Claire Saffitz Makes Cheesecake | Dessert Person

oh god this is one of my one of my worst ideas truly oh god i'm about to burn myself hey everyone i'm claire saffits we're in my home kitchen today i have a recipe from dessertperson that you can take with you through any season it is my goat cheesecake sort of a lighter better version i think of the classic very customizable to any season with fruit on top [Music] i live in new york there's a lot of new york cheesecake i really really really like the first bite of new york cheesecake and then i like the second bite and then with each bite they're all the same and i sort of like it less and less and then i'm like halfway through the slice and i'm like not feeling so great and it's kind of boring so this version was an attempt to make it a little lighter to change the dimensions so it's it's a much more low profile cheesecake with a higher crust of filling ratio where i could like eat the whole piece and feel really good about it from start to finish special equipment the recipe in the book calls for a stand mixer you can also use a hand mixer and that's what i'm going to use today you also need a 9 inch springform pan now i have one 9 inch spring 4 pan i used it last night to make a swap because this cheesecake has to cool down and chill for a long time so in the interest of shooting this video all in one afternoon and then the cheesecake got stuck on the base of the pan so i'm having to use my nine inch springform pan ring with my ten inch springform base and so we're gonna see what happens it's gonna be interesting it's gonna be a little dicey let's talk about the ingredients this recipe uses a graham cracker crumb crust so that's a separate recipe and for that you'll need six ounces of graham crackers some sugar in the raw or you could use granulated kosher salt unsalted butter and one egg yolk for the filling we're going to use cream cheese goat cheese a vanilla bean heavy cream granulated sugar lemon zest and juice in the book the recipe calls for figs but the figs at the grocery store were not looking so hot so i am choosing a different fruit topping which you you can do any fruit that you like so i grabbed some raspberries so step one is making the crust i'm gonna bake that before i put the filling in and i'll bake it again what i need to do is crush some graham crackers i think there's a thing you can buy now that's graham cracker crumbs which is such a great easy like it makes a lot of sense and i'm happy to see it i have whole sheets here i have six ounces and that's about 10 full sheets of cookie i've been very sort of analog lately and not using a lot of machinery so i'm going to crush these by hand even though in the book it says to use a food processor you can use a wine bottle you could just use your you know the heel of your hand you could use a heavy pot to crush these two tablespoons sugar i have sugar in the raw you can use granulated put that in this bowl so i'm going to pour this into the bowl so then if you have any larger pieces you can break them up with your fingertips so i'm going to add to this some kosher salt just about a half teaspoon there's not really a risk of over processing your crumbs if you're doing it by hand but in a food processor you can go a little too fine and that basically will create a crust that doesn't hold its shape but this is what you're going for now to this i am adding six tablespoons of room temp butter you could do melted and cooled but make sure it's actually fully cooled it just makes it easier to work with and it makes it easier to compact one of the keys of a crumb crust is that you're really compacting it i add an egg yolk to my crumb crust that's not typical normally you just see sugar and butter and that's enough to create this setting power when you bake it and bind everything together but i add a yolk for extra binding because i find especially when you're adding a liquidy filling like the goat cheese filling it's helpful to have it there to assist the other ingredients so one yolk so i want to work this with my fingers until i have a mixture that looks like wet sand so everything will be evenly coated the butter should disappear you should not see discreet bits of butter then it's just going to melt and it won't hold up in those areas this is a nice texture where it's still crumbly but when i squeeze it it holds together like that so i'm going to make a thicker layer of crust along the bottom and sides and the crust is only going to come up about an inch around the pan so i'll put about a little less than half the crust mixture scatter it around the bottom of the pan and work it into an even ring up against the sides i can go in with my measuring cup and press it up against the sides to compact it and that is going to make the edges of the crust i'm also thinning out the crust a little bit toward the top you know instead of going straight against the side i'm angling it like that to make a slightly thinner rim so the remainder of the crumbs goes into the pan and this now forms the bottom so this you can press straight down although first i scatter it make sure i have full coverage across the bottom use your fingers or you can use the measuring cup to tamp it down you don't have to go so firm on the bottom now this crust when i bake it should hold its shape i won't see a lot of slumping the sides should stay right where they are i really want to dry it out because i'm adding a really liquidy filling so i'm going to bake this until i see a dark brown edge and a browned bottom surface and that'll take about 10 to 15 minutes one important thing is to have all of your ingredients at room temperature because it's otherwise difficult to get cream cheese and the goat cheese to incorporate smoothly into one another we want like an ultra smooth homogenous filling i'm going to start by combining my sugar that's two thirds of a cup then eight ounces of cream cheese this is philadelphia my one and only cream cheese then my goat cheese and you want like a nice fresh goat cheese not aged you want it to be soft and smooth and then i'm gonna add the seeds from one vanilla bean so i'm gonna scrape that vanilla bean really shines when it's combined with like creamy sort of mild ingredients like goat cheese and cream cheese so i split it down perhaps you saw our vanilla episode i split it down the length of the pod and then you scrape out the seeds and i'm not going to actually scrape this pod a bunch of other times because i don't want to get out a lot of the threads thready pieces so much in the cheesecake i really just want the seeds i'm using my hand mixer i'm going to start on low and i want this whole thing to start to cream together and i want it to be very smooth and a little bit light then you can increase the speed of it and periodically scrape down the sides the next thing i'll add is some heavy cream also room temp i'll get it later i'm finally grating the zest of a lemon the recipe calls for one tablespoon finely grated and that's basically one lemon i'm fascinated to watch people's zesting techniques because i've always done it this way but a lot of people do this which i've never really tried it makes sense because you're like holding onto the zest and then you're able to see i suppose how much you're taking off so there's a lot of good arguments for using this technique although i just don't scrape all that zest in now i'm gonna do some juice two tablespoons typically you'll get a quarter cup of juice from a decently juicy medium sized lemon i'll probably get what i need out of the half that goes in and now i'm going to add my eggs and i'm going to add them one at a time i'm going to beat these in starting on [Music] low [Music] we want something super smooth i love how you can see the seeds from the vanilla beans suspended in the filling so we have golden brown edge and surface it's a little soft to the touch but will firm up as it cools and in the meantime i'll turn down the oven to 325 so it is the egg that is going to set as this cooks and give you that solid really creamy cheesecake layer when you are baking a custard especially in cheesecake form you often use a water bath and that means that the pan is set inside of a larger vessel of some kind that's filled with a little bit of hot water and that water inside the pan is moderating the temperature in the oven and giving a very gentle heat to the filling what you want to avoid is water getting from the water bath into your cheesecake [Music] a springform pan is designed to allow you to unmold whatever you've baked in it without inverting it and that's something that you use for something like a cheesecake which has a delicate top or something that you don't want to turn over so as such you there's always a seam at the bottom of a springform pan where the ring attaches to the base what happens is in a water bath inevitably water seeps in and so i have all sorts of methods that i use to create a barrier so that no water seeps in but just know that it's very very common it's a problem that i have a lot and if it happens you just end up with a slightly softer crust it's not like you're gonna get a waterlogged cheesecake but i'll show you what i do to protect as well as i can the filling now i know i've been trying to use less plastic wrap but this is one instance where it's kind of the best tool for the job i'm going to do a layer of plastic around the pan and then the foil plastic wrap has a weirdly high melting temperature so this does not melt or anything it just peels right off when you're done this is an 18 inch wide roll of film if you have a thinner one you might want to do two pieces and crisscross them i'm centering the pan inside the piece of plastic and then this just gets wrapped up i use this foil on the one i made yesterday and i saved it now i'm going to go back in and cover with foil over top of the plastic now i am concerned about my base and my i might like do something a little weird before i fill this hold on one second don't do this part use a proper springform pan i just might have to do this because my concern is that the weight of the filling when i lift it is going to separate the ring from the base again if you're using a proper springform pan like you should you won't have to worry about this but i might try to prevent disaster so i'm using some baker's twine you seriously don't have to film this there's a couple of things to keep in mind with the water bath i just prefer to assemble everything on the stovetop and then transfer it because i get a little bit nervous about not only the filling but the water the super hot water sloshing around as i transfer it so i start by setting up my water bath already inside the oven so i'm going to start by putting the skillet inside the oven so use your roasting pan whatever it is now i'm going to take my water that is up to a boil i'm going to pour it in and i want the water to be to a depth of about an inch so if you need to boil a little more i'm going to fill my crust with the filling and then carefully transfer it to the water bath in goes the filling this is going to come all the way up the sides of the crust and in some places it might even go past it which is fine if you want to you can gently tap the pan on the counter to pop any air bubbles my pan isn't so sturdy so i'm not going to do that but also you're going to cover the surface of fruit so i don't care if i have little air bubbles it's no big deal oh god this is one of my one of my worst ideas truly oh god i'm about to burn myself okay so inside the water oh i got it do better than me so we don't want to overcook cheesecake because what happens is you you cook those eggs in the filling and then as they cool and steam escapes they kind of tighten up and then you get cracking we want like a nice even surface so we'll check back in about a half an hour and see how it's doing so now that the water isn't boiling i'm less terrified of it so let's see if i can lift the whole thing i mean i'm starting to think that this may be something i want to do on all spring form pans because look at how easy it is to lift out of here one of my one of my worst ideas truly i wanted to wobble a little bit because we are going to let this cool inside the oven for a while in the water bath and the heat that's in there is going to gently finish cooking the filling and it's going to very gently cool what we don't want is to shock it and bring it into a cool environment where the egg is going to contract and then we get a cracked surface we do not want that now i would say two hours in the oven then transfer it to the fridge and let it chill for a couple hours in the fridge i already have one that has set up and chilled so i'll show you how to put it all together it's beautifully set no cracking on the surface there are some little craters because those were where the air bubbles were but we are going to finish this with some fresh fruit on top and you won't see that i like to do this with raspberries i like to crush some of them and release some of the juices so i'm going to crush a handful of them with a little lemon juice i used a lemon earlier i'll use some of the juice here i think that i have under appreciated raspberries growing up we had raspberry bushes in our backyard and i would eat them on my way to school why don't i use some vanilla sugar which i have left over from our vanilla episode okay a little sugar i'm sort of like juicing these in a sense i want this to create a bit of a syrup so now i have this kind of jammy mixture and i'm going to fold in some of the other raspberries you could do poached rhubarb in the spring that would be beautiful and delightful if you were doing blueberries i would do something similar to get some you know juiciness from it crush some get some let them macerate meaning basically let them sit with sugar so it draws out some of the juices i feel like i'm in a great british baking show [Music] i don't know they're always like putting raspberries on stuff chilling the cheesecake means that the filling will be really set and you get that perfect clean slice now that i said that i have to cut that the filling is such a great combination of like very set so you get this razor sharp cut but it's also soft and creamy and delicious and just kind of like yields to your fork and it's really not overly sweet at all just the perfect canvas for delicious seasonal fruit but also so good on its own you have to like goat cheese usually sometimes when i call something interesting and it's food that's not a compliment necessarily but in this case it's interesting like it's interesting to eat i want to keep eating more and it's not like a more classic new york style cheesecake where there's a lot of sameness to it it's just a really delicious and interesting dessert so i hope you try it maybe it will change your mind about baking that you're using what is normally a savory ingredient in a sweet recipe and finding that you like it even more than the classic all cream cheese version give it a try a great thing to make for all of the spring fruit that's coming into season so thank you for watching and like and subscribe oh my god [Music]

Channel: Claire Saffitz x Dessert Person

Views: 744,059

Keywords: claire saffitz, cake, claire saffitz dessert person, claire saffitz makes, bon appetit, new york cheesecake, cheesecake recipe, cheesecake, how to make cheesecake, how to make cheesecake at home, expert cheesecake, cheese cake, claire makes cheesecake, best cheesecake recipe, make cheesecake, easy cheesecake, goat cheese, cheese, cake recipe, raspberries, making cheesecake, make cheese cake, simple cheesecake recipe, food, cream cheese, cheesecake recipe easy, dessert person

Id: KjDYLOVjoBw

Length: 17min 20sec (1040 seconds)

Published: Thu May 20 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Lokaji]

That two pack of goat cheese from Costco might finally come home with me.

[u/betterUseThisOne]

I'm glad she did it with raspberries for the video - makes me more eager to try the recipe. I had been holding off because I'm not very familiar with fresh figs but I loooove goat cheese cake.

[u/stephpop444]

This was one of the first recipes I tried from Dessert Person. It was the most amazing cheesecake I have ever had!

[u/dunkelblaugrau]

Note, this recipe is under ‘Goat Cheese Cake’ in Dessert Person…. Thought I might save everyone else the 10 minutes I spent trying to find ‘Cheesecake’ unsuccessfully….

[u/holmeschap]

Has anyone tried this? If so, how intensive is the goat cheese flavour supposed to be? Really want to try this, but unsure of whether to choose a milder and softer chevre, as opposed to a "regular" chevre.

[u/Haunting_Way_816]

The X/Y axis of enjoyment/number of bites made me actually laugh out loud.

[u/ks1645]

“so, i’m using bakers twine……you seriously don’t have to film this”

[u/fabondi]

That foil waterbath fucked me up.

[u/wtf_kinda_world]

I wish I liked goat cheese :(