I have been making the baked New York cheesecake for more than 30 years. It has always been a hit. In the 1990s, Singaporeans got introduced to another kind of cheesecake, which is the Japanese cottony cheesecake. This kind of cheesecake is the complete opposite of the New York baked cheesecake.
While the New York baked cheesecake is creamy, heavy and dense, smooth and silky, the Japanese light cheesecake is light and cottony, melt-in-your-mouth and feels like you are eating a moist chiffon cake. The way these cakes are made explains their texture and mouth feel.
My family has always loved the old fashion cheesecake, but it is a bit too rich. So I coined up this recipe, which is really a cross between the Japanese cheese cake and the New York cheese cake. It is not dense but very moist, not light but still soft. It is therefore creamy, soft, not heavy, and still not dense. I made a base out of digestive biscuits and nuts. Which makes the cake much easier to cut, since it is a less dense cake, the traditional base for a New York cheesecake is a sugar dough base, you can find the recipe for the Hilton’s cake here.
If you are looking for a cross, then this is a great cake. I get tired of the cottony cake, I get tired of the New York cheese cake too. When that happens, this is where the balance is. This cake is hard to get tired with, and it is huge!
Fusion Baked Cheesecake
Ingredients
Mxiture 1
- 500 g Ricotta or Philadelphia cheese RIcotta cheese can be homemade from milk
- 100 ml or 8 Tbsp Condensed Milk
- 4 Tbsp Lemon or Lime juice or any citrus
- Zest of 2 citrus fruits
- 5 egg yolks
- 75 ml cooking oil or melted butter
- 150 g Plain flour or corn flour
Mixture 2
- 5 egg whites
- 1/4 cream of tartar or lemon juice
- 150 g sugar
Cake base
- 2 cups crushed digestive biscuits or almond meal
- 100 g butter
Instructions
- Heat up oven to 180C.
- Melt the cream cheese and condensed milk in a double boiler.
- Whip in the egg yolks one at a time.
- Add the lime juice and zest and then the oil and flours.
- Beat the egg whites, cream of tartar and sugar to stiff peaks.
- Folk in mixture 2 into mixture 1, using 1/3 of mixture 2 at a time.
- Fully line a 10 inch diameter cake tin, and wrap a tin foil on the OUTSIDE of the cake tin.
- Pour the cake batter than give it a few whacks to get rid of big bubbles.
- Bake on the medium shelf. Once the cake goes inside, lower the heat to 165C.
- Bake for 1 hour.
Cake base
- Blend everything together and press the mixture tightly into the base of the same cake tin used to bake the cheesecake. When the cake is cooled, place over this base and it has to be below room temperature before the base will set.
