Basic cheese cake

Basic cheese cake:

I heard term "cheese cake" for very first time during my stay in USA. And I was like what the heck..really? Unfortunately I didn't got chance to taste due to my short tenure there. Since then I always wanted to eat cheese cake.
I had it in few restaurants and they were too much costly. 100Rs/piece and I was certainly not happy with it.

Still it took about years to finally put into a trial :D Well yeah thats because main ingredient cream cheese was a costly affair all together. As I learned to make cream cheese at home, I made cheese cake almost on very next day.
Another hurdle for making a cheese cake was erratic proportions mentioned in almost all recipes. I mean Come on!!! I never made it before so I cant deal with 48 Oz of cream cheese, 6 eggs and blah blah blah. So I trimmed  down all proportions.

Cheese cake is done in 2 phases. First make its base and then make its creamy filling. Many sites suggests springform tin for this, but you can use normal cake tin as well.

Cake Base
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Ingredients:
1. 100 Grams of biscuits (parle-g or digestive biscuits)
2. 50 grams butter (room temperature)
3. 25 grams powdered sugar (optional)

Method:
1. Grease up round cake tin with little butter and plain flour and keep aside.
2. process 100 grams of biscuit in food processor to form coarse crumbs
3. Mix in butter in biscuit crumb. Add in sugar, but if your biscuits are bit sweet don't add sugar.
4. Press this mixture properly in cake tin and spread evenly.
5. Put cake tin in refrigerator and start preparing filling.

 Tin with biscuit base (outer tin for waterbath)

Cream filling:
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1. 300 Grams of cream cheese (recipe here -> http://vinitsjoyofcooking.blogspot.in/2012/04/yes-i-love-cheese-in-all-forms-be-it.html)
2. 200 ml fresh cream (amul fresh)
3. 2 eggs
4. 75 grams powdered sugar
5. 1 teaspoon vanilla essence

Method:
1. Add cream cheese to bowl and whisk to make smooth texture.
2. Add fresh cream and mix well with cream cheese.
3. Add in sugar, vanilla essence and mix well, make sure sugar is dissolved completely.
4. Add eggs one at a time and mix it up nicely.
5. Entire mixture should be of pouring consistency and looks bit glossy.
6. Pre-heat oven to 180 degree Celsius
7. Pour this mixture on biscuit base and give a gentle tap on tin to remove any bubbles.
8. Bring a cup of water to boil, and pour it in another 9"inch tin or any other baking tin. This is known as waterbath and it make cake bit moist.
9. Put cake tin inside 9"inch tin and make sure water level is just halfway of inner tin, Bake about 40-45 minutes. Cake won't rise too much so don't worry, once top becomes brown as shown in picture. Its done, switch off oven. Cake remains little bit wobbly but top appears bit firm.
9. Let it be cooled down a bit inside oven for about half hour and then take out and allow it cool down further.
10. Once it come to room temperature, generally edges of cake gets separated from tin, if it does not then just scrape edges with sharp knife slowly, and flip cake out. Its not beautiful way but if you don't have springform tin then this is your best bet :)
11. Refrigerate it overnight, take out about half an hour before serving.

Baked cheese cake

If you are using springform tin make sure you seal it properly before using waterbath. I prefer to eat it plain but u can think of putting some fruit sauce over it, or some berries, or even put jelly on top of it before storing in freezer.

Cheese cake ready to serve after refrigeration

Be creative Enjoy!!! :)