Who can resist a perfectly luscious cheese cake accompanied by their favorite topping or flavor? The cheesecake is a standard dessert in many of today's restaurants, but the making of such a delicacy is not usually held in the average kitchen. This is mainly because of the list of things that could go wrong in the process such as: cracking, overbaking, overmixing, overbeating, shrinkage, browning, and caving. With this many problems one would think that the making of this "perfectly luscious cheese cake" is implausible, but through hard work, patience, and changes in ordinary recipes, an extraordinary cheese cake can be created.
One of the most important factors in the perfect cheese cake is its texture. In order for the dessert to have the perfect equality of light fluffiness and denseness that characterizes the cheese cake, one must do three key things. The egg whites must be whipped separately from the other ingredients in the batter then folded in by hand afterwards, but before mixing the second half of the batter, the cream cheese should sit out and become soft to reduce the risk of overbeating and densening of the cake. The batter should be mixed with a wisk, but, as the Joy of Cooking explains, shouldn't have too much air beaten into it or the surface will cave drastically while cooling.(Rombauer, 978) When both parts are wisked together, they should sit over night to ensure that the cheese cake will turn out white and fluffy.
Another problem one might encounter while trying to make an extraordinary cheese cake is the color. In order to get the natural off-white color of cheese cake, one must leave the cheese cake in the oven long enough to be cooked all the way through, but the top can not turn brown as a result. The temperature was tested and set at a low 250o, but, as a result, the cheese cake must be cooked for 5 hours and cooled to room temperature. The importance of this low temperature cooking and slow cooling is made clear in Betty Crocker's Cookbook.
