When it comes to cheesecakes, my preference rests on two extremes. It either has to be a super rich and dense NY Cheesecake that’s hard to push a fork through or a cheesecake that’s airy and light as a feather. I really don’t like all the things in between. My dad is a huge cheesecake fan, so I wanted to make him a cheesecake for his birthday. However, unfortunately after a whole life of gluttony, my dad’s metabolism has finally started catching up with him and now his cholesterol levels are on the high ends of normal. So, I’ve been trying to encourage him to eat healthy. Even though this cotton cheesecake isn’t healthy enough for me to encourage you to consume it everyday, but this certainly contains less cream cheese, butter and sugar than a NY cheesecake. So, I am offering this to you as a lighter alternative.
I really love the texture of this cheesecake; I think the best way to describe it is a mix between cheesecake and cotton candy. It isn’t overly sweet, so it allows you to appreciate the subtle sweetness of the dairy even better. I really adored the pairing with balsamic strawberries, even if I do say so myself. So please, try it for yourself.
Japanese Cotton Cheesecake
Recipe from: http://vivianpangkitchen.blogspot.com.au/2012/01/japanese-cotton-cheesecake.html#.UkgLw4ZpmnE
Makes: 1 whole cake
Ingredients:
- Place cream cheese, milk and butter in a bowl. Cook with double boiler method until thick and smooth. Set aside.
- After the cheese mixture turned warm, mix in both flours. Stir with a whisk until smooth.
- Add egg yolks into the cheese mixture and stir until well combined.
- In another clean bowl, beat egg whites until frothy. Put in lime/lemon juice and add in sugar gradually, beat until soft peaks.
- Fold 1/4 of egg whites into cheese mixture, and then another 1/4 of egg whites. Lastly the rest of egg whites. Make sure all the egg whites is well combined with the cheese mixture.
- Pour batter into a lined regular 8” round pan with lined base and sides. If using a springform pan please line as per normal, but wrap the outside of the pan (especially the bottom) in foil to prevent the water from the water bath seeping through.
- Place cake pan into a slightly bigger, shallower pan. Fill the bigger pan with boiling water and put in oven to bake at 180C for 15 minutes. Then turn down to 120C and further bake for 40 minutes (Please adjust according to your own oven)
- Unmould cake immediately upon removal from oven, if not, the cake will shrink a lot (don’t worry of handling soft cotton cheesecake. If the cheesecake is well cooked you won’t have the problem of removing the cake).
- Once cool, keep the cake in fridge to chill before serving. Serve with balsamic strawberries
Balsamic Strawberries
- Place the caster sugar, vinegar and 60ml (1/4 cup) water in a saucepan over low heat, stirring to dissolve the sugar
- Toss the strawberries, mint/basil with the chilled sauce
- Allow to seat for at least 1hr in the fridge, stirring at least once in between.
- Drizzle on top of cheesecakes, ice-creams, waffles, pancakes, crepes or anything you fancy
I’ve never heard of this before, but this looks awesome! Gotta try it sometime