Skip to main content

Basque burnt cheesecake

Once upon a time we went to San Sebastian and there was a restaurant which sold pretty much only cheesecakes. They sold other things, but San Sebastian is a town where each restaurant has one or two items for which they are known for, and when the walls are covered in cheesecakes, it's fairly obvious what this place sells.

Now it seems basque burnt cheesecakes have reached a new kind of cult status so naturally I had to try.  The recipe I used was from Bon Appetit, which for a 10 inch cake pan was far too big for me to contemplate. Instead, I reduced it by half and used a 7 inch pan. Also because I made it on the same week as a guiness cake we discovered the two are very palatable eaten together.



Ingredients:
480g cream cheese (room temperature)
150g caster sugar
3 eggs
240ml double cream
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla extract (I used vanilla paste for some nice flecks)
20g plain flour

Method:
1. Blend the cream cheese, sugar, eggs and cream in order. (Wooden spoon
works fine)
2. Add salt and vanilla.
3. Sprinkle flour across the surface and fold in gently. The end result should be smooth and unaerated.
4. Bake in a lined tin (traditionally as per the picture, just scrunched in parchment paper) for 40 minutes at 200C, turn the oven off and allow to cool inside with the door ajar for another ten minutes.

For the memories... holiday shots below...



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Rachel Allen's Chicken Pie

Some things should be noted. I'm not a major fan of Rachel Allen. She always seemed such a poor man's version of Nigella. Some trophy wife of a producer somewhere making a lady of leisure's living of cookery shows playing up the Irish accent in a cavernous show kitchen. Perhaps it was because all her helpful "tricks" had already been touted by others a long time ago - like getting the garlic smell out of your hands... But over the years she's kind of grown on me. The format is a little twee, the pink accessories want to make me barf, but she isn't the spawn of all things faux goddess anymore. (FYI I have no idea with regards to her personal life etc, but like my distaste for Ashley Judd, one wonders how she gets good films with little acting skill.) So here I was, tapping away on the internet last week whilst she was on tv, and there it was. A beast of a pie. It was so beautiful. Her job was done. Out I trotted to buy a huge pie dish (we don't own cera...

Low carb diet plan

It's January. I've allowed my weight to grow UP with the Covid curve and somehow it still has not come down. Thanks to a large part to me using up a number of hot chocolate bomb "fails" just before Christmas I think. Wall of text alert - I don't plan on ever writing about this ever again. To be clear, I've never been a fan of carb-cutting. Cutting an entire food group seems wrong. Carbs, as we were taught at school, are cornerstones for growth. I felt like decking a "doctor" at an annual work health check when he told me to cut carbs as a way to get my weight down. The fact he then pushed a blog which was at its infancy at the time felt like a distinct conflict of interest. Anyway, I do absolutely agree I need to cut sugar, and I will never disagree that whole grains are better for you. It is also very, very effective dieting wise on me. We don't know why, I do know I have a lot of water weight which fluctuates a lot in the month and also it does...

Ginger fluff sponge with Apple Sauce filling

This is from the Crabapple Bakery cupcake cookbook. I've loved this cake for ages, looking at the picture for some time, but finally I made it. Decoration wise I don't have any flowers to put on top so I put the little chocolate mushrooms I bought from the Japan centre on top. This cake I'd definitely remake, but without the sponge fingers which are decoration only and don't add anything. They stay stiff and unyielding against the cream which is almost a disappointment when you're eating it. Ingredients: 1/3 self raising flour 1/3 cup cornflour 3 tsp ground ginger 1 tsp ground cinnamon 2 tsp cocoa 5 eggs, separated 3/4 cup caster sugar 1 tbsp golden syrup - Apple sauce - Whipped cream - Sponge fingers (250g pack works fine) Method: 1. Mix all the dry ingredients (bar sugar) together 2. Beat egg whites to peaks, add sugar and keep whisking, then add yolks and golden syrup 3. Fold dry into the egg mix 4. Bake in two greased pans (18-20cm round sandwich tins) for 15 mi...