Light And Easy Cheese Cake Recipe

Try this cake from my best cake recipes collection.

This German cheese cake recipe comes of course from my mom-in-law and belongs to one of my best cake recipes. It is very fluffy, light, and not extremely sweet.
This original easy cheese cake recipe uses quark (white cheese, smooth like ricotta, little sour) as a main ingredient. Quark, or white cheese, is not easy to get in the USA.

The Vermont Butter and Cheese Company makes quark in the US and some supermarkets carry it, but one can substitute the quark with a ricotta and sour cream mixture.

If you cannot buy quark in your local food store, then you can take 50 grams of sour cream and 450 grams of ricotta and blend it well. Also you can have it shipped to your house at: http://www.vermontcreamery.com/ Another way of buying it is looking for a German deli, Polish food store (it is called white cheese there), European bakeries, as well as natural food stores in your living area.

Of course, if you live in Europe buying quark should not be a problem. Try out something new and give this great cheesecake a try!

Cheese Cake Recipe

Shortbread recipe for the crust:
• 225 g flour (8 oz)
• 150 g butter (5.3 oz)
• 75 g sugar (2.6 oz)
• 1 1/2 spoon of heavy whipping cream
• Salt
Cheese fillig:
• 125 g sugar (1/2 cup and 1/8 cup)
• 4 eggs
• 1 spoon vanilla sugar
• 200 ml whipping cream (.2 qt)
• 500 g quark or 450g ricotta and 50g sour cream(1.1 lb)
• Lemon aroma
• 2 spoons flour

Preheat the oven to 180°C – 355°F

To make the crust:
• Knead the flour, butter, sugar, cream and pinch of salt to smooth dough. I recommend using the hook attachment on most mixers, but you could use your hands.
• Roll the dough until ¼” or thinner on a silicone baking mat, and if you don’t have one, use wrapping foil.
• Flip the dough onto a round 11”form. You can cover the sides with dough if you want to.
• Make couple of holes with a fork in the dough so that the steam can escape.
• Bake it at 180°C for 15 minutes or until golden brown.

To make the cheese filling:
• Beat the egg yolk with sugar and vanilla sugar.
• Whip the whipping cream.
• Add the cheese, lemon aroma, flour, and the whipped cream to the egg yolk mixture and mix well.
• Whip the egg whites. Using a spatula, mix the egg whites with the cheese-egg mixture.

Prepare the cheesecake: • Wrap outside of the 11 inch springform pan with aluminum foil.
• Pour the cheese mixture onto the baked bottom.
• Place the aluminum foil wrapped pan into a large oven proof pan. Pour hot water into the large pan until it reaches ½ inch up the sides of the pan.
• Bake 1 hour at 180°C. If you are using a bigger form (14 inch) you need to lower the temperature to 160°C and bake only 35 minutes.
• To test for doneness, gently shake the pan. The top of the cake should move as one solid piece. There should be no soapy movement in center.
• Remove from oven to cool. Refrigerate for 12 hours. Cake will set completely when refrigerated.