S.KRAUSE

In the Kitchen with Krause #21: Classic Creamy Cheesecake

Classic Creamy Cheesecake

Ingredients:

• 4 (8oz.) packages of cream cheese
• 4 eggs
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 2 teaspoons lemon juice

Directions:

1. In large mixing bowl beat cream cheese at low speed until smooth.
2. Add sugar; beat at low speed just until blended.
3. Add lemon juice, vanilla, and one egg; beat at low speed until egg is blended.
4. Add remaining eggs, one at a time, beating only until just blended, scraping the bowl after each addition.
5. Pour filling into pan over crust. Bake 1 hour 15 minutes to 1 hour 20 minutes until firm except for the very center.
6. Cool completely (on a wire rack); cover and refrigerate at least four hours.

Play-by-Play:

Cheesecake can be fancy, can be spiced up, and so on. But at its simplest it is just cream cheese, sugar, and eggs mixed together and cooked on a crust. When it comes in a box/brick, cream cheese tends to be 8oz. by weight, or half a pound. A simple rule is 1/4 cup sugar and 1 egg per package of cream cheese.

It's hard to really screw up cheesecake; it's rather forgiving, I think. I just had a lot of cream cheese to get rid of, so used all of mine in one batch, which did, however, result in one rather deep cheesecake.

I had a 9" round pan I purchased a while back and decided to use that; a spring-form is rather standard for this sort of thing so you can remove the cheesecake from its “pan.” It might be prettier that way, but I wasn't really concerned with pretty.

When it came to the crust I had no graham crackers on hand, and a graham cracker crust almost seems traditional, but I had no desire to head out in the evening looking for crackers of any sort. I didn't have any stale bread or bread crumbs, etc., so went for a tasty, simple, nutty crust:

• 1/2 stick (1/4 cup) butter, softened
• 1/2 cup flour
• 1/2 cup ground walnuts
• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar

Cut the butter into the dry ingredients with a fork, and then mix with your fingers. Push into and spread around the base of the pan, and bake for 10–15 minutes at about 375F.

Add a quarter to half a cup of oats for something more granola-esque.

After the crust was ready I spooned the filling—I made it more or less as directed but decided to leave out the lemon juice—into the pan, and it came to the top ... that is a lot of cream cheese, after all. A half-batch would have been fine, I suspect. Once it finished baking it puffed up a bit, but did not overflow the rim of the pan and no mess was made.

I let it cool and then covered it and put it in the refrigerator. Thursday afternoon I had a slice or two. Very tasty, quite dense.

I think my neighbor could have used some cheesecake; it calms even the most frayed nerves.

—March 9 2007