Hi ,
I have two favourite cheesecake recipes. I didn't need to do anything special, they just always turned out wonderfully. One is for a baked cheesecake, the other recipe isn't cooked; it goes in the fridge to set.
The recipes use cream cheese. But because I live in Germany, I thought I'd use the local product - quark. I thought it would be easy - leave the cream cheese out and add the same amount of quark.
But, I've had problems.
Last year I tried the recipe that goes in the fridge. The taste was good. However, the mixture didn't set (1). I think quark is softer than cream cheese, so the mixture was different (runnier (2)), but it still looked OK.
A big problem was I changed another ingredient, too. I wanted to share the cheesecake with a couple of vegetarians, so I didn't use gelatine to set the mixture, I used agar-agar. Clearly you need to use far more agar-agar than gelatine for the same amount of liquid (3), because my cheesecake didn't set properly.
I made it again a couple of weeks later and used more agar-agar. That time it worked and I was brave enough to take it to my workplace and share (4) it.
I've just made the baked cheesecake and I was disappointed with the results. Let me say that again - I was disappointed with how the cheesecake looked and the amount there was, but it tasted good!
The mixture was too runny when I put it in the oven. I think the problem was the quark. I needed to take the quark out of its container and separate the liquid (the whey) from the cheese. Plus, I don't think there was enough mixture. In the end there was a lot of the biscuit layer at the bottom, but not much cheesecake on top of it!
I'll try again soon, and use more quark than the recipe says. Plus I'll drain the quark before adding it to the mixture. Hopefully I'll get a better result.
When you cook, , do you follow exactly what the recipe says, or do you make changes? When you make changes, are you successful, or do you need to try several times to get a good result?
Wishing a week of successful cooking and baking,
Andrea
(1) set - change from a liquid (like water, or milk) to a solid (like jelly)
(2) runnier - flow more easily. For example, water is runnier than oil, or hand cream.
(3) liquid - something like water, that moves to fill the shape of the container you put it in. Oil is another liquid.
(4) share - not keep it all for me, give it to other people
0 comments