ReCPY: Japanese Cheese Cake

I don't like cheese cake. Especially NY-style cheese cake, which is like eating cream cheese as is. You are done after one bite, it's enough. In Japan, we have baked cheesecake, which is very light and fluffy. This week's recipe is how to make ever-so light baked cheese cake. The art of Japanese cheese cake is how NOT to crack the top when baking. Since the batter is so soft, it often cracks ss the cake rises, and that's sad. With this recipe, apparently you can have an uncrackable top (I haven't achieved it yet), and fluffy as hell. Once you have this cake, you won't go back to Juniors any more.

Ingredients:
One stick of cream cheese
200 ml milk
4 eggs separated
40 grams of cake flour
20 grams of corn starch
juice from one lemon (or lime)
70 grams sugar

The key to the uncrackable top is to have parchment paper around the cake tin, higher than the cake mold itself. Place another piece of parchment paper on the bottom. Use butter or butter spray (I was lazy and used spray) on the mold, then stick parchment paper around it. Butter works as glue here. Then spread a generous amount of butter on the parchment paper, dust it with powdered sugar, dust off the excess. Keep it in the fridge. It's kind of an annoying process, but this does help rise the cake to the maximum, and when you do it right, the top doesn't crack at all.


Process:
1. Put cream cheese and milk in a small pan, and heat it until cheese are soft, mix them well until it's well blended. Then cool it (I find this very important to wait until it completely cools) I am sure you can do it with room temperature cream cheese, but you don't have to wait until cheese gets soft in this method.
2. Add egg yolk one at a time.
3. Add 1/3 of sugar (the rest goes into egg whites).
4. Sift flour and starch together, and add it into the batter slowly so that it doesn't create lumps.
5. Add lemon(lime) juice
6. Make meringue. Beat egg whites, and slowly add sugar, beat it until it's very stiff.
7. Mix 1/4 meringue into cheese mixture, mix well.
8. Now, mix the batter into meringue, this makes it easier rather than mixing meringue into batter.
9. Once everything is mixed, pour it into the mold.
10. Bake on 360˚F for 20 minutes, in a water bath, then lower it to 340˚F and bake additional 40 minutes until nothings sticks to a tooth pick.

It rises quite a lot thanks to stiff meringue, but unfortunately it cracked a little. Oh well, I will try until I have a successful cake.

It shrinks a lot, but it's inevitable, apparently. I brushed loosened jam on top to make it look shiny and keep the top moist.

Umami porn here.

This cake is so light and fluffy, you can basically eat the whole pie easily. It might sound too much involved, but trust me, it's worth the effort.

*Yamahomo likes cooking and baking. He prefers staying in kitchen all weekend long than being outside. Come back every Monday to check out his new creations on ReCPY.