Jason's Log

Cheesecake Chronicles #7

Well, the chocolate-chip cheesecake was served for dessert last evening (Christmas Day). In general, I was very happy with the outcome, but I did learn a few things:

1. I will continue to not pre-cook the crust. The double-thick crust that I made for this cheesecake did come out with a slightly burned look/flavor that was mild but noticable.

2. The initial cooking segment (10 minutes at 500 degrees) definitely affects the crust on the side of the cheesecake more than the crust on the bottom. The side-portion of the crust was the part that had the slightly burned taste to it, not the bottom-portion of the crust.

3. For future cheesecakes, I will probably make the double-thick crust, but will keep it on the bottom of the cheesecake, and not apply it to the sides of the springform pan. The cheesecake filling definitely protects the crust from burning when cooked at high temperatures.

4. The use of mini-sized chocolate chips and lightly coating them with flour was enough to keep them from settling on the bottom of the cheesecake during cooking. The chips were suspeneded throughout the cake, just like they should be.

Cheesecake Chronicles #2

In the previous installment, we were working on a sugar-free and carbohydrate-free chocolate flavored cheesecake. When we left off, we have tested two different filling mixtures, and decided that using unsweetened baking chocolate plus splenda was the better approach, but that it wasn't quite chocolatey or sweet enough.

My recommendation on an improved formula (which I have not yet tested) would be:

Base cheesecake filling recipe, plus
6 oz. unsweetened baking chocolate, melted (increased by 2 oz)
0.5 cups Splenda (increased by 0.25 cups)

The cooking technique worked perfectly, so I'm not planning to make any changes to that. Most other cheesecake recipes call for cooking the whole thing at 325 degrees for an hour or so. Each time I have tried that technique, the cheesecake puffed up like a souffle during cooking, then collapsed as soon as it cooled, resulting in lots of ugly cracking. The 500/200 technique has always worked for me, so I'm sticking with it.

The next tests involved a replacement crust for the traditional graham cracker crust...

Cheesecake Chronicles #1

This past week I began a cheesecake baking experiment with two separate goals:

1. To create a very good sugar-free and carbohydrate-free chocolate cheesecake.
2. To create the perfect fully sugar-ified chocolate chip cheesecake.

I decided to start with goal #1. Over the past couple of months, I've shed about 50 pounds of body weight by adopting a low-carbohydrate diet. As with most people who are following that type of diet, desserts can be tough to enjoy. In particular, I really enjoy cheesecakes.

I started with a base recipe that was featured in Cook's Illustrated for a New York-style cheesecake. I've made this cheesecake before, and the results have always been wonderful, so I figured it was a good place to start.

The 'filling' portion of this recipe looks like this:

5 blocks (8 oz each) cream cheese
1/8 teaspoon salt
11/2 cups (10 1/2 ounces) sugar
1/3 cup (2 1/2 ounces) sour cream
2 teaspoons juice from 1 lemon
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 large egg yolks
6 large whole eggs

To start, I made two modifications to this base- 5 blocks (2.5 pounds) of cream cheese makes a whole lot of cheesecake, and I wanted to reduce the overall volume a bit. And because this was going to be a chocolate cheesecake, I didn't want the hint of lemony flavor. My reduced volume and lemon-free base recipe looks like this:

3 blocks (8 oz each) cream cheese
Pinch of salt
1 cup Splenda
0.2 cups of sour cream (just less than 1/4 cup)
1.5 teaspoons of vanilla extract
3 whole eggs
1 egg yolk

The next step was to figure out how to add the chocolate flavor without adding too much carbohydrates. There were two approaches that were open to me: Using unsweetened cocoa powder or unsweetened chocolate. In sepatate batches, I tried both:

Filling Variation A:
Base cheesecake recipe from above
0.5 cups cocoa powder
0.25 cups Splenda

Filling variation B:
Base cheesecake recipe from above
4 oz unsweetened chocolate, melted
0.25 cups Splenda

Each of these filling variations were then baked using the Cook's Illustrated cooking technique (modified slightly to accomodate the reduced size of the cake). This technique is the only one that I have used that will consistently result in a crack-free, thick, rich, dense cheesecake.

1. Preheat oven to 500 degrees
2. Cook cheesecake at 500 deg. for 6 minutes
3. Open over door, reduce temperature to 200 deg
4. Once oven temp drops to 200 deg., close oven door
5. Continue cooking until center of cheesecake reaches 150 deg (about 50 minutes).
6. Cool at room temp for an hour or two, then refrigerate overnight.

Note: I use a Taylor meat themometer to check the cheesecake temp, and a Taylor oven thermometer to gauage actual oven temp.

The results?

In a blind tast-test, Young and I both preferred the cheesecake that was sweetened using the baking chocolate. The cake made using cocoa powder just wan't the right flavor or texture.

However, niether mixture produced a cheesecake that was chocolately or sweet enough to be 'just right'. Another round of tests will be required...

Cheesecake Chronicles #6

The last thing I needed to figure out was how to do a nice thick graham cracker crust for my chocolate chip cheesecake. I started with the base recipe from Cook's Illustrated:

1 package regular graham crackers, ground in food processor
1 tablespoon sugar
5 tablespoons butter, melted

The only problems with this recipe is that it resulted in a crust that just wan't thick enough. Most people I know really like the taste of the crust, so why use such a skimpy amount? Here is what I did:

2 packages graham crackers, finely ground
0.25 cups sugar
8 tablespoons butter, melted

I combined those three ingredients in the food processor, then pressed it into the springform pan. The additional volume of crust allowed me to push some crust up along the sides of the pan, for a crust that surrounded the cheesecake completely instead of just being on the bottom. Much better.

I also decided to not precook the the crust at 350 degrees for 12-15 minutes as per the Cook's Illustrated recipe. In previous tests, the crust had burned just a slight amount during the cheesecake cooking time. Not precooking the crust seemed to help alleviate this problem.

Cheesecake Chronicles #5

In order to get the chocolate chips to not all melt and settle on the bottom of the cheesecake, I made two modificaitons:

1. I used the mini-sized semisweet chocolate chips.
2. Befure use, I lighly coated the chips with baking flour in a zip-loc bag.

This time around, I added 0.33 cups of the the flour-coated mini chips directly to the batter just before pouring it into the crust. These were incorporated by just lighly folding them in, not using a mixer or beater.

Once the filling was poured into the crust (more on the crust later), another 0.33 cups of the coated chips were lightly sprinkled onto the surface of the cheesecake just before putting it into the oven. We were careful to not put too many on the surface, because we didn't want to create a thick chocolate layer.

The results this time around were wonderful. The mini chips that had been folded into the batter stayed suspended instead of sinking to the bottom. The 0.33 cups of chips sprinkled on the top looked nice, and did not lead to any cracking when used with the 500/200 cooking technique (see earlier Cheesecake Chronicle entries for information on this technique).

Cheesecake Chronicles #4

At the outset of this set of experiements, I had two goals. One was to create a really good low-carb chocolate cheesecake. See the Cheesecake Chronicles entries #1-3 for the story of how I achieved that initial goal. The second goal, however, was to put together a really good chocolate-chip cheesecake using regular ingredients (plenty of sugar).

As I did in my low-carb quest, I did want to reduce the original Cook's Illustrated recipe a bit, so I started with the following base:

3 blocks (8 oz each) cream cheese
Pinch of salt
1 cup Sugar
0.2 cups of sour cream (just less than 1/4 cup)
1.5 teaspoons of vanilla extract
3 whole eggs
1 egg yolk

This base also removes the lemon zest, which is part of the Cook's Illustrated recipe. I did this because I didn't want the lemony flavor to contrast with the chocolate chips.

My first attempt at this recipe used regulat-sized semisweet chocolate chips that were incorporated into the batter before baking. The result was a very good tasting cheesecake with a thick layer of melted chocolate just above the crust. This isn't exactly what I was looking for, so I another experiement was in order.

Cheesecake Chronicles #3

Although we now have a low-carb chocolate cheesecake filling that tastes really good, we still needed a replacement for the crust. To start, I used a base recipe taken from the 500 Low-Carb Recipes cook book. We'll call this base recipe 'Variation A'.

Crust Variation A:
1 cup hazelnuts, finely ground in a food processor
0.25 cups vanilla-flavored whey protein powder
4 tablespoons butter, melted

The first crust made with this recipe turned out awful. The nuts were not ground finely enough, and the resulting flavor was too nutty and bitter. It literally ruined the whole cheesecake. I decided to try another set of blind taste tests using two additional crust variations:

Crust Variation B:
1 cup hazelnuts, very finely ground
0.25 cups vanilla-flavored whey protein powder
6 tablespoons butter, melted
0.25 cups Spenda
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Crust Variation C:
1 cup plain almonds, very finely ground
0.25 cups vanilla-flavored whey protein powder
6 tablespoons butter, melted
0.25 cups Spenda
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

The results?

Variation A was easy to pick out, and was still plain awful. Variations B and C were vast improvements over the base recipe. They were not bitter at all and were much more like a real graham cracker crust. My preference is for the hazelnut version (Variation B), while Young preferred the almond version (Variation C). The hazelnut version does have a slightly more noticable nutty flavor, but is a tad sweeter, which I actually enjoyed. The almond version had a more neutral flavor that Young thought would go over better with most people.

If you are serving this to guests, I think it would be good to tell them that you have an alternate crust, just so they don't bite into the cheesecake expecting a graham cracker crust only to get something a bit different. However, the crusts were still very good tasting substitutes to the traditional variety.