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I love cheesecake. The smooth, velvety texture and the slight tang in the flavor are absolutely wonderful when they come together. I love them so much that I make a pumpkin cheesecake every year at Thanksgiving and I even created my own cheesecake recipe in a baking contest at the Woodstock Fair one year. So you can see that I have a pretty high bar for cheesecake to get over and getting this high of a score tells you that this is really a good cheesecake.
Let’s start with the crust, which I have already raved about. This one was a little more crumbly than previous ones so I blame myself for not measuring closely enough to get the right balance of dry/wet ingredients. That said, it is still far, far better than past recipes. You do need to get it high on the sides for this one so the filling is cooked consistently around the edge.
I have a cookbook that Borden made a few decades ago that uses sweetened condensed milk (SCM) in every recipe. (It’s the cookbook most likely to cause a family feud when I die and the will is read.). There is a chapter in it that focuses on cakes, namely, cheesecakes. I have used that chapter so many times the spine of the book is starting to deform there. You will notice that the before picture doesn’t have a can of SCM in it. That’s because you make it yourself! The texture is perfect and the taste is spot on without the SCM. Mind blown. 🤯
I am also sharing with you two tips for cutting perfect cheesecake slices without gunky edges. You can see in the picture below that there is one cut with gunk and all the rest are clean. I use my huge chef’s knife to cut all the way through in one slice and then run it under warm water to rinse it before cutting the next slice to keep from getting the build up on the blade that leaves the gunk on the next slice. The 2nd trick (and my personal favorite) is to pop the cheesecake into the freezer overnight and then cut it while still frozen. Bonus on this one is for a holiday meal you can make it several days ahead then pull it out of the freezer in the morning, slice it while still frozen, and then let it defrost in the fridge all day for perfectly cut slices at dinner. Could it BE any simpler? Taste and texture are not adversely affected by the freezer stay.
One more tip for the right way to use eggs.
Disclaimer – the top of this cooked a bit much but that’s my fault, not the recipe. I was baking it while also in a meeting that night and had to depend on the timer instead of keeping an eye on it the last 15 minutes or so which is my usual way of cooking these. It should have come out of the oven 5-10 minutes sooner but that wasn’t an option.
