Souffle cheesecake (double cream)

It is very frustrating making Japanese cheese cakes. This time, I came across a recipe which used double cream but no butter. Great! Things seemed to go ok at first and I corrected all the mistakes of the last attempt which I felt had too little liquid or was the wrong temp, but something new developed - my cheesecake now has a 'waist'!

Looking good

Shrunk by 1cm which is ok

Formed a waist

Really not sure what has happened. Maybe the contents are too heavy for the cake flour and corn flour to hold up. According to the below link, forming a waist could be a temperature issue because the cake deflates on removal from the oven. (Update: i misread the instructions and left it for an extra half hr in the residual heat! This has been corrected below) This cake was less brown than the previous attempt but it will suffice.

Source: http://www.ricenflour.com/recipe/how-to-make-japanese-cotton-cheesecake-recipe/

Ingredients are doubled. The link is quite good as it provides troubleshooting of various problems: cracks, falling, dense at the bottom, and forming a waist. 

Ingredients (for 9" pan)

250g cream cheese

220g double cream (approx 230ml)

6 eggs (separated)

100g cake flour

40g corn starch

140g sugar

zest of 1 lemon

1 tbsp lemon juice + ¼ tsp replacement for cream of tartar

¼ tsp salt

Method

1) Prepare. Butter the bottom and sides of the thin and line the bottom with a parchment. Boil the water for the bain marie. Prepare a baking tin with a cloth at the bottom. 

1) In a bain marie, melt the cream cheese. Add the whipping cream and half the sugar and whisk till smooth. Remove from the heat and let it cool for 5 minutes.

2) Add the yolks and beat until pale yellow. Add the salt, juice and zest and whisk to incorporate.

3) Sift the flours and fold into the flour. Do not over-beat. To ensure that there are no lumps, pour through a sieve.

4) Preheat the oven to 180 deg C. Whisk the egg whites till foamy at medium speed. Add the ¼ tsp of lemon juice and ⅓ of the sugar. Continue to whisk at medium speed and add remaining sugar in 2 more additions. When all the sugar has been added, whisk at high speed until firm peaks (midway between soft and stiff peaks. At this stage when you turn the whisk upside down, the peak will hold for 1 seconds and then fold down on itself).

5) Add ⅓ of the meringue into the yolk batter to thin it. Add a second third of the meringue into the yolk batter but this time, carefully fold in using the whisk. Then, pour the yolk batter into the remaining third of the meringue. Carefully fold in until no white streaks remain.

6) Pour the batter into the tin. Using the spatula and make slashing motions to dispel the bubbles.

7) Place the cake tin in the baking tin

8i) Bake at 160 deg C (some heat would have been lost from opening the oven) for 40 to 50 minutes until the top is browned. It took me 50 minutes. At this temp and time, my cheesecake was *just* about to crack when I turned down the temp. On slicing open, I found the top was too hard. Next time stick to 40 mins.

ii) Turn down to 140 deg C and bake for a further 20 to 30 minutes until the top springs back. It took me 20 minutes. Based on my slice, next time I will do 30 mins.

iii) Remove from the oven and remove the water bath to prevent condensation at the bottom of the cake. Replace in the oven with door open ajar for a further 30 minutes. The cake should have shrunk from the sides and the tin should be cool enough to handle. Unmould. Let it thoroughly cool down before slicing up.

Recipe feedback

I'm almost about to throw in the towel regarding Japanese cheesecakes and just stick to regular cheesecakes. Not too sweet but it was more kueh like.

Update: I feel exactly like this blogger: http://www.bakeforhappykids.com/2015/05/having-problems-baking-japanese.html

Have tried all the recipes and none work! Not cream, not milk, not technique. While I believe my problem is also oven temp, my oven is different from hers. Hers is a small oven an non-fan forced. Mine is a big oven, so unfortunately, her solutions will not work for me. But our frustration is the same.

Sausage in cream bun

Been experiment with different bun recipes because I wanted the soft fluffy bread associated with Asian pastries. Have tried tangzong and it wasn't great. Came across this recipe that uses 2 different flours and also double cream and it works fantastically!

Sausage recipe (without gram measurements): http://thewoksoflife.com/2015/03/chinese-hot-dog-buns/

Hokkaido milk bread recipe (with metric measurements): http://thewoksoflife.com/2015/01/milk-bread-2/

Ingredients (makes 12)

⅔ cup (158ml) double cream - room temp

1 cup + 1 tbsp (250ml) milk - room temp

1 large egg

⅓ cup (115g) sugar

½ cup (approx 70g) cake flour

3½ cup (approx 500g) bread flour

1 ½ tsp (7g) salt 

1 tbsp dry yeast (approx 11g)

12 sausage franks

Glaze

1 egg, beaten + dash of water

1 tsp white sesame seeds

2 tbsp hot water

2 tsbp sugar

Method

1) In a bowl (or stand mixer bowl), add the following in turn: cream, milk, egg, sugar, cake and bread flours, yeast, and salt. Mix well until it forms a dough that leaves the bowl clean. If needed, add a dash more milk or flour as required.

2) Knead the dough for 20 to 25 minutes until it passes the window pane test.

3) Leave in a covered oiled bowl to prove for 1 hours or until it expands to 1.5x its size.

4) Deflate the dough and cut into 12 pieces.

5) Roll into 12 ropes and coil around the sausage, leaving a gap between each coil as it will expand. Crimp the ends or tuck them in. Place on a baking sheet lined with parchment.

6) Leave to prove for another hour until fully expanded. You should see some bubbles on the surface and the edges are rounded.

7) Glaze with the egg wash. Sprinkle on the sesame seeds.

8) Bake for 14 to 15 mins in a preheated oven at 175 deg C. Rotate and swop trays halfway. 

9) While the buns are baking, make the simple sugar solution.

10) Remove from the oven and place on a wire rack. Immediately while the buns are still hot, glaze with the simple sugar solution to give it that characteristic HK baked pastry shine.

Apple flakey pie

I bought puff pastry some time ago and never quite knew what to do with it. When I had 4 lingering apples in the fridge, hey, make apple puff pastry tart!

Came across four different recipes but the base recipe was similar, the only difference was the presentation.

Open faced: http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/quick-easy-and-yummy-apple-tart/
Apple pie ie closed faced: http://www.justonecookbook.com/easy-apple-pie/
Croissant rolls: http://theblondcook.com/apple-pie-bites/
Apple strudel: https://www.puffpastry.com/recipe/apple-strudel/

With apple poking through

Ingredients
2 sheets of puff pastry
4 medium apples, peeled and cored
Juice and zest of ½ a lemon
Bowl of salted water.
1 tbsp raisins
1 tsp cinnamon
2 to 3 tbsp brown sugar (adjust to taste)
2 tbsp corn flour - this is key because raw apples are used, otherwise the pastry becomes soggy
1 egg, beaten

Method
1) Peel and core the apples and then halve it and cut thin slices.
2) Thaw the pastry in the fridge (½ hour) or countertop (10 minutes). If it becomes too hard to work with, stick it back into the freezer but make sure that it is well wrapped otherwise it dries out.
3) Place the apple slides in a bowl of salted water to prevent oxidation. In a bowl, add the lemon juice, cinnamon, and sugar and toss in the apple slices to coat. Taste. It should be slightly too sweet for your palate.
3) Take 1 sheet and cut into four. Invert onto a parchment covered baking sheet and peel off the baking plastic. Leave a gap between each slide.
4) Lay the apple slices on top neatly but leave an edge. Brush egg wash on the edge.
5) Cut the next sheet of pastry into 4, and make 3 slits in each pastry. Lay this second piece on top of the apple slices and crimp all around the edges using a fork.
6) Bake in an oven at 220 deg C for 5 minutes as the pie will be very soggy. Turn down and bake for a further 20 to 25 minutes, turning the pan halfway to ensure even browning. Check to see that it has browned and puffed up, and you should also see the liquid inside bubbling away.
7) Serve hot but be careful as inside would be scaldingly hot. Place the remaining tarts on a wire rack to cool fully before storing.

Cotton cheesecake (IESP)

From this earlier post that compared cheesecake recipes, I decided to try out the very detailed recipe from I Eat I Shoot I Post that uses the bain marie method because the previous recipe that I tried has a very high failure rate - 66% failure (2 out of 3 attempts). Even with the 1 successful attempt, the cheese still sank to the bottom of the cake on the 3rd day as it it separated. Strange. I thought maybe putting the cheese in a bain marie to 'melt' it might help it to amalgamate better with the milk than just putting in warm milk and butter.

This recipe has about half the amount of liquid and everything else remains almost the same except there is 20g more sugar and uses 1 tbsp of lemon juice instead of 1 tsp.

However, the cake hardly rose. At first I thought that my tin was too big (I used 9" instead of 8") but Craft Passion followed his recipe and also mentions that a 9" tin can be used if the 8" tin doesn't have a 3" height. So I can only surmise that my cake didn't rise because 

1) I had to take it out of the oven about 2 mins after it first went in when I realised that the oven temp was about 150 deg C!

2) The sides were TOO non-stick - is that possible? And it had nothing to cling to. I used oil rather than butter which seemed to be less dense compared to butter and very slick. I had attempted to use corn starch to coat the sides but so much stuck on and I gave up. Maybe if I use non-stick spray/oil, I will have to use corn starch but not if I only use butter.

3) Oven temp? Did I cause the temp to fall too suddenly during the 160 deg C baking round?

Craft Passion suggests 200 deg C for 12 mins, 140 for 30 mins, off for 30 mins, open door and remove water bath for last 30 mins. 

Also with the same recipe, Chinadoll uses a 8" pan and suggests 200 deg C for 15 mins, 160 for 30 mins (tented), off for 20 mins, 120 for 10 mins with bottom grill only, open for 30 mins.

4) Somehow my springform pan (even though it is PushPan) may have 'caught' the cake because I had inserted the bottom in wrong way around in my haste?

5) Did not beat it enough. I was told to beat to just before soft peaks and under beating was better than over beating. But this occurred! I don't think it rose much, not that it deflated (ie reason #1).

Anyway, might have to try again and at least eliminate most of the reasons above.

Looked ok in the tin

Ingredients

250g cream cheese (Philadelphia brand only)

6 yolks, separated

140g caster sugar (not fine or super fine)

100ml full cream milk

60g butter

2 tsp vanilla extract

¼ tsp salt

1 tbsp lemon juice

1 tsp lemon zest (optional)

Method

1) Separate the eggs just out of the fridge. 

2) Do all the other prep work: line the pan with a base of parchment and butter the sides. Weigh out all the ingredients. Boil the kettle. Prepare a tin with a cloth at the bottom. Melt the butter until ¾ way (1 minute on 80% power) and then pour in fridge cold milk. Microwave till about finger warmth (about 1 minute 80% power).

3) Boil a pot of water and insert a glass bowl that will sit on the pot but not touch the water. Use a scissors to cut the cream cheese into cubes and set aside to melt. 

4) Once liquidy, remove from the heat and add in the yolks 2 at a time and whisk. Add half of the sugar. Whisk till smooth. Add the milk and butter mixture and whisk again.

5) Add in the vanilla, salt, zest, and juice and whisk. Set aside. The batter temp should be between 50 to 60 deg C now.

6) Beat the egg whites, adding ⅓ of the sugar at a time after it turns foamy opaque. Whisk till just before soft peaks. 

7) In the yolk batter, fold in the sifted flours. Try not to beat too vigorously as you don't want to form gluten.

8) Pour in ⅓ of the meringue into the yolk batter and incorporate with a whisk. Next, transfer in another ⅓ of the meringue and folk in carefully. Finally, pour everything back into the meringue bowl and this time, very carefully folk through until no whites remain.

9) Pour into the prepared tin. The batter should be very pourable and liquid, like pancake batter. Using spatula, run zig zag strokes through the batter to burst big bubbles. Place in the bigger tin with the cloth, and pour in the boiled kettle water. Place everything at the bottom ⅓ of the oven.

10) Bake at 200 deg C for 17 mins to brown the top (mine only took 17 mins to achieve the browness I liked but the original recipe was 18 mins), then lower to 160 deg C for 12 mins (this means letting the temp lower gradually until it reaches 160 deg C in the oven at the end of the 29/30 minutes. I had to tweak my controls between 100 to 150 deg C to achieve this effect.) Switch off the oven but don't open it and the temp should fall to 110 deg C in 25 to 30 mins. 

11) Remove the tin from the water bath to prevent condensation at the bottom. Leave the oven door ajar and leave the cake inside for a further 30 minutes to cool. Unmould when still warm but cool enough to handle. Only put in the fridge after it is completely cool and it is nice served chilled.

Why so flat?

Update Attempt 2 

using CraftPassion's timings of 200 deg C for 12 minutes, 140 (i did 150) for ½ hour, off for ½ hour, and open oven for ½ hour. The cake developed a waist! It rose beautifully initially but then seemed to shrink. See how the top seems to have hardened but only on 1 side, the side that browned the most - dried out? Also, it developed a slight crack, but only after the 30 minutes of closed oven door, huh? I surmise that having a high temp and then turning down and eventually cooling by residual heat seem like a bad idea. Much better to cook for a long time at a lower heat.