Jeni Wright, Eric Treuille, Le Cordon Bleu

Making a Baked Cheesecake

Appears in

Le Cordon Bleu Complete Cooking Techniques

By Jeni Wright , Eric Treuille and Le Cordon Bleu

Published 1996

About

This type of cheesecake is traditionally baked in a pastry case. Here a crisp, sweet Austrian-style pastry that has been enriched with cream cheese is used, but you can use a plain pâte brisée or sweet pâte sucrée if you prefer. Pastry cases should always be baked blind first, to prevent the filling making them soggy.

Make the filling: beat the cream cheese, cottage cheese and sugar with a wooden spoon until well blended, then add the remaining filling ingredients and stir together until the flour and the cornflour are evenly incorporated.
Line bottom of tin with a circle of pastry, then line side with a deep strip. Make sure all edges are sealed, to prevent the filling leaking out during baking.
After removing foil and baking beans, ladle the cheese filling into the partially baked crust. It should come almost to the top of the pastry case.
When the cheesecake is cooked, the pastry case will have shrunk away from the side of the tin and a fine skewer inserted into the centre will come out clean.
To decorate, place a paper doily on top of cake. Put icing sugar in a small fine sieve and shake gently over top of cheesecake. Carefully remove the doily. Alternatively, cover top of cheesecake with glazed berries or chocolate curls.