American Cheesecake Experiment

I've always been a big fan of cheesecake, but while I've made some pretty tasty cheesecakes, I've never been 100% successful. My cakes ended up cracked or the texture too dense. After making a bunch of Japanese cheesecakes and finally having a good oven, I turned my attention back to American cheesecake once again. I tried the chocolate swirl cheesecake recipe found in Better Homes and Gardens' Old-Fashioned Home Baking but with a few minor changes. Instead of 24 oz (680 g) of softened cream cheese, I only had 670 g of cheese instead. I also use 1.5 cup of Oreo crumbs with about 2 tablespoons of melted butter as the crust. The springform pan was 9".

With a hand mixer I mixed cream cheese, imported fine granulated sugar, vanilla, and all purpose flour together until the ingredients were well combined. Then, I added two eggs and a yolk to the mixture and, again using the hand mixer, beat the mixture until just till combined. The mixture was actually still a bit chunky but I switched to my wooden spoon to finish the mixing. After the milk was added, I split the batter in half and added the melted chocolate to one half. I poured all the batter into the pan, made swirls using a small spatula, and placed the cake in the oven.

The starting temperature was 375 but it dropped down to around 350 when the cake was in the oven. I noticed that oil (butter in the crust?) kept dripping out of the springform pan. Thank goodness I placed a cookie sheet under the springform pan. I let the cake bake for around 35 minutes before I checked it. I finally took the cake out around 45-50 minutes when tiny cracks started to appear. I think I could have taken the cake out around 40-45 minutes instead. I let the cake cool on a wire rack for about 15 minutes before I ran my knife around the edge of the cake. I then let the cake cool for another 30 minutes before taking the pan off the cake. I chilled the cake in the fridge overnight after the cake completely cooled on the counter.

The cake received very favorable comments from Wid's parents and Wid. It's surprising because Wid isn't a fan of American cheesecake yet he liked the one I made this time. The cook's sister who's the baker of the family said she likes the swirly pattern. Overall the cake had really good flavor and texture. It's not as fluffy as the ones from Cheesecake Factory, but the texture is still very cheesecake-like. The sweetness is just right for everyone. The edge of the cake was really brown so next time I'll have to remember to use more crumbs and build the crust up about an inch.

Now I'm tempted to try new cheesecake recipe though using 24 oz of cheese at a time is rather scary. Hehe.

Various Experiments

Here are some experiments from the past few months. I've never bothered to post them before because I was lazy.

I made the orange sponge cake and the Japanese cheesecake the same day for Wid's mom, if I remember correctly. The Japanese cheesecake turned out well as usual, but the orange sponge cake didn't because about 3/4 way into baking the gas ran out so the temperature dropped. The volume wasn't as good as before, but it did pass the upside down test. The cake tasted good and it was still moist and fluffy. Here is the original post about the two cakes.


I tried a recipe from the The New Best Recipe. The cake had a wonderful buttery taste, but it was rather compact. It had a more biscuit texture than cake texture. I don't know why it didn't raise like a normal cake. Maybe the baking power wasn't potent enough. The frosting was pretty much whipped melted chocolate and heavy cream; it tasted very decadent!

Tale of Three Sponge Cakes

Last Thursday I wanted to make the orange sponge cake for my language teacher's birthday. I was fairly successful in my previous attempt. Wid's dad loved it and so did Bonnie the dog who hates oranges. I thought it would be easy to make the cake, and I did everything perfectly until the very end when I took the cake out of the oven. When I inverted the cake to cool, it plopped onto the counter. I guess the 1 hour cooking time as suggested by the cookbook wasn't long to cook the cake completely. I immediately figured out possible sources of problems: oven temperature wasn't high enough, I'm just not quite used to new oven yet, and the pan was too small (it was around 9.5" instead of 10" tube pan).

Since it was so heart breaking to see my cake failed so spectacularly like that, I was determined to try again as soon as possible. My chance came pretty quickly because Wid's mom wanted me to bake a cake for Wid's brother's birthday. She wanted a Japanese cheesecake, which I made, but I decided to make the sponge cake also. This time I used the same pan and recipe except at the end, I took out enough batter to make six cupcakes. The cupcakes were done in about 40 minutes. The cake was in the oven for one hour and 20 minutes. I think the cake might have been done around one hour and 10 minutes, but in the end the cake passed the upside down test and was cooled over night at room temperature.

The cupcakes cooked quickly so I put it in the living room. Wid's dad asked for one, scarfed it down really quickly, and asked for another one immediately. It's pretty cute because of he was so enthusiastic and happy about eating the cake. He said it tasted like a traditional cake (I guess it's similar in taste and texture of a madeline-like cake that's available here) and he liked the cake because it doesn't have a tough/hard crust. This makes the third cake to met his seal of approval. Wid and I ate two of the cupcakes for snack later in the night and in the morning Wid's dad ate another cupcake.

When we brought the two cakes to the birthday lunch, the orange cake was gone the first, followed by my cheesecake (a crowd pleaser usually), and then Wid's sis's (failed) cheese and carrot cake. The orange sponge cake was light and fluffy like before. It wasn't as wet as before but the level of the moisture in this cake was perfect. The crust stayed mostly intact as well, unlike the first cake, because it was taken out of the pan after it was cooled completely. Plus this time no complaints about the cake being under done. For some reason Indonesians think cakes should be oily or bone dry. Overall, I'm very happy my cakes turned out well. Now I'm tempted to try the cheese carrot cake challenge that Wid's mom proposed.

Bavarois (trial #2)

Accepting Wid's request for bavarois, I tried making the dessert again on Monday. This time I reduced the amount of sugar by a quarter (60 g to 45 g). I took more care in dissolving the gelatin and in reheating the mixture after the addition of the egg yolk. When I served the dessert to Wid, I added a bit of the leftover ganache from the chocolate cake. No whipped cream this time because I didn't want to open up the 1 L box. He really loved the second batch because of the combination of the good chocolate and the slightly less sweet cream. He also thought the texture was better though I do not know if the lessening of sugar contributed to the change in the texture.

Since Ana and Hadi came to dinner for the Taiwanese deep fried pork chops, I gave them the dessert too. First they shared the one cup of bavarois. Then, Hadi came into the kitchen and asked, "So what other desserts are there?" We gave him the second cup of bavarois and a slice of the chocolate cake. He seemed to like the chocolate a lot even though normally he hates chocolate (it gives him a head ache).

So I guess mission accomplished. Next French dessert on the list is eclair. I need to find more ways of using the ganache before it goes bad.

Gâteau au Chocolat (Chocolate Cake)

While I read reading my new book Jacques Pépin's The Complete Techniques, I came across a recipe for the basic sponge cake (génoise) that's very versatile. I decided to try out the recipe because I'm a fan of sponge cakes. The recipe called for two 8-inches round pan but we didn't have any in the house so I ended up using two 9-inches pan instead. What I thought was interesting was the first step where you heat the eggs, sugar, and vanilla over boiling water or the burner to make it lukewarm. Then you "over beat" the mixture for about 10 minutes because you need to add the melted butter at the very last stage. Flour was then sifted and folded into the mixture. Because the oven temperature is almost impossible to adjust, I ended up baking the cakes at around 170-175 C. When the cake came out of the oven, it looked gorgeous with this wonderful golden brown color. The smell was lovely also. Wid's mom thought the cake was a bit undercook, but it looked and felt fine to me. It was a bit hard to get the cake out of the pan, but maybe I was a bit too impatient while waiting for the cake to cool a bit.

After thinking for quite a bit about what sort of cake to make (fruit with cream, chocolate, or tiramisu), I decided on the chocolate cake filled with whipped ganache and coated with more ganache. The next day I assembled the cake. I cut each cake into halves. I couldn't cut the cake into thirds because it was too thin. I made two batches of ganache with semisweet chocolate (instead of half bitter/half semisweet because it's impossible to find bitter chocolate here) and heavy cream. First batch was whipped and flavored with a bit of rum, and I used this to frost each layer of the cake and all over the cake once it was assembled. The second batch was allowed to cook to room temperature which was then poured all over the cake to make the shell/coating. I wanted to follow the direction in the book to make the white frosting, which was used as decorations, but because we ran out of eggs I couldn't make the frosting nor could I make another frosting that I used for neapoleon because we can't find corn syrup. In the end, I combined a bit of powdered sugar with a bit of honey, water, and lime juice to make something that's workable. Unfortunately, I found out later that it doesn't cool well, but at least I got to decorate the cake.

It was really fun trying to frost and decorate the cake (a first for me), but the best and messiest part of the experience was dumping a large amount of ganache on the cake and letting it run off to the counter. The cake looked very amateur-ish, but it tasted great. Widhy really liked the taste of the cake. I thought the chocolate and the sponge cake went well together and not overwhelmingly sweet, but I'm not happy with the texture of the cake. My mom's sponge cakes always been softer and finer in texture, but all the cakes I had here are coarse. I'm pretty sure one of the reason is that the local flour is inferior to flour from US. Maybe once I mastered basic cake making techniques, I can switch to imported flour to make a better cake.

It kind of sucks to be handicapped by not so awesome ingriendents and bad equiptments. It's very frustrating. Well, at least the chocolate was awesome and it did produce really awesome results.

Bavarois

Wid, his parents, and I returned from our trip to Singapore. I managed to find lots of ingredients for Chinese cooking as well as gelatine for cheap. With the last ingredient in hand, I decided to make Bavarois or Bavarian Cream Monday afternoon. The recipe I used was from my mom's Chinese-translated cookbook on creating desserts without an oven. Since the oven in the house is still broken, this cookbook comes in very handy. I already tried Blun's Mangen, which Wid really liked a few months ago. I read in several places on how to make Bavarois and they all seemed to differ in terms of the order of the steps. For this attempt, the steps were modified based a bit. I first soaked the gelatine powder in water. I warmed the milk and the sugar on the stove until the sugar melted. I then added the gelatine. I then beat two egg yolks in a glass bowl and slowed added the sugar-milk mixture to the eggs. I poured the mixture into a sieve, though I think the sieve was too coarse because everything simply passed through it. Instead of immediately putting the mixture on ice, I returned it to the stove and cooked the cream until it coated my wooden spoon. When I was able to draw a line on the spoon with the coated cream, the cream was the correct consistency. What was interesting is when the cream was almost done, I could hear the change in the sound of the spoon hitting the side of the pot. I let the cream cool in an ice bath as I beat the whipping cream. In my first attempt at beaten the cream, for some mysterious reason, the cream started to curdle like when milk and something acidic were combined together so I had to redo the batch. Once the cream was whipped, I had trouble incorporating the cream and the whipped cream. I think the problem was I added the whipped cream to the cream instead of vice versa. Eventually everything was mixed in nicely and I placed the dishes into the refridgerator.

To serve the Bavarois, I added freshly whipped cream and a piece of Hersey Kiss on each dish of cream. Everyone seemed to like it, but it might be too sweet for Wid's parents' pallet. I thought it was not too sweet, but next time I'll decrease the amount of sugar. I'm also tempted to make a chocolate version later.

Japanese Cheesecake

I finally had time to make the Japanese cheesecake. Unlike American style cheesecake, the Japanese variety is fluffy and light in taste and texture. The lightness is achieved by beating the egg white until still peaks are formed and folded into the cheese/egg yolk/flour mixture. It has been a few months since the last time I baked the cake so I have forgotten some of the details. This time my cake shrunk quite a bit after it was taken out of the oven, but I suspect it's because of the eggs (not warmed up to room temp or too old). At least the cake didn't collapse and the taste was still good.

I was reluctant to make this cake because of our totally unreliable and overly large oven. Temperature control totally depended on the gas fire, and only one person in the house actually has the skills to keep the temperature steady. In the past the temperature would decrease or increase significantly (as much as 50 degrees celcius in about 30 minutes) which caused many baking failures. Miraculously enough, the Japanese cheesecake is my only cake that has not suffered any failure. I believe the reason is that this is the only baking recipe I have that uses a hot water bath (helps maintain a more uniform/steady temperature).

Almond Tofu

Yesterday Wid's mom requested almond tofu (杏仁豆腐) for tonight's dinner party. I made this dessert several times a couple times already, but the first time, it was kind of hard to convince Wid's mom that I knew what I was doing (i.e. I was using too much water). My guess is that people here haven't had "real" Chinese almond tofu and the only ones that they have tried are stiff cubes of agar agar. Almond tofu isn't made of soy bean; it's agar agar, flavored with almond extract and evaporated milk and sweetened by white sugar. Because of the large volume of liquid, the solidified agar agar is soft like tofu and quite slurpable. This dessert is often served with fruit cocktail. The guests at the party dinner loved the dessert because it's not too sweet.

The dinner consisted of Indonesian and Indo-Chinese foods (satay, fried meat balls, meat ball soup, grilled fish, gado-gado, etc.) and quite tasty. Some of the food were spicy (of course!) but I was able to eat them anyway.

I also made a Japanese cheesecake yesterday, but I'll post something about it tomorrow.

Taiwanese Cake (part 2)

A few days ago I decided to try the salty cake recipe again. I made this cake for Wid's dad who wasn't feeling well and didn't have too much apetite. Because of the Chinese medicine he was taking, he couldn't have pork so I decided to make the salty cake except this time I use chicken instead of pork. I managed to break the hand mixer when I tried to beat the egg and sugar. The mixer made a large pop sound along with a bright spark; the mixer shorted out the fuse in the house so everything went dark.

Besides almost electrocuting myself, everything went pretty smoothly. I modified my protocol (sounds like a science experiment. haha) a bit in an attempt to fix the texture problem from my previous attempt. I believed that the dense, doughy texture was due to the overly long cooking time and not enough steam. First change was to use a bigger steamer. Not only more steam would be generated and go through the slots, I could also use a larger baking pan (22 cm instead of 20 cm). Instead of moistening the paper that lined the bottom of the cake pan with butter, I just laid the paper on the very lightly buttered pan, like how we place a small piece of paper under buns for steaming. I tried to maximize the amount of steam produced as well as trying to cut down the total cooking time. I kept the fire on high for full boil during the entire time the cake was steamed. I also cut down the amount of cooking time down from 1+ hour to total of around 35 minutes (about 25 for the first layer and 15 for the second layer), and I checked on the doneness of the cake periodically with the toothpick. Because of these changes in the equiptment and cooking, the cake was perfect! Instead of being doughy and dense like the last cake, the cake had the perfect soft and fluffy texture.

I'll post the pics of the experiment later.

Taiwanese Cake

Last night I made some salty cake (鹹蛋糕) which is a Taiwanese speciality. The cake is actually sweet but the topping consisted of minced pork and fried shallots which give the cake its unusual taste. This is the third time I experimented with this recipe. The first time I was forced to use the oven to bake the cake because I didn't have a large steamer. The second time I used a steamer but because I cut down the amount of ingredients, the cake was a bit too flat. This time the result was much better and the cake is much fuller, but I still have to experiment with the cooking time.

Before making the actual cake, I cooked the minced meat. Instead of following the recipe, I went with my mom's way of preparing this dish. The meat was normally used as an awesome topping for noodles or rice, but it is great for this cake. The pork was stir-fried with garlic and ginger, followed by the addition of water, rice wine, soy sauce, sugar, black and white pepper, and salt if necessary. Fried shallots was added right at the end before everything was transferred to a pot for slow cooking.

While the meat is being slow cooked, I started with the cake batter, which consisted only of eggs, flour, and sugar. Once the eggs and the flour were beaten until stiff and cream-colored, flour was sifted and folded into the egg-sugar mixture. About half of the batter was poured into a 20 cm pan that's greased and lined, and some of the meat and fried shallots were added on top of the batter. After about 10 minutes, the remaining batter, meat, and shallots were added, and the cake was steamed for another 10 minutes. Wid's mom complained that the cake was not completely cooked so she steamed it for another 40 minutes, which I thought was too much time because the cake ended up being more doughy than it supposed to be. Oh well. I'll try again next time and cut the cooking time to around 40 minutes instead of over an hour.

With the exception of the chewiness, the cake turned out well. The taste is perfect, and the saltiness of the meat and the sweetness of the cake complemented each other nicely. Besides trying to perfect this recipe, the next steamed cake I'll try is Ma La Gao (馬拉糕), which is a Cantonese style cake that you often find in dimsums.

Here's a picture of the cake. Click on the image for a larger version

New York Style Cheesecake Experiment

Wow, this week we've been eating out way too much. I can't remember when's the last time we had dinner at home (Tuesday?!). Yesterday we met up with our friends at a beachside cafe called Lanai in Semiyak. I'll try to post a review another day along with other interesting food stuff from the week.

With all the eating out and stuff, I did manage to do a bit of baking. On Thursday when we met up with friends from Singapore, we were in persuit of the best cheescake in Bali. Unfortunately, the villa cafe no longer had this cheesecake because the chef left. Boo. It got me even more motivated to try out this New York style cheesecake recipe that I found on the net. This was my very first time trying to make a proper cheesecake, and it turned out ok despite all the physical flaws (mostly the cracks on the top and sight over browning of the crust) and the trouble I went through with the actual assembling (grating my thumb by accident of course, borked oven with NO temperature control, running out of sugar in the middle of assembling, and misbehaving electric hand mixer). I let the cake sat overnight in the fridge after it was done baking and cooled sufficently in the oven and then on the counter.

I ate a piece of it this morning for breakfast. The taste is surprising light with a nice citrus flavor (the trouble with grating of lemon and orange was worth the taste). The crust at the bottom of the cake and most of the sides turned out fine with a nice golden brown color. The taste was quite good too, i.e. not burnt. I still need to figure out how to make the cheesecake more fluffy. I wonder if the slow cooling in the oven helped. Overall, not too bad for my first try...

Totally off topic, but on our way to Ubud, we saw a pink pig that was as large as a cow!! It had balls as big as grapefruits too. Then, in Ubud we met a very friendly golden retreiver. We whistled at him for a bit, and a few minutes later, he approached us and plopped himself down at our feet demanding to be petted. Now we know where our favorite dog Dilgo (half local/half golden retriever) got his personality.