The Best Technique for Classic Cheesecake | Tips for a Light and Creamy Recipe | Kitchen Conundrums

hey everybody thomas joseph here now today we are tackling cheesecake everybody's favorite it's sweet creamy rich and a classic favorite but there are so many things that can go wrong with this dessert well today i'm going to share with you all of the tricks and tips you need to have a perfect cheesecake [Music] so let's get started with the crust now this is a twist on the classic graham cracker crust so i'm going to take 15 graham crackers here and crumble them up into a food processor now if you didn't want to do the classic graham cracker crust you don't have to you can use other cookies that you like those vanilla wafers those are really nice they're chocolate wafers which would give you a really great kind of crumbly sandy crust here even your favorite store-bought cookies like if you like those bisque off cookies those are a really delicious kind of spicy version of this crust and to this i'm going to add a third of a cup of dark brown sugar now usually we use granulated sugar but i think this really helps it offers a lot of really great flavor and also brown sugar it has molasses in it which adds a little bit of moisture to your crust so this is going to be a nice sturdy crust which will help in slicing the cheesecake now to this i'm going to add a twist and that is lemon zest so i need a teaspoon of lemon zest here and this just adds wonderful flavor it helps to cut through the richness of the cheesecake even a little bit of lime zest would be really fantastic it plays nicely with the wonderful rich cheesecake filling a little bit of orange zest so this is going right into the bowl of the food processor along with those crackers and i need about a teaspoon of lemon zest and that is probably the entire grind of this small lemon if you have a bigger lemon you might not need to zest the whole thing so right in and then a little bit of salt this is a half a teaspoon of coarse kosher salt we always use kosher salt in the test kitchens here at martha stewart living so when you're making these recipes make sure you're using kosher salt if not if you only have that finer table salt or a fine sea salt you actually need to use less salt in general so just be careful of that so i'm going to pulse this together until it's kind of coarse crumbs and then i'm going to add some melted butter all right so this looks good and now i'm going to add six tablespoons of unsalted butter that has been melted and cooled slightly right in and the butter is gonna help bring this crust together the consistency is gonna be around like a wet sand we'd like to say and this will press nicely into the base of our springform baking pan so again pulse this together until it's nicely combined and you can see it's not super wet it doesn't pull together like a dough but you should be able to squeeze the crust together and it should stay in a nice clump and this will press nicely into the base of the baking pan so i'm using a springform pan today and what's really nice about this is the collar of the pan is very easy to remove so then you'll be able to get your cheesecake out now one important tip that i want to share with you all is when you put the base of the pan in you want to make sure that it's inverted that it's flipped over most people will put the base of the pan in like this with the lip up but this makes it more difficult when you're trying to remove the cheesecake from the baking pan and this bottom kind of dish it makes it really difficult because then you have to go kind of in and under as opposed to having a nice flat surface where you could just slide your cheesecake right off onto a serving platter so make sure you put it together properly and it's very easy to do so just like that and now put all of your graham cracker crumbs right into the center of the pan and we're gonna press this out to the edges and you can do this with your hands if you'd like i really think that a measuring cup is super helpful here because it helps to flatten the crumbs out into a nice even layer and we're also going to work this crust up along the sides of the pan so that it creates a nice edge which will help to hold all of the wonderful cheesecake fillings so spread this out in a nice even layer to start it might look like a lot of graham cracker crumbs but we're really going to compress these down and then using a nice measuring cup i have a quarter cup measure here you're just going to press around the base of the pan building up a wall an edge that will go halfway up the pan and i didn't mention this before but this is a nine inch spring form pan so spring form pans come in different sizes but typically they're either nine inch or 10 inch if you only have a 10 inch at home you can work with that it will probably just take a little bit less time in the oven baking because it's a thinner layer of cheesecake batter so this is looking pretty good here so right into that preheated oven 350 degrees for 12 to 15 minutes all right so our graham cracker crust is done 15 minutes in that oven you can see it has a nice golden brown color it does sink a little bit in the oven so don't be worried about this this is going to be perfect but leave this off to the side while we make our filling for our cheesecake so i have a stand mixer here with a paddle attachment this is really ideal for getting a nice rich creamy cheesecake filling if you didn't have a stand mixer you could certainly use one of those hand blenders as well it works just as good so into the bowl of the stand mixer i'm going to add two and a half pounds of cream cheese this is five eight ounce blocks and really an important thing here guys use full fat cream cheese it's really important to get that decadent rich wonderfulness that we all know and love with cheesecake so don't skimp on the cream cheese you can always have a smaller slice i would say so i'm going to try and plop this into the bowl of my mixer now this is at room temperature and typically what i do is if i'm gonna make cheesecake i'll pull the cream cheese out the day before and i'll leave it on the counter overnight and it softens up really nicely if you don't have the time to do that you could take the cream cheese out of the packaging put it on a plate like this and maybe in a single layer and microwave it for a few seconds to get it nice and soft you don't want it hot at all so this goes right into the mixer and i'm gonna cream this mixture together for about two maybe three minutes until it's nice and kind of creamy i don't want to incorporate too too much air so this is going to be on a medium speed for about two to three minutes all right so our cream cheese has been creaming away here for about two minutes and now i'm gonna add some sugar i have one and a third cup of granulated sugar and i'm gonna slowly stream it into the cream cheese so that the sugar kind of gradually dissolves in the cream cheese which is nice for a consistent creamy batter so take a little bit of time here and gently stream in the sugar and this is gonna mix for another two to three minutes until everything is nicely combined that's the sugar some salt as always we like to use salt whenever we're baking it helps to bring out all of the wonderful flavors three quarters of a teaspoon of coarse kosher salt we should be about ready to add our eggs now i have five whole eggs these are large eggs room temperature again you want to make sure that the egg is fully incorporated in the cream cheese mixture before you add the next sometimes if you add all of the eggs at once eggs are so high in moisture right all of that egg white is is kind of filled with water if you just dumped it in all at once you might end up with kind of a broken batter so we're really trying to avoid that here by adding them slowly and making sure that they're at room temperature and the last egg goes right in and while this is mixing or finishing mixing i'm going to add some lemon now i need a tablespoon of lemon juice and this is from the lemon that i zested and put into the crust so we're really trying to amp up the flavor here with this cheesecake but again this is an ingredient that you can really customize to your taste so again if you like the idea of lime even orange maybe a little bit of spice you can really customize this recipe to your personal tastes so a tablespoon of lemon juice again slowly add it to the batter the acidity here really does help to kind of cut through a lot of the sugar so the sweetness and also the richness from all of that cream cheese so the acidity really is a nice addition to this recipe reducing the speed to about a low speed and now i'm going to add a cup of sour cream this is again full fat sour cream and this is going to add really great kind of lightness i want to say to the cheesecake not in terms of calories by any means but sour cream again it has that kind of acidity to it it's a nice kind of light acidity which helps to lighten this batter up a little bit and it also helps with the texture it's not going to be super dense this cheesecake it's still going to be really rich and delicious but the sour cream kind of helps to temper out the richness of the cream cheese so slowly add this in all right sour cream in and the last ingredient a teaspoon of really good quality vanilla extract so a teaspoon right into the batter here we're just going to mix this up for a few more seconds until everything's nicely combined now if you didn't have vanilla extract at home you could certainly use a vanilla bean if you have it oftentimes what i like to do is i use vanilla beans and custards and other recipes and i'll take the pod and i'll actually stick it into a jar of sugar and this way whenever i'm making a cake like this and it calls for granulated sugar i can add that vanilla sugar right in and i already have the wonderful vanilla flavor to it without using vanilla extract so there's a little tip for you guys now this looks great scrape down the sides i'm going to remove the bowl and the paddle attachment right to my board here so just scrape the paddle attachment clean with your rubber scraper and then i just like to stir around the side of the bowl sometimes with these stand mixer bowls the very bottom of the bowl you can see right down here sometimes it doesn't get mixed very well so really take your rubber spatula around the sides around the bottom and just fold it together and you should have a nice shiny batter that's light and then this is going to go off to the side and i want to show you a little trick here now oftentimes when people make cheesecake at home they bake the cheesecake in what we call a water bath so i have a water bath which is essentially just a large roasting pan filled i would say about a third of the way with hot water and that's in a 325 degree oven heating up nicely we're going to cook this in a low slow oven with that water bath so that the filling it's going to cook gently and set nicely it's not going to bake up so much where it puffs up and then sinks back in on itself this is going to be a nice low and slow cooking process but sometimes the water can leach into the pan and get your crust soggy and get your cheesecake kind of waterlogged so a tip here is to take some aluminum foil i have two layers of aluminum foil and you're basically going to wrap the sides of the pan with the aluminum foil and what this does is it helps to create a barrier so that the water does not have access to the pan so press the aluminum foil pretty firmly against the sides of the pan and you should have a foolproof barrier now and no water will get inside your cheesecake so now i'm going to fill this with our wonderful cheesecake batter and it looks like a lot this is going to fill the pan up all the way to the top so we're going to have a nice thick layer of cheesecake gently kind of level this off with your spatula but this is going to kind of even out nicely in the oven and now we're ready to transfer this to our water bath so let's go right to the oven so this goes right into the water bath and the water should come about halfway up the side of the springform pan so this is going to bake at 325 degrees for about an hour and three quarters to two hours all right our cheesecake it looks amazing it smells great too so after the 20 minutes of initial cooling run a small paring knife around the perimeter of the cheesecake and this is a really helpful tip here guys because while the cheesecake is still warm that running of the knife will help to release it nicely from the sides of the pan so after that cool to room temperature and then this goes into the refrigerator you can loosely cover it with some plastic wrap if you would like and it needs to chill for around six to eight hours until it's nice and cold and that's what i have here i'm going to release the collar now if you're having any issues with this one of the things that you can do is you can actually take a kitchen torch or even a hair dryer if you have it and you could go around the side of the pan and what that will do is it will help the cheesecake to release nicely from the collar of the pan but if you do the little tip with the paring knife while it's still warm you should end up with something that looks exactly like this now i can't wait to show you guys what this looks like on the inside i'm gonna cut it right on the the springform pan but you could certainly move this to a serving platter if you would like i'm using a chef's knife here standard knife that i've warmed up in a little bit of water and wipe it clean or wipe it dry i should say and this will help you to get a nice beautiful slice of cheesecake so right through now the crust is crisp i can hear it which is great that means it's not waterlogged hot water again clean the knife off dry it off and cut another beautiful slice right through that cheesecake and the crust and fingers crossed and you should have an amazing slice of cheesecake just like that it's mile high super creamy rich and delicious so there you go guys the perfect cheesecake i hope you give this recipe a try now if you have any kitchen conundrums please reach out to us using the hashtag kitchen conundrums we love to hear from you enjoy it's really good and as always guys click like and subscribe [Music]

Channel: Everyday Food

Views: 1,814,352

Keywords: Recipe, Recipes, Cooking, Cook, Food, Dinner, Easy meal, Dinner tonight, Everyday Food, Home made, Sarah Carey, Martha Stewart, Family meal, easy cooking, how to, food ideas, quick dinners, fast recipes, easy recipes, quick recipes, tasty, classic cheesecake recipe, new york style cheesecake, tips and tricks, food hacks, light and creamy, 2020 election, presidential election, covid 19, trump biden

Id: q2xWA_Md2D4

Length: 15min 47sec (947 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 06 2020