Shared from the 12/15/2016 The Daily Gazette eEdition

Say cheesecake, even if you’re a novice

Presenting this decadent dessert after a big holiday meal is well worth the effort

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PHOTO COURTESY SUNY COBLESKILL

From left: Pumpkin cheesecake with gingersnap crust, mocha cheesecake with chocolate cookie crumbs and crust, and white chocolate raspberry cheesecake with graham cracker crumb crust in the SUNY Cobleskill culinary lab.

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Students inspect their cheesecakes in the SUNY Cobleskill culinary lab.

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Cloughly

New York-style cheesecake

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Students in the SUNY Cobleskill culinary lab soften cream cheese as the fi rst step in batter production for their cheesecakes. Professor Jo Anne Cloughly reminds her students to let all the indredients warm up before beginning to make the cheesecake.

Makes one 9-inch cake, serves 8-10

CAKE 2 pounds cream cheese at room temperature 2 cup sugar 1/2 cup fl our 1 cup sour cream, room temperature 1- 1/2 cup eggs, room temperature, lightly beaten in the measuring cup 2 Tbsp. vanilla extract 1 Tsp. almond extract (optional)

CRUST 1/2 cup graham cracker crumbs 1/4 cup sugar 3 Tbsp. cool melted butter

STEPS

1. Preheat oven to 325.

2. Wrap outside of 9” springform pan with foil and grease the inside.

3. Mix crust ingredients. Pat mixture into base of pan and 1/2 inch up the sides. Set aside.

4. With mixer on low speed, blend cream cheese until smooth. Scrape bowl often.

5. Add sugar and fl our, blend well.

6. Add sour cream and mix to blend.

7. Slowly add eggs, one third at a time, and mix on low until blended. Scrape bowl after each addition.

8. Add vanilla and almond extracts and mix to blend.

9. Pour into pan and bake in a water bath until cake is set and its top loses its shine. This will be about 45 minutes, but judge by the appearance of the cake rather than the timer.

10. Cool in water bath and then chill overnight before removing from pan.

Flavor variations

PUMPKIN: Substitute 1/2 cup ground gingersnaps for graham cracker crumbs in crust mix. Add 1/2 cup pumpkin puree and 1 Tbsp. pumpkin spice mix to the batter before adding the eggs.

COOKIES AND CREME: Use 3/4 cup fi nely ground crumbs from Oreo or similar chocolate-vanilla creme sandwich cookies for crumb crust — no need to add any butter or sugar! Omit almond extract from batter. Stir 1 cup broken cookie pieces into batter. After batter is in pan, arrange seven or eight whole cookies on top of batter. This one should sit overnight — the cookies will soften to become cakelike.

AMARETTO: Add the optional almond extract along with 1/4 cup almond liqueur. Pour into crust and top with 1/2 cup sliced, skin-on almonds.

GRASSHOPPER: Use 3/4 cup fi nely ground Oreo cookies for crumb crust — no need to add any butter or sugar. Omit optional almond fl avoring and instead add 1/4 cup creme de menthe liqueur.

WHITE CHOCOLATE RASPBERRY: Omit optional almond extract, instead add 1/4 cup raspberry liqueur. Add 1/2 cup melted but cooled white chocolate chips into batter. Pour batter into crust and swirl1/2 cup raspberry preserves into batter.

There are dozens of different types of cheesecakes, each one treasured by the region or culture that developed it. And yet there really are only two types: Those you make yourself and those you buy from a bakery.

It’s not a particularly diffi cult cake to make, requiring only a short list of ingredients and no specialized equipment or skills beyond those the casual home baker probably already possesses.

The wonderful smell of a cheesecake baking in the oven and the pride of presenting a homemade version for the closing act of a big holiday meal make it worth the effort for even the novice baker. As a bonus, it needs to be baked at least a day in advance, so it’s one less thing to do on the holiday itself.

Of all the cheesecake styles out there, we’ll focus on the familiar New York-style — super-dense yet still creamy. And for guidance, we turn to Jo Anne Cloughly, professor of culinary arts at SUNY Cobleskill.

Cloughly recently helped guide the Student Pastry Arts Club through its annual fundraiser, in which the 15 members created hundreds of cheesecakes to be sold before Thanksgiving. Every year, she fi ne-tunes the recipe a bit to make it just a little closer to perfection.

“This year my thing was, how do we eliminate some of the settling?” she said.

Why cheesecake for the annual fundraiser, and not, say, cupcakes or pies?

“One, it’s different. You’re not going to have it every day,” Cloughly explained. “Cheesecake is this super-delectable dessert that represents a special occasion.”

Students are willing pupils when cheesecake is on the curriculum, and Cloughly herself practices what she preaches, sometimes having a slice to accompany her morning coffee.

New York is her preferred style.

“I like a really heavy, heavy cheesecake,” she said. “I like a cheesecake that you have to really dig your fork into.”

This is accomplished with cream cheese, sour cream or heavy cream, and a thickener such as fl our or cornstarch.

Other styles such as French, Italian or German cheesecake are usually made with different cheeses and may also omit the thickener, depending on the baker. Classic French cheesecake, in particular, is known for being light and fl uffy, a world apart from New York-style cheesecake.

Cloughly learned her craft at the Otesaga Hotel in Cooperstown and worked there many years as a pastry chef before baking at Union College and then the Holiday Inn Turf in Colonie. For professional development, she would take classes at SUNY Cobleskill, and eventually was invited to join the faculty there as an adjunct professor. She’s now a professor, helping train a new generation of culinary students.

Most of the Student Pastry Arts Club members are culinary students, though the club is open to the entire student body.

Cloughly offers the same guidance to her students in the big culinary laboratory as she offers to Gazette readers in their home kitchens.

It can be summarized succinctly — be accurate and be thorough — but the specifi cs below are worth knowing too, whether you are baking your fi rst cheesecake or fi netuning your hundredth, particularly if you are following the recipe that accompanies this story.

› Use quality ingredients. Cloughly likes Philadelphia-brand cream cheese (the foil-wrapped blocks, not the whipped plastic tubs, which are too light and airy for cheesecake). And she will sometimes replace the vanilla extract with the seeds from a single vanilla bean for a more delicate fl avor. This can get expensive — that single bean may cost several dollars. Stick with extract if you like, but use genuine extract, not imitation. Or try vanilla bean paste, which is between beans and extract in price and is less labor-intensive than whole beans.

› Eggs are a big variable. Four large eggs from a supermarket do not equal the four super-jumbo orbs from your local organic farmer. That’s why the recipe calls for a specifi c measure of eggs, rather than a particular number.

› Let the ingredients warm up before starting. That includes the eggs, the sour cream and especially the cream cheese, which is stiff and stubborn at 35 degrees. “You want room-temperature ingredients. They mix better,” Cloughly says.

› Mix slowly and thoroughly. Don’t rush this! That’s one of the important lessons aspiring bakers have to learn in the college’s culinary lab, Cloughly said: “The students want to get it done and move on.” But getting it done thoroughly is better than getting it done quickly. The eggs, in particular, should be added very slowly.

› Bake and cool the cheesecake in a water bath — wrap the bottom and sides of the springform pan in foil to keep it dry and then place it in a baking pan or dish half fi lled with water. This will keep the oven humid and will moderate the temperature of the springform pan itself, preventing unwanted changes in texture and moistness as the project turns from batter to cake.

› Don’t rely entirely on the timer — keep an eye on the cake in the oven. It will go from pudding-like to perfect to overcooked in a surprisingly short period of time. Remove it when it is no longer shiny wet on top but not yet over-browned. Then cool it gradually and completely, again in a water bath to moderate the temperature.

› Chill the cake completely before slicing but don’t wait too long — the crust will absorb moisture and start to get soggy after a few days.

› Slice the cake with a single downward motion with a wet knife, then draw the knife straight out from the bottom, rinse it off, and cut the next slice while the knife is still wet. Don’t use a sawing motion, and don’t lift the knife out of the cut — you’ll bring up crumbs from the crust.

› Many cheesecakes lose some of their creamy texture when frozen, and become crumbly instead of creamy once thawed, though the taste should be as good as ever.

› Follow the steps to create a good-looking cheesecake. “The biggest thing is, they crack when they’re baking or when they’re cooling,” Cloughly said. “That’s why we cook and cool in water.” But don’t fret if your cheesecake does crack. As long as they are not undercooked (too wet) or overcooked (too dry), cracked cakes taste the same as intact cakes. If you slice it creatively, your guests may not even know it was cracked.

› And never, ever try to shave calories by using low-fat cheese or substituting egg whites for whole eggs. “No, it’s not going to work!” Cloughly said. “The whole idea is to make it really decadent.”

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