Baking Cheesecake The Easy Way

As a former baker, I was once responsible for baking cheesecake in truly massive amounts something like eighty to one hundred and sixty cheesecakes a day. I truly doubt you will ever want to turn out that many cheesecakes, but I can use my hard-won wisdom to give you some tips on how to turn out perfect cheesecakes at home, every time.

The trick to baking cheesecake isnt in the batter theres plenty of variation possible in creating your cake. A traditional New York cheesecake is deceptively simple, consisting of just cream cheese, butter, flour, sugar, eggs, and heavy cream, with a little vanilla extract and citrus zest for flavoring. Mixing up the taste profile of your cake is as simple as stirring in the ingredient of your choice fruit, chocolate chips, you name it.

No, the real magic in baking cheesecakes comes in the actual baking process itself. To bake the perfect cheesecake, you need one essential piece of equipment a springform pan. This special bakers tool allows you to pop the bottom out of the pan when your cake is finished baking, letting you slide the completed cake out without having to wedge it out with a knife or other tool and keeping the shape of your cheesecake round and aesthetically pleasing. The pans retail for fairly cheap, and if youre really interested in making the perfect cheesecake, youll need one.

But surely a pan cant make all the difference, I hear you asking. And you would be correct there is one more ingredient to baking cheesecake like the professionals, and thats the use of a water bath. It may seem counter-intuitive, but you need to submerge your springform pan into hot water before you put it into the oven. Wrap the pan with aluminum foil to ensure that it doesnt leak and place it into any good-sized baking pan with raised edges. Fill the pan with hot water and bake your cheesecake, testing for doneness with an instant-read thermometer (its ready to come out when the internal temperature is over 165 degrees).

After you remove it from the oven, it needs to chill for at least an hour, and ideally overnight. Chilling the cake will both set the consistency and pull it away from the edges of the pan, allowing you to drop the springform bottom and extract your perfectly baked cheesecake with ease. Plate, decorate, and youve got a fantastic dessert that will impress even the most jaded gustator.