Day 44: in at the deep end
It’s all about cheesecake today - five words that make me very happy - and while this one may not have turned out quite how I would have liked, the eating of it is very much going to plan. I have made several cheesecakes before, but these were mainly Polish-style cheesecakes (sernik), which I find are a lot more forgiving and less sensitive to overbaking. Curd cheese is used for sernik and the end result is much denser and almost crumbly, compared to a New York baked cheesecake, I find.
As you know, baking unsettles me because of the love-hate relationship I share with my oven. I simply don’t trust it. I’m not blaming it because I can’t use it, I’m blaming it because I am 100% convinced that it runs 30 degrees hotter than the temperature I set it: everything tends to brown on one side only, and even when I turn the temperature down drastically things continue to brown unusually fast and even burn. And, yes, I am taking into account the fact it’s a fan oven when I follow a recipe. You may well be questioning why I don’t just quit moaning and do something about it, so this is probably as good a cause as any to dig out the warranty - before it expires - and get it serviced because I’m not sure I can take another angst-ridden baking episode. Neither am I sure that my husband can tolerate any more tantrums from me every time my bakes go wrong, just like I can no longer tolerate his impatience when I finish baking something and he wants to slice straight into it. I suppose I should find the excitement endearing, but - as much as I love him so - it does rub one up the wrong way.
Despite these oven-worries, I do consider it my duty to overcome this obstacle and get to know my oven better, so throwing myself in at the deep end - choosing perhaps one of the most sensitive kinds of bakes you can - I chose to make headway into this challenge with Nigella’s London Cheesecake
Nigella’s London Cheesecake
Other than giving you a rather dull account of how I sat at the kitchen table for a full hour while this cheesecake baked in the oven (apart from taking it out after 50 minutes to apply its soured cream lotion), there isn’t really much else I can say.
This is the first cheesecake I have cooked in a water bath and my main worry here was that the tin foil would be breached and everything would flood into a mulchy mess, much like our garden does after 6 weeks of rain during the British summer. Alas, the barrier held strong and the fort remained dry.
This left me with only one remaining worry, which unfortunately came became reality: the oven (despite being on 150°C fan) turned the right side of my cheesecake brown after about 20 minutes. I took this as a cue to turn the oven down even more, and at 140°C the cheesecake continued to brown (I don’t know if this is normal ?) and even rose slightly in the middle. A few small cracks did form and when I took it out to apply the vanilla sour cream topping, I could see the mixture had split slightly. The dome in the middle also made it difficult to achieve that perfect layering, like in the photo from How to Be a Domestic Goddess.
Flavour musings
As far as disasters go a little splitting is the lesser of two evils, and the final cheesecake was very much still edible, and very enjoyable. Two days on, and two of us have already greedily devoured nearly three-quarters of it. I love this kind of cheesecake, and I love the sour-sweet tones meshed together with the fragrant vanilla.
While I definitely didn’t manage to achieve that velvet-smooth texture this time, I am inspired to try, try and try again. I shall take this book (How to be a Domestic Goddess) and officially enroll myself in the teachings of Nigella Lawson: it is a book rich in baking and is the perfect mentor for me and my beautiful oven.
