking of it.

So a lot of times when people make a Basque cheesecake, they'll add flour to it.

We really did not want to do that, because without the flour, you're going to get extra creaminess with no cakiness whatsoever.

So we did not add flour.

That was kind of a challenge, but I think we accomplished it.

So here is the a-ha moment for this cheesecake for us.

We found that if you just took this batter and put it in the oven to get that burnished top, we were overcooking the filling.

So we brainstormed a little bit and figured out that if you take the batter, chill it completely, and then cook it, you don't have that problem, because you can leave it in the oven long enough to get the beautiful brown top.

So we're gonna chill this for at least six hours or 24 hours.

It's nice to just make it and keep it in your fridge overnight, and then you can bake it the next day.

So I'm gonna cover this and put it in the fridge.

So our batter's completely chilled.

If you're not familiar with a Basque cheesecake, originally it was made in a wood-fired oven.

So what we did to replicate that here is put it in a very hot oven.

We have a 12-to-14-inch circle of parchment paper here.

I'm just gonna use that to line our springform pan.

Another thing that was a little bit of a challenge for this was the color of our bakeware.

We found that if you bake it in a light pan, you can use a higher temperature.

If you're using a darker springform pan, you really have to turn the temperature down because the outside of a darker pan conducts heat better, and it will cook the cheesecake too fast.

We use 450 for the lighter pan.

For a darker pan, you want it to be at 425.

So I've lined my pan with my parchment, and now I'm gonna take my nice cold batter and put that in my springform pan.

Okay.

So I'm gonna spread that... ...evenly.

And now, again, because this is a lighter springform, it's gonna go in a 450 degree oven for 40 to 55 minutes.

I know that sounds like a really long range, but we found every oven is a little bit different.

Some of these will get really brown and some of them will get some browning, but they won't be very dark.

Either way, it's gonna be delicious.

The most important thing is the temperature.

So if you use an instant read thermometer and stick it in the side of the cheesecake around 40, 45 minutes, you want it to come to 150 to 155.

It's gonna be really jiggly.

It's gonna look like it isn't done, it's gonna look wrong.

But if you don't pull it at that time, it's gonna overbake.

So once you are getting close to that temperature, you want to check it every three or four minutes because it's gonna go really fast.

So I'm gonna put this in an oven at 450 and we'll see what happens.

So once this comes out of the oven, you want to let it cool to room temperature for an hour-and-a-half to two hours.

That is really important, because another thing that we found is if you refrigerated it too early, when you cut into it, it was breaking on the edges.

So let it really cool down, and then put it in a refrigerator for anywhere from two hours to overnight.

In Spain, they kind of like to eat it at room temperature.

We found we like it with a little bit of a chill on it, but you can serve it however you like.

So I'm gonna take it out of the springform pan.

It's like a gift.

It's so pretty.

So pretty.

So the best way to cut a cheesecake clean is to put your knife in some nice hot water, dry it off.

And then, fingers crossed, everything should go right through.

Oh, this looks great-- so you can see the inside of that is so creamy.

So it's not overdone, it's not too dense or too thick.

And you still have that beautiful, burnished kind of caramel top that really plays off against that creamy middle.

Give that a try.

Mm.

That is probably the creamiest cheesecake you will ever eat.

It's got a little bit of lemon in it.

It's not too sweet, and there's no crust, no water bath.

So the next time you want to try a really elevated cheesecake, try this Basque cheesecake from Spain.

It is utterly delicious.

- So you just learned how to make the Basque cheesecake with Rose, and one key ingredient is crme frache.

Crme frache is a slightly cultured dairy product.

So unlike mascarpone or clotted cream, that are just delicious, high butterfat cream, both crme frache and sour cream are cultured.

And cultured means that there is acid produced in the making, and that acid is the key to the success of that delicious Basque cheesecake.

What I want to show you how to do today is make your own crme frache, because crme frache can actually be quite expensive, and I don't want that to be the reason that you don't make that amazing dessert.

So it is so simple to make.

I know people like I am, cooking school teachers, often say, "It's just this and just that and it's so easy."

And 30,000 steps later, you have something that was just so easy to make.

But crme frache?

One cup of heavy cream.

You want to make sure that it's not ultra-pasteurized.

That's the only rule.

One tablespoon of whole milk yogurt or kefir.

What the yogurt or kefir do is they culture the cream, which means the bacteria, the lactobacillus, that are in the yogurt or the crme frache, go into the cream and they eat the sugars.

Then the byproduct is carbon dioxide, which is the acid, which gives us the tang that you're familiar with in crme frache or sour cream.

Cover it with some cheesecloth or a coffee filter, secure it.

Don't touch it for 48 hours.

Room temperature, which for us is 70 to 75 degrees.

So we cover it with cheesecloth, or a coffee filter and not a tight fitting lid.

Because when the fermentation happens, you give off that carbon dioxide gas and that can pop off the lid.

You also need the air that comes through your cheesecloth or a coffee filter for an aerobic fermentation.

Magic-- it's been 48 hours.

You take off the top, you stir it a little, and if it's not completely thickened, you don't worry-- take a whisk, Whisk it up and let it sit for a couple of minutes.

When you come back, you have this, this beautiful, thick, incredible crme frache that costs a quarter of what you would have paid for it in the grocery store.

Why do we use crme frache?

If we were to use mascarpone or were to use clotted cream, it has such high butterfat that it can actually mask some of the flavors in something as simple as the Basque cheesecake.

The acid from the fermentation sort of lifts up the flavor and allows some of those other ingredients and flavors to come through.

So the recipe for the Basque cheesecake calls for eight ounces.

If there's any left over, you can eat it off a spoon 'cause it's delicious.

You can also keep it in the fridge for five to seven days-- it needs to be in the fridge.

You can use it to make some whipped cream to serve with berries.

You can use it to thicken a soup.

You can even rub it on the outside of a chicken before you roast it and add some herbs.

And you get a beautiful crme frache-roasted chicken.

So there's lots of uses for the crme frache if you have extra.

So if you want to make Basque cheesecake today and not 48 hours ago, and so you need to buy crme frache, the only ingredient should be cultured cream.

And this is why we call for it instead of sour cream.

Sour cream often has a lot of added ingredients to stabilize it and make it shelf stable for a long time.

Those can affect how your bakes bake up, but they also can add some off flavors.

So with crme frache, you just have cultured cream.

So it really is just that simple.

Heavy cream, yogurt, 48 hours, crme frache.

- As Rose mentioned in her recipe for the Basque cheesecake, we had a bit of an issue with different kinds of pans.

- There are non-stick, dark non-stick and aluminum pans to work with in all of the different types of bakeware that are out there.

So we wanted to dive a little deeper into this issue because it does come up quite often.

We have a lot of readers who write in and they have problems with cakes.

They're overbaking, and we really kind of zero in on-- half the time, it's because they are baking in a darker pan.

And our instructions are for a lighter pan such as this one, which is a stainless coated aluminum.

So we want to go deeper into the materials here and how it can affect your baking.

- You mentioned the Basque cheesecake.

I remember also when we did the goat cheese cheesecake, how much testing and retesting we had to do because we were using both a dark non-stick and we were using the aluminum nonstick.

And they were baking at such different bake times before they got done.

- So we thought we would dive a little deeper into this and bake our wonderful yellow blender cake, make the batter, and bake off some cupcakes in these different types of pans-- light non-stick, a dark non-stick, and this is a stainless coated aluminum, which is not considered non-stick.

And we'll see what the results will be.

- Okay.

- How many drips?

How many drips do you have so far?

- One on the counter, none on the pan.

- I'm going the top row.

- Okay.

- You stay back.

- All right.

- So as these cool down, this is the same exact recipe, baked at the same exact amount of time, at the same temperature in three different pans.

The stainless coated aluminum, which is not considered non-stick, a lighter colored non-stick, and a dark non-stick pan.

So that's a nice, even bake there.

Not a lot of color.

- Yup.

- Okay, now we got a little bit of tan there.

- Yeah.

- It's a little bit darker.

- Kind of a golden, light golden.

- And then here's... - But smoother, too.

Wow.

- Here's our dark pan.

- Oh, look at that.

- Which you can really see.

So the question is, how do we adjust?

If you have only dark non-stick pans in your kitchen for cakes or for muffins, what do you do?

- For one, you might want to turn the heat down by 25 degrees or so, and you need to do more diligent testing at the end, because it may need a little less time in the oven as well.

- And for the non-stick, actually, this one I prefer because it's got a little color.

It's nicely set.

It didn't over-brown.

- Right, it's got a little dome on it.

- And this is kind of more of a professional pan.

You don't see too many of these any longer that have no non-stick coating.

So much of the pans in the stores now are non-stick automatically, so there's no need to throw out your pans.

You just need to know how to adjust.

If you're baking a cake or muffins or cheesecake, darker pans, drop the temperature by about 25 degrees, and cook it a little less and start checking for doneness sooner.

The light nonstick is good all-purpose, but you may also want to drop the temp a little bit if the recipe does not call for non-stick.

If you have only a light colored pan that's not non-stick, and the recipe has non-stick in the recipe as the pan, you have to adjust the opposite direction or you'll get a cake that's still liquid in the middle.

- Yeah.

- Nobody wants that.

So if you decide you want to make a recipe and you don't have the exact equipment, don't panic.

Just adjust it as we've suggested and you should be fine.

All right, all that work.

- Ha!

- Not for naught.

- That's great.

- Who loves their job?

- Sprinkles, too!

- We do sprinkles.

- Cheers.

- Cheers!

- The world's lightest cheesecake.

This has ricotta in it, has some mascarpone in it, which gives it great flavor as well.

And we're gonna do something a little bit unusual.

We're gonna add beaten egg whites to this mixture to really lighten it up.

So we're not using a water bath, but I can't say it's a no-crack cheesecake.

Because of the egg whites in this, you will see a little cracking, but that does not mean it's gonna be overbaked, and we'll get to that later.

So first of all, we have to prepare our pan, and we're just using a spray.

And I should have also mentioned, by the way, there's no crust.

You know, there's no reason you have to use the crust in a cheesecake.

So we'll just not use a crust.

This is semolina.

Semolina is a flour.

It's made from durum wheat, which is maybe six or seven percent of the total wheat grown in the world.

It's very high in protein and gluten.

It's used a lot in pasta.

Okay, so pan is ready to go.

So the first thing we're gonna do, and this is a great technique you use for lots of recipes, is flavor sugar.

Do that in a food processor.

And we're going to zest on the sugar, and then we're gonna process for about ten or 15 seconds.

When you zest lime or lemon or orange, you want to zest it over the bowl or the food processor.

The reason is if I zested it over, let's say, a cutting board, the essential oils, which have a ton of the flavor in lemon, are going to come out, and they're going to end up on your board and not end up in your sugar, food or whatever.

When in doubt, add a little extra.

I never measure when it comes to this.

I think it should be a couple of teaspoons or something like that, but who cares?

And like we do here on TV, always have your food processor backwards so you can't see the controls.

See, that's really-- ah, there it is.

You can see it's actually turned a little bit yellow, it has a wonderful fragrance.

So that's just a great way to flavor sugar instead of putting those two ingredients in separately.

Okay, so on to the two key ingredients, mascarpone.

(groans) Love mascarpone.

And ricotta.

And we're going to process those briefly.

And you also notice that, I mean, mascarpone is a little thicker than ricotta, but neither of them is as gluey and compact as cream cheese.

We're adding a little bit of semolina in here.

Because this is a wetter dough.

Egg yolks.

Lemon juice.

A little salt and a little marsala.

So now we're gonna just mix that up.

So that part is done.

Now we're gonna beat the egg whites, which is a... ...good time to have a little lesson in egg whites.

Obviously, you want a clean bowl, you don't want any fat in the bowl.

I'm gonna start it off kind of at a medium.

So once the egg whites are broken up a little and frothy, we can start adding sugar.

The two things you can add to egg whites to stabilize them so that they are creamier and really hold the air better-- one is cream of tartar, which is acidic.

Sugar is really what I like to add.

It makes them very soft, very billowy, makes it harder to overbeat them, and you get a nice, luscious texture.

I learned this lesson from Claire Ptak in East London.

She has a very well-known bakery there.

And she has always told me, the two things you want to think about is slightly underbeating your egg whites, but to think about the egg whites not having a stiffer texture than the batter into which you're folding them.

And that makes sense, because if they're too stiff, you're going to have to fold and fold and fold, and you're going to collapse the egg whites.

So it turns out that if you keep them softer, they're not going to be collapsed during the folding process.

And, in fact, you're going to end up with a cake, for example, or a cheesecake, that has more air in it and actually rises better.

So, we're getting there, but we're not quite there.

Okay.

Ah, almost.

Not quite.

Now look at these, let's just look how soft and creamy they are.

If I hadn't put sugar in here, they would be kind of foamy and brittle and more airy.

Not creamy.

If they're not creamy, if they're too brittle, they're going to collapse as you fold them.

Now, when you first fold in or mix in the first part of the egg whites, you can really mix them in, but when you're going to add the next two-thirds, you're going to want to be a little gentler with it.

Because these egg whites are soft-- that is, they're not stiff peaks-- and they're nice and creamy because of the sugar, they're folding into the batter.

And they're really, as Claire Ptak said, if those egg whites are stiffer than the batter, they're not going to fold in nicely, and then it's gonna be very hard to fold them in.

So they're folded now.

By the way, her bakery is the Violet Bakery in East London.

So if you're ever in London, I don't care what else you do, but go there.

Okay, we're going to put this in a 350 degree oven for about 45 minutes.

So now the question is, when is cheesecake done?

Which is one of the top ten questions in the history of man.

If you wait till the center is fully set, you're going to overcook it.

So what you want to look for is the center, two inches or three inches or so, still can jiggle a little bit.

Same with a pumpkin pie-- then you take it out, let it sit on a cooling rack, and it will set in the next half-hour or so.

However, this cake will crack a little bit, because we're using egg whites-- it's a very light batter.

So you will see a little cracking, but that does not mean overcooking.

It's cooled.

I've cooled.

Now, if I showed this to you and said, I just baked a cheesecake, you'd go, like, "Nice job, pal.

You really overbaked this one."

But it's, as I said, it's got the egg whites, it's got a little bit of the semolina in it as well.

And that's just what it does, but it does not mean it's overcooked.

Now before I stop talking and eat this, I mean, this is super light.

I'm not even sure it's cheesecake.

And it obviously has a lot of cheese in it, but... ...oh.

Nothing short of spectacular, if I say so myself.

I mean, this is so good.

Even if you don't like cheesecake, you'll like this cheesecake.

So ricotta semolina cheesecake with mascarpone.

It's super light.

It's part cake, it's part cheesecake.

There's no bottom crust, you don't have to use a water bath.

Please give it a try.

If you want this recipe and all the recipes from this season of Milk Street, go to MilkStreetTV.com.

Recipes and episodes from this season of Milk Street are available at MilkStreetTV.com, along with shopping lists, printer-ready recipes, and step-by-step videos.

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From cacio e pepe and skillet spanakopita to Brazilian-style carrot cake and Thai coconut soup, the Milk Street Cookbook offers bolder, fresher, simpler recipes.

Order your copy of the Milk Street Cookbook for $27, 40% less than the cover price.

Call 855-MILK-177 or order online.

- Funding for this series was provided by the following: - MOWI salmon comes ready to cook, ready to grill, ready to season, or pre-seasoned and ready to eat.

In an assortment of flavors for an assortment of people.

MOWI Salmon.

- We pass down traditions here.

We create and connect.

We enjoy special moments-- some simple, some grand.

The heart of your home is the kitchen.

The heart of your kitchen is The Galley.