- Hey, I'm John Kanell. And today in Preppy Kitchen, we're making a dreamy,
luscious lemon cheesecake. So let's get started. First off, set that oven to 350. It needs to be nice and
toasty for our crust. In the bowl of my food
processor or just a big bowl if you're gonna stir this
together and already have crumbs, I'm adding 2 1/4 cups, 270 grams, or 17 1/2 gram crackers. You don't have to use gram crackers. You can make this with shortbread cookies, Biscoff cookies. Really, any crisp cookie
is gonna be delicious, even lemon shortbread cookies. We're gonna whiz this up
just to get this broken up. (food processor whirring) Now that that's started, let's add three tablespoons of sugar. And three. Okay. (container clattering) Couple more pulses. (food processor whirring) Now, it's time to add in six
tablespoons of melted butter. Just drizzle over the top like this, get it all out, and pulse until it just comes together. (food processor whirring) Sometimes, I like to go 2/3 cookies, 1/3 toasted pecans. Mm. (food processor whirring) Okay. We're gonna pop this out. This cheesecake, by the way,
has been, by popular request... I have a lot of cheesecake
lovers on the channel, and I love you for loving cheesecake too. It is always delicious. And this is gonna be light and fluffy, full of lemon flavor,
topped with a lemon curd. It's gonna look gorgeous and be delicious. No dense cheesecake for us. Food processor's all done. Before I dump my crumbs out,
grab two layers of foil. And here's the deal. You can't have regular foil for this. Regular foil is not wide enough for your nine-inch springform pan. You want to have the
extra-wide aluminum foil. This will save you a soggy headache. Just trust me. If you don't have the foil, just don't try and make
it work with regular foil. I'll show you how to bake the cheesecake without a water bath. It'll still be delicious. (foil rustling) I bought the foil specifically
for the cheesecake, though. (foil rustling) I actually bought the foil because I make so many cheesecakes, and I want to have it on hand. (foil rustling) All right. Just scrunch it up. (foil rustling) Give it a good hug. I love you, cheesecake. The saddest thing is when
you accidentally poke it, and it has a little hole, and the water seeps in. Okay, I'm gonna fold it over the edge now. (foil rustling) Now, we're gonna add our crumbs in. (container clattering) Scoot them around so you
have a nice even base. Now, use a flat bottom
glass or measuring cup and just press it down to
compress everything together. That's the secret of a cookie crust. And don't move those graham crackers all the way up the side. You just want one inch. It's just annoying when graham cracker
crusts come up too high because they're crumbly, so they crumble into your
cheesecake and you'll be annoyed. And cheesecake exists to remove
annoyance from your life. It's supposed to make everything better. If it comes up too high, just use your handy-dandy
finger and tamp it back down. (bright music) All right, that looks nice. And by the way, if there's a cheesecake you wanna see on the channel, let me know in the comments. You can basically make anything, any dessert flavor, into a cheesecake. Ooh, listen to this. Black forest cheesecake, pina colada cheesecake, German chocolate cheesecake, chocolate cherry cheesecake. That's a black forest cheesecake. Ooh, matcha strawberry cheesecake. Anything, let me know. This is gonna bake at
350 until it's fragrant and a little bit more golden. 10 to 15 minutes depending on your oven and your springform pan. While that crust is baking, it's time to make some
amazing lemon sugar. So I wanna have all the lemon flavor and that's coming from the skin. The skin has all these amazing lemon oils and you want to extract them all. And there's two ways to do that. Food processor is the
least labor-intensive, except for washing out that bowl, which we had to do this now. So one cup and 1/4, 250 grams. Grab a microplane or a rasp. These are great. And you're gonna remove the
skin from two lemons about. You want a tablespoon of packed
lemon zest that's 10 grams. But I read that and see two nice lemons. If you don't wanna use the food processor, like let's say you don't
wanna drag them out, you don't have one. You could make the crust by hand. And for this part, instead
of using the food processor, you use your clever little hands, and just rub the sugar and
the lemon zest together until you have a beautiful
wet sand that's yellow. It's like a light yellow color. It's actually really fun to do. And kids love helping with that. Right, lemon number two. And whenever I use lemon zest, I really like to give my
lemons a thorough wash. And I prefer to use organic lemons if they're not coming directly
from my mom's backyard. Okay. (container clattering) We're gonna whiz this up until it's a beautiful pastel lemon color. (food processor whirring) It'll be a second. You'll notice that the sugar starts clumping up pretty quickly and it really changes color. (food processor whirring) It's about 30 seconds of mixing. If you take a look inside, you can see it's like wet sand. It's totally different
as far as the texture, and the color is this
beautiful light lemon with most of the zest broken up. Same goes for using the hand method. It'll look exactly the same. Now, our food processor is done. You can grab a big bowl or a stand mixer with a paddle attachment. And we're gonna get to mixing. It's time to add the cream cheese. And I have a couple
words to say about this. One, so delicious. How is it possible? But two, this should be nice and soft. I have a warming drawer, so I just popped this into
the warming drawer to warm up. You could microwave it on
40% power for 30 seconds outside of the foil wrapper, please. Or put it in your oven
with light turned on, but the oven off, and just let it come to room
temperature so it's super soft. Cream cheese lumps are not
your friend in a cheesecake. You want a smooth, gorgeous mixture. I want four eight-ounce
packages of cream cheese for this recipe. And if you're making this and you're not in the States
and you can't get cream cheese, this should work just fine
with Neufchatel cheese. Cream cheese was actually
invented by Americans to mimic Neufchatel cheese. And in trying to do so, they came up on something even
creamier and more delicious. Hmm, they're both delicious, but cream cheese can't be beaten. Just to show you, this is how soft it is. It's almost softer than softened butter. So you can pop your finger in, it'll leave a very easy indent. It bends super easily, too. That's what you want. I also want 1/4 teaspoon of salt for a little bit of contrast. And don't think I forgot
about that lemon sugar. That all goes in right now. Every last drop. Pop your paddle attachments on, and you're gonna mix this
on medium high to medium, depending on your mixer, for about two minutes or
until it's nice and smooth. And you definitely have
to scrape the bowl down at least once. (mixer whirring) This is basically a foolproof cake. Almost nothing can go wrong aside from leaving it in the
oven and just burning it. But you do want everything to be totally smooth and homogenous. Little lumps just aren't
gonna taste right, they're not gonna look right, and they can also kind of
help lead to cracking, too. So a smooth mixture is where it's at. But look at this, it's been 30 seconds, and it is so silky smooth because
our cream cheese was soft. Scrape the bowl down, especially
the bottom of the bowl. Okay, and back to mixing. (mixer whirring) This looks nice, but it's
time to crack some eggs. I want three eggs for this. It's gonna help make things
nice, and light, and silky and also hold the cake together. If possible, room temperature is best. (mixer whirring) Now, working a low, I'm gonna add the eggs in one at a time. Let the first one incorporate
before adding the next. The reason we do this is so you're not just
injecting a ton of water, 'cause the eggs are very
watery, into this thick batter. You want it to mix in really
evenly before you add the next. It helps save a lot of headaches. Number two. After this one, we're
gonna scrape the bowl. So here we go. We have a creamy, beautiful
light yellow mixture on top. But on the bottom, still
creamy, but it says paler. So you wanna really scrape the bowl down and fix that all with your spatula. (container clattering) Very nice, oh, my gosh. The smell is so light and luscious. (mixer whirring) Last egg goes in. And while that mixes, I'm also adding in 1/2
teaspoon of vanilla. Just a little kiss of flavor. I forgot to juice the lemon. It's not just the lemon zest. There's 1/4 cup of lemon
juice in this as well. Before you finish making your filling, it's time for some boiling water. We need to bake this in a water bath of really scalding hot water. So grab a kettle, fill it up, and pop it onto your stove. I'm adding 1/3 of a cup or 80 mils of heavy cream or double cream, depending on where you live. Just while the mixture's on low. This will lighten up our
cheesecake a little bit. We don't want it to be super dense. It should be like fluffy
cheese lemon clouds that dissolve on your tongue. (mixer whirring) Doesn't that sound nice? And don't think I forgot about my 1/4 cup of freshly squeezed lemon juice. You have one last scrape down
and then you are home free. Okay. Look at this, no lumps. It's like magic. Another reason to not use
ice-cold cream cheese, aside from it being lumpy and hard to mix, is you're making a cake. And if you watch this channel, you know that when you pop
something into the oven, you shouldn't have ice-cold ingredients. They should be room
temperature to even warm. It helps things bake evenly. And one thing a cheesecake
wants is to evenly bake. That's how you avoid cracking. (mixer whirring) Mix, mix, mix, mix, mix. (mixer whirring) (kettle blaring) (John laughing) They filled it really, really high. And I like the sound of that kettle I had. So many people told me they did
not find it soothing at all. This goes here. We're done with our mixer. I can smell that crust. I know it's ready. Pop that out of the oven,
let it cool completely, and reduce the temperature to 325. This fits just inside my roasting pan. And one word about this. This is a nice roasting pan. I have a super mega roasting pan that's basically for
Christmas and Thanksgiving. And it is really thick, really big. And if I ever bake a cheesecake in it, it adds 20 minutes to the bake time. So just be aware that
depending on your roasting pan, if it's really thin, maybe
a little bit less bake time. If it's really thick and big, you're gonna add some
thyme on, and that's okay. It just insulating your pan extra well. I'm gonna pour the batter in
now, get it into the oven, and then we're gonna
pour the boiling water. And you don't wanna
amble across the kitchen with a boiling water tray that
can't spill onto your cake. No. (bright music) Get all that batter out. This looks like a mess. So a little shimmy will
fix a lot of things. Gently. See? Look at that. And if there's any nonsense on the top, I'm just gonna give it a little swipe. We're actually covering this completely with lemon curd later, but it's nice to have a smooth top. All right, this goes into the oven, 325 for about 50 minutes. You're gonna add boiling water halfway up. And don't forget to check
on it, starting at 40. Just keep an eye on it and make sure that it's
not getting too much color. If you don't have that tin foil and you're not gonna do
the water bath method, I would pop this onto a baking sheet and then have a big tub of
boiling water underneath so it steams up and it'll help
keep the top nice and smooth. And by tub, I mean large
casserole dish of boiling water. (bright music) The cheesecake's done when
the center has a nice wobble. If it's too wobbly, just
give it five more minutes, and then five more minutes,
and then five more minutes, until that wobble is just
really in the center. Then, turn the oven off,
keep the door closed, and let it sit there for about an hour until you take it out. (bright music) I let this chill overnight, so it's perfectly firm. And now, we're gonna get
all of this foil off. (foil rustling) It's bone-dry on the inside. That's what you want. If it's wet on the inside, oh, dear. Use a small knife and just
run carefully along the edge to make sure your
cheesecake isn't gonna stick 'cause sometimes, if you don't do that, you'll open the collar, and the cheesecake will crack open 'cause it's stuck on two sides. And you're like, "No!" Then you cover it up
completely and nobody knows. Moment of truth. This looks great, look at that. Get the crumbs away. Put this into your mouth. Grab an opposite spatula or knife and we're gonna run it
just along the bottom to loosen things up. Now, in one confident
motion, remove the base. It's on the stand. This is delicious. It looks nice, but we want
the cheesecake to sparkle. So I have some homemade lemon curd here. I made it a couple days ago. If you wanna make your own, click up here for my lemon curd video. It's so, it's like liquid sunshine. You can just buy it
from the store, though, and it's still delicious too. So you don't have to make
everything from scratch. I want about 1/2 a cup of
lemon curd for the top. Just plop that right on there, and we're gonna smooth it out. Just a little bit where I'm
eyeballing this this time. Smooth the curd out all over the top. (bright music) I whipped up some cold
cream with powdered sugar and a little bit of vanilla to taste. We're gonna add this into a piping bag and make it super pretty. And before you pipe anything, always use your spatula
and give it a test. Like, what do you wanna do? So this is your practice. (bright music) I'm marking where my dollops go because I'm always so lopsided. So I want them to be like
nice and evenly placed. All right, pipe it up. (bright music) Last dollop. Ooh, look at that evenly-spaced situation. I'm using my zesting tool to get these beautiful little ribbons. And this is something you
wanna do right before serving just because they
dehydrate kind of quickly and they don't keep their beautiful shape. This cheesecake was so
beautiful at the end and easy to decorate
and cut so beautifully. It makes it even more delicious. (bright music) That is so creamy, but light, and fluffy,
and silky, and amazing, and full of lemon flavor. It's like my heart is
beating faster right now. I hope you get a chance
to make this recipe. And if you like this video, check out my Cheesecake playlist.
