The Basic Cheesecake Recipe with Variations (2024)

The Basic Cheesecake Recipe withVariations

July 29, 2010 by mlanz

Cheesecake is pretty easy to make. The recipe is easy to memorize, easy to make larger or smaller, and has infinite variations. The basic formula is 1 8 oz. package cream cheese, 1/4 cup sugar and 1 egg. Most cheesecakes double that, to fit well inside of a typical pie crust.

Ingredients:

• 2 8 oz. packages of cream cheese
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract
• 1 ready-made graham cracker pie crust

Place a pan with water in it at the bottom shelf in your oven, and preheat to 325 degrees. Cut the cream cheese into small squares and let them warm and soften a bit. Add the 1/2 cup sugar and beat with a mixer until the sugar is completely dissolved in the cream cheese, and the mixture starts becoming light and fluffy.

Add the eggs, one at a time to the batter, mixing just a short amount until the egg is incorporated into the batter. Then add the vanilla and mix again.

Put the ready-made crust on a baking sheet for stability. Pour the cheesecake batter into the crust. Put it in the oven on the middle rack (above the pan of water) and bake for approximately 35 minutes. The center may look a bit “wet” but it continues baking for a while after you’ve taken it out of the oven. After about an hour on a cooling rack, move the cheesecake into the refrigerator to finish cooling. It should fully cool before eating. Keep in mind that plastic wrap may make odd patterns on the top of your cheesecake, so you can cover it with a concave dish to prevent this.

It’s very important you don’t overbake your cheesecake, or it may crack. The pan of water also helps prevent cracks, but make sure you don’t open the oven to peak while it’s baking, otherwise you’ll let out the moisture.

Variations on this cheesecake recipe are limitless. Most fruit toppings go well with cheesecake, but you’ll just put these on the top, after the cheesecake has fully cooled. Very rarely will a recipe suggest baking the fruit in the cheesecake batter, though I have done this successfully with a caramel apple cheesecake in the past. Most added ingredients get mixed in last, after the eggs and vanilla.

Variations:

• Pumpkin cheesecake – use 1 15 oz. can of pumpkin, 1 8 oz. cream cheese, and pumpkin spices like ginger, cinnamon and allspice. Eggs and sugar and general preparation is the same, except the pumpkin is added after the cream cheese and sugar are blended. This will result in extra batter which can be baked separately, or discarded
• Almond cheesecake – same as above, but add 1/2 cup of almond paste or 4 oz. almonds that have been finely ground in a food processor.
• Caramel apple cheesecake – add 1/2 cup diced apple bits, spices such as cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice, and top with a caramel topping.
• Chocolate chip cheesecake – use a chocolate graham cracker crust and add 1/2 cup of very small chocolate chips. If you use normal sized chocolate chips you’ll have difficulty cutting the cheesecake later.
• Chocolate cheesecake – add 1/2 cup melted semi-sweet chocolate to the batter, or 1/3 cup cocoa powder.
• Peanut butter chocolate – add 1/3 cup peanut butter to the batter, put 2/3 of the batter in the crust. Then add a few teaspoons of cocoa to the remaining batter (your personal preference for the darkness of the chocolate), mix, and add in large spoonfuls to the top of the peanut butter batter. Run a knife through the batter to blend the chocolate and peanut butter batters together a bit. I made this one most recently, and unfortunately I over-baked it by a few minutes and it broke on top…

  Chocolate Peanut Butter Cheesecake

Comments RSS

Leave a comment