There are many recipes for Basque Burnt Cheesecake available on the internet, and some of those recipes helped me to understand how this Cheesecake needs to be made. And then, I measured all the ingredients according to my experience with baking, and here is my version of Basque Burnt Cheesecake which is a delight to experience.
A not-so-good-looking Cheesecake, but it went viral A few years ago. In the well-liked recipes of Basque Burnt Cheesecake, one of the ingredients was double cream. Now double cream is a cream that you whip to make whipping cream. I used fresh cream in this recipe instead of double cream, I’ve nothing against double cream, but I didn’t want to use hydrogenated oil-based double cream here. It’s not easy to get dairy-based double cream everywhere in India, whereas dairy-based fresh cream is easy to find in local stores. Fresh cream worked wonderfully in this recipe, and every morsel of the cake was loved by my family.
I hope you’d love to try this recipe for your family & friends. Don’t forget to tell me about your experiences with it.
Crustless and Convenient
It’s the easiest Cheesecake to attempt, especially for the no-crust reason. Imagine you don’t have to make a crust from powdered biscuits and butter, so one step has reduced from the usual Cheesecake making. You only need to make a batter, transfer it to the pan, bake and it’s done!
Basque Burnt Cheesecake vs. Baked Cheesecake
Basque Burnt Cheesecake is denser than regular Baked Cheesecake, which is light in texture and tastes much airy on the bite. On the other hand, the burnt top of Basque Cheesecake is just fabulous, which compliments its dense interior perfectly. Due to the high-temperature baking, the Basque Burnt Cheesecake appears different and tastes more unusual than a flawless Baked Cheesecake, which we bake relatively at a lower temperature over a water bath.
If you can maintain the temperature for a short duration, this Cheesecake travels well in comparison to the other varieties of Cheesecakes.
Basque Burnt Cheesecake
The crustless Basque Burnt Cheesecake rose to fame due to its dark caramelized top and creamy, dense interior. A delight to experience, it’s easy to whip up, loved by everyone, and a crowd pleaser, an upcoming star at your next party.
Ingredients
- 400g- Cream Cheese
- 3- Eggs
- 1¼ cups / 175g- Caster Sugar or Powdered Sugar (read notes)
- 200ml / ¾ cup- Fresh cream (I used Amul’s)
- 3 tbsp- All-purpose flour/Maida
- ⅛ tsp / a pinch- Salt
- 1½ tsp- Vanilla extract
Instructions
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All the ingredients were at room temperature before I started.
Preparing the Cake pan
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Use a 7” Round cake pan. A loose-bottomed cake pan or a regular cake pan, any of this works for this recipe.
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I used a 6.5” inch pan this time because I wanted thick slices. But a pan of that size might not give me a photogenic Basque Burnt Cheesecake with a flat middle surface along with thick raised borders I thought, and that is what happened here. But who cares, this ugly deliciousness has all my heart!
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Grease the cake pan with vegetable oil, this step is optional. You can easily lift the Cheesecake by the top edges of the baking paper when it cools down after baking. Greasing with oil only helps the baking papers to sit better in the pan.
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Cut two large equal sheets of baking paper to line the pan. The sheets should be such in size that after you place them in the pan, they must be 1” up from the walls of the pan. Basque Burnt Cheesecake rises quite a bit during the baking, so the raised papers support the Cheesecake at that stage.
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While you set the sheets of paper in the cake pan, allow them to create random creases and folds throughout the inside wall of the pan. That is the way you could achieve the rustic impression around the Basque Burnt Cheesecake afterward, one of the hallmarks of this Cheesecake.
Preparing the batter and baking
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Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C.
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In a bowl add softened cream cheese, and whisk until smooth, don't whisk too long. Use an electronic hand mixer to get the best result.
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Now to this, add sugar in 3 batches, and keep whisking until everything blends well.
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Next, add the eggs and vanilla extract to the batter, one at a time, whisk after adding one, then add the next egg.
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Next, add the fresh cream to the batter, and whisk well.
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Now sift flour and salt over the batter, and whisk well until a smooth mixture forms.
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Transfer the batter to the baking paper-lined cake pan. Tap the cake pan gently on the kitchen counter a couple of times, and swirl the top of the batter with a spatula to release the air bubbles. Bake for 50 minutes.
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The cake shall rise during the baking and come down to a flat top gradually after you remove it from the oven. It’s ok if the top of this Cheesecake develops cracks during the baking, they close on their own to fine lines during the cooling time that is after baking.
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Watch for a dark brown top during the baking, and you’d know that the Cheesecake is done. When you’d take out the Cheesecake from the oven, the middle of it would jiggle, and the jiggle settles slowly when the cake cools.
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Transfer the Cake pan to a cooling rack and let it be cooled completely in the pan itself at room temperature.
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You can serve the cake after it cools. But I prefer it to stay in the refrigerator for a minimum of 3-4 hours, or overnight before serving.
Recipe Notes
- In my recipes, I use 250 ml cups. 1 cup = 250ml.
- Now you must know when you’re weighing ingredients by metrics over a kitchen weighing scale, you calculate only the weight of the ingredient and not the container in which you kept the ingredient over the weighing scale to measure it. In this scenario, always consider deducting the weight of the container from the total unit of metrics, this is how you’d get the actual weight of an ingredient.
