Basque cheesecake is a baked cheesecake, not just baked, but burnt! Unlike classic New York cheesecake that is in perfect round shape and with a glazed top, Basque cheesecake is full of cracks and rough edges like a city that is bombarded. Although Basque cheesecake is the ugly duckling in the elegant cheesecake kingdom, its unique bitter-sweet taste and its creamy texture have helped it earn the place in the dessert world. Now, let us take a look at how this amazing cheesecake is made.
Before you start on the cake, preheat the oven to 220°c first. Second, cover your 6-inch baking pan with 2 parchment papers. It is perfectly fine if the papers are wrinkled because Basque cheesecake is all about imperfection. Just make sure your pan is fully covered, or else the cheesecake and the pan will fall deeply in love; when you finish baking, no force can do them apart. Then, cut off the extra parchment papers that stick out of the pan so that the papers won’t touch the oven and turn your cheesecake into flame.
Now, you can finally move on to the cake. First, beat 450g of cream cheese until smooth in a bowl with an electric hand whisk. A normal hand whisk will also do, but your hands might tremble when you wake up in the next morning. Secondly, add 135g of sugar into a bowl and mix until the sugar dissolves. After that, add three eggs into the mixture slowly. Make sure you the crack eggs in another bowl and check if the eggs are still fresh before you add them to the batter. This step seems unnecessary; however, a rotten egg can ruin the whole cake batter and put you back to square one. Next, get another bowl, sift 11g of flour with a sifter and add 225g of whipping cream. Mix until there are no lumps left. Then, combine the two mixtures and add 5g of vanilla extract and 10g of lemonade. It is better for you to use the vanilla bean. The rich flavor of the bean will take your cake into another level, but will also put you in a financial crisis because the vanilla bean is a luxurious ingredient. Finally, sift the mixture into a clean pan through a sifter to get rid of any lump. Put the cake into the oven.
Next up, lie on your couch or your bed, watch an episode of TV series on Netflix and completely forget that there is a Basque cheesecake baking in your oven. When you smell the burnt scent and recall the existence of the cheesecake, you should dash to the kitchen and find out the cake is burnt. The cheesecake will be colored in black and the middle of the cake will sink if you nail every single step stated above.
There you go! A perfectly baked Basque cheesecake. Wait until it reaches the room temperature and enjoy!