Easy No-Bake Cheesecake vs. Showstopping 10-Hour Pistachio Cheesecake | Melissa Clark | NYT Cooking

Lovingly looking at both of them. Do I have the look of love in my eyes? Okay. I don't know how I did that. Hi, I'm Melissa Clark. I'm a reporter for the New York Times and I'm here in the NYT Cooking kitchen studio to bring you a new episode of my show, Shortcut vs. Showstopper. Sometimes you wanna make something really quick that's still incredibly delicious and sometimes you wanna make an incredible showstopping dessert where you're pulling out all the stops. Today I'm gonna make two versions of a pistachio cheesecake. A very fast, no-bake shortcut version. There's a secret ingredient in it, which I'm not gonna tell you about yet. The other one is your showstopper. A really classic baked cheesecake, super velvety. Both of the desserts are excellent. I have always loved just your traditional cheesecake. I grew up in Brooklyn. Junior's is just like right here for me. And mastering it, getting it with that perfect, creamy consistency was something that I've been working on basically my whole baking life. Gotta be just right. For a classic no-bake cheesecake, you wanna use a graham cracker crust. You can buy graham cracker crumbs already crumbed up. You can also just make your own with regular graham crackers. I have learned that for the two cups that we need, you need about 14 to 16 graham crackers. So I've got 16 here. If you don't have a food processor, you can do this in a plastic bag with a rolling pin, which is actually kind of fun, especially if you're like, you have some aggression to work out, you know. That works well too. If you see any big pieces, they can catch the next bus. You can use any kind of wafer cookie. Gingerbread works really well. Like, you know, crisp ginger cookies. Chocolate wafer cookies work really well. Shortbread. All right. And I'm gonna add a little bit of brown sugar. You can use light or dark brown sugar. It doesn't matter. A little bit of salt. And finely chopped pistachios. You do wanna take time to really chop them up because you don't want to bite into like a whole pistachio nut. You wanna have like just the essence of it, the flavor of it. If you see any bigger pieces of graham cracker, just smush them down with your spatula. And then half a cup of melted butter. And this just brings it all together, makes it stick. Now, because this is a no-bake cheesecake, we are not going to bake the crust. So when it looks like wet sand, that's when you wanna put it in the pan and then we're just gonna press it in. And I'm gonna press it most of the way up the sides. Anything that goes on the counter can put right back in the pan. I am going to use this flat-bottomed little measuring cup to press the crumbs evenly into the pan. You could use your fingers, but this is just easier. So we're taking it all the way up. This cheesecake reminds me of cookies and milk because the center is so creamy and so milky. And then you've just got the cookies all around the sides. So as I'm pressing this into the pan, I'm thinking this is a little bit drier than I want it. I mean, it looks pretty good. You know how you can tell. See how I press the crumbs up and then they fall back in the pan. That signals to me that there's not quite enough butter in this. So I'm just gonna add a teeny bit more melted butter and that's just gonna help the crumbs adhere. I'm just gonna drizzle it in and that's just gonna help us out. So feel free to do that. It really should feel like wet sand all over. And if there are dry patches, butter to the rescue. I always start out using the measuring cup and then I'm like, you know, hands just can't beat them in the kitchen. Okay, this looks better to me. When it goes in the fridge, the butter, which is soft right now, is gonna harden up when it's cold and then it's gonna anchor all the crumbs and so it's gonna be nice and secure. That is all finished. We've got a really nice looking crust here. So we're gonna make the filling for our shortcut pistachio cheesecake. And I mentioned a secret ingredient and I'm gonna do the big reveal. So when I was making this recipe, I was thinking, how do I get a pistachio flavor? I briefly played around with pistachio pudding mix, which actually doesn't taste anything like pistachios. It doesn't taste very good. And I guess kept thinking, what do I think of when I think of pistachio flavor? And the thing that came into my mind was pistachio ice cream. To me, pistachio ice cream is the essence of pistachio, especially when you have a really good brand that uses fresh pistachios, infuses it into the cream, and just gives you that, oh my God, yummy pistachio flavor. So I thought, well, why don't I just add melted pistachio ice cream to my cheesecake? So I just took this pistachio ice cream. I let it thaw in the fridge overnight. I don't know if you can see that. It is completely liquid, which is what you want because we're gonna beat it into the cream cheese. Let's talk about no-bake cheesecake. No-bake cheesecake is brilliant. Instead of using eggs, you beat the cream cheese with your flavorings. In this case, pistachio ice cream, sugar, salt. I'm gonna use some vanilla extract and a little bit of almond extract. And then what keeps it together, what keeps it light is whipped cream. So it's just this great way to get all the flavors of a cheesecake and get a lovely soft texture without adding eggs and without baking. Now, whenever you make cheesecake, you must soften the cream cheese, not just room temperature because your room might be cold, but actually soft. When you poke it or when you stick your spatula in, see how there's no resistance? That is what you want because if there are little cold patches in your cream cheese, you're gonna get lumps. If you start with softened cream cheese, you won't have to beat it as long. It'll be smoother. It's just gonna be better. While I beat the cream cheese, I'm gonna add the sugar at the same time because sugar is sandy and it's abrasive. If there are any lumps lurking in that bowl, sugar is gonna help dissolve them. And then just a little bit of salt. I'm checking for lumps. I'm actually gonna take this off to make it easier. And I'm gonna scrape down the sides. And as I'm scraping, I am looking for lumps. And if there are lumps, I'm going to keep beating this. There are no lumps. This is good. If you do get a lump, it's not the end of the world. So there's a lump. I mean, we're aiming for the smoothest, most delicious cheesecake, but I don't wanna freak you out. So I'm gonna add almond extract, just a little bit, because the flavor that we associate with pistachio isn't just pure pistachio. It's pistachio mixed with a little bit of almond. Most pistachio products on the market have almond mixed in. You don't need a lot, but it makes a big difference. And vanilla. Okay, the extracts are beaten in. And now I'm gonna add pistachio ice cream, about a cup. You could measure it. I'm just gonna eyeball it, especially because you're not baking it. You're just chilling it. So a little more, a little less is okay. So I'm gonna let this hang out, and I'm going to beat the whipped cream. And the whipped cream, like I said, is going to lighten this, and it's going to help it set into just this beautiful, lovely textured cheesecake. If you don't have a stand mixer, you can make this whole thing with just regular electric beaters. It works great. If you don't have two bowls, whip your cream first. Take your whipped cream out, and just put it in another bowl. You can stick it in the fridge, actually, for the few minutes it takes to make the rest of the batter. Make the rest of the cream cheese mixture, and then fold the whipped cream right in. Okay, so we're looking for stiff peaks. Don't overdo it. Don't take it to butter. If you do, though, the secret is add a little more cream, and then just whisk it in. It'll be fine. So what you wanna do is start out adding a little bit of this whipped cream to lighten this mixture, and then we're gonna add more. And when you fold something, you just wanna go slow. And the idea is to incorporate it without beating out all the air that's in the whipped cream. And my crust. You can make the crust, by the way, a few days ahead. Just leave it in the fridge. It's good. And then just gonna pour it right into the crust. You don't have to worry too much about smoothing the top because we're covering this with berries. So just make sure it's even. Cover it with some plastic wrap, and then we're gonna put it in the fridge to chill four to six hours, but really, actually, it's better overnight because then it gets super cold. Or it'll last a couple of days. If you wanna do this like two or three days ahead, you're good. For the showstopper cheesecake, it's got a homemade pistachio shortbread crust. So the secret to shortbread, for my recipe that I love, one cup of flour to half a cup of butter. And then everything else is negotiable. I'm using a third of a cup of sugar. You can make it a little less sweet by using a quarter cup. You can make it extra sweet, which actually makes it brown really nicely, and use a half a cup. Just remember, always use one cup of flour to half a cup of butter. That's the secret to it all. And then salt is really important. About three quarters of a teaspoon of fine sea salt. So you wanna just give this a mix before you add your fat so it's evenly distributed. Then the butter and chopped pistachios. You want them finely chopped because you don't want a ton of texture. I switched over to a spatula because everything was getting stuck in the whisk. And really, you can use your hands. This is very much like Play-Doh. Just wanna get in there. Don't knead it too much, but you can give it a couple of times just to have it hold together. And now I'm gonna press it into the bottom and up the sides of my buttered nine-inch springform pan. You wanna just take your little measuring cup here and just flatten it out, and then work your way up the sides. I am using my hands a little bit because it's easier to feel how even the crust is if you use your hands. So if you don't have a springform pan, you can still make cheesecake, but you won't be able to get it out of the pan. You'll have to serve it directly from the pan, which is fine, but for a showstopper, I mean, that's not very showstopping, right? So do that for your shortcut version if you don't have a springform pan. Ta-da! Okay, so here we go. I'm gonna bake it at 325 until it just sets and turns a little bit golden brown right at the edges. Start checking it at 18 just to make sure, and then you'll know when it's ready. And now we're ready for the filling. Sweetened pistachio paste or pistachio cream, or sometimes it's called spread. All you wanna do is make sure that when you buy it, it needs to have sugar in it. So just check the ingredients, make sure there's sugar. They do sell unsweetened pistachio paste, and it is not good. There's something magical in this jar. Also, I have to warn you, do not taste it before you make this cheesecake because if you do, you'll probably eat the entire jar, and then you'll just have to go out and buy another jar because this stuff is the bomb. It is so delicious. It's a lot of cream cheese because you know what? It's a very big cake. Cheesecake keeps really well. So if you have extras, you can eat it for four or five days if it lasts that long. Keep it in the fridge, and it will be fine. I'm gonna beat the cream cheese with sugar. I'm also gonna add my salt. Even though cream cheese has salt in it, you just need a little extra just to make the flavors pop. I'm just scraping down the sides here. You can see how just beautiful and smooth it is. Then you can add your eggs, and you wanna just add them one at a time, beating well in between each addition because it mixes in better. But also, if you add all the eggs at once and you try to turn the mixer on, it will splash up in your face. So this is, it's practical on many levels. When you wipe the sides of the bowl with a spatula, don't forget to wipe the middle of your beaters because sometimes a little bit of cream cheese or batter or whatever will just clump right there, and it'll be hard to get it off. Now I'm going to add some creme fraiche because it's a deluxe and fancy cheesecake. Sour cream works just as well, but creme fraiche is slightly less sour and a little creamier than sour cream, but either one will work. And I'm also gonna add my extracts. I'm gonna add a little bit of almond extract. It adds this just lovely floral high note. And then a little bit of vanilla extract, which just rounds everything out and makes cheesecake taste like cake. To me, vanilla is the ultimate flavor of sweet dessert. So this batter is finished. This is your basic cheesecake batter. If you wanted to bake it off just like this, it would taste great. It would taste like yum, cheesecake with a little almond. Now I'm gonna add the pistachio, but I'm only gonna add it to half of this. I'm gonna do a layered cheesecake. When you cut the cheesecake, two layers. On the bottom, your beautiful classic cheesecake, and on the top is the pistachio. And I love the contrast between those two flavors so that when you drag your fork into it, you're tasting this intense pistachio flavor, but then just a creamy richness with a little bit of tang. It works so well, and it looks really pretty too because it's a showstopper. We wanna make it look pretty. So I'm gonna divide the batter in half. You can eyeball this. You don't have to worry about it being exactly half the batter because it doesn't really matter. So this one is gonna just stay vanilla and almond flavored, and then this one's getting the pistachio. I'm gonna beat it in. So put the mixer back together. Pistachio pastes, creams, spreads tend to vary in thickness. So this one, look, can you see the texture? It's like creamy and nice, and it's almost the same texture as the batter. But if you buy pistachio cream and it looks really thick and dense, put it in the microwave for like five to 10 seconds to loosen it up because you want it to be runny so that it's easy to mix into the batter. It's almost like icing. Oh, did I tell you how expensive it is? I didn't actually, I forgot to tell you something really important. So this amazing, delicious, fantastic stuff costs like $25, and I'm not kidding. It's really expensive. This is why this is your showstopper. You're not gonna do this every day. It's an investment. This is when you really wanna wow people. I'm sorry it costs so much. I tried to make a homemade one to see if it was cheaper, and it was, but it wasn't as good. It's just, there's no way around it. You just gotta splurge, and I am sorry. But as you saw with the shortcut one, there are less expensive options for cheesecake. So we got you covered. Okay, let's just scrape this down one more time. Make sure we got everything. I mean, cheesecake is persnickety. Like, you do have to follow the rules. You have to make sure the cream cheese is at room temperature. You have to beat it really well. But it's actually also really easy. Now I'm just gonna check on the crust to see if it's done. That looks good. You can see that the edges of the crust are golden brown. The rest of it is just kind of a light golden color. It's firm. We're gonna let it cool down just for a little bit. It shouldn't be super hot when you put the cheesecake mixture in. So I'm just gonna let it cool for, I mean, depending on your kitchen, 10 to 20 minutes. You can also do this ahead. If you wanna make this crust even the day before, it can hang out. It'll be fine. So you've got options. When I was testing this, I was just pouring the pistachio one on top. And when I poured it on top, it would go straight to the bottom. It's a little bit heavier than this one, and it sinks. So there's a couple of ways to mitigate that. I'm going to spoon it on top. You could actually freeze this for like half an hour, get it really solid, and then put the pistachio one on top of it for extra assurance. I'm not gonna do that right now because I know that spooning does work. Resist the urge. Like, I really just wanna pick this up and pour it right in, but don't do that. Traditionally, you would bake this cheesecake in a water bath, which means that you would just keep it in this tray right here, and you would pour about half an inch of water into the bottom of the tray and pop it into the oven. Don't forget to wrap the outside of the pan in a double layer of foil just to make sure that nothing leaks. I'm going to not use a water bath. I think it's just as good to put your oven at a low temperature and bake it low and slow. I'm doing 275 because I've made this cake so many times. I mean, I think I've made it about a dozen times that I feel very secure that 275 is gonna be perfect. And I'm just gonna clean this little bit up right here. It's so good. All righty. So we're gonna check on the cheesecake just to see how it's doing. It's been about an hour and 10 minutes. I don't think it's gonna be ready yet, but we're gonna take a look. So I wanna point out a few things. First of all, there's a little bit of butter that has leaked out. This is why we're baking this on a sheet pan. So make sure to do that because some of the butter from the shortbread might come out. It's fine. It's not a big deal, but you don't want it dripping on the bottom of your oven. So very important. Second thing is you see how there's a few little bubbles. That's just from beating the cream cheese, beating air into everything. Don't worry about that. The cheesecake is going to rise a little bit, then it's gonna fall, and it's gonna look fine at the end. Actually may crack, which is okay too. We're covering the whole thing with raspberries, so no one's even gonna see that. But it's also, you can see it's not ready. See that jiggle? That is way too jiggly. So I'm gonna let it go for a little while longer. So we're gonna check it again, see how the cheesecake is doing. And what we're looking for, yes, see what we're looking for, the jiggle. See how it's still jiggling, but it's mostly set? That is what we want. You can see underneath, it's still a little liquidy, and it's gonna continue to set as it cools. So this is good. So we're gonna turn the oven off, and now I'm gonna let it cool in the oven. I'm gonna crack the oven door, just leave it a little bit open. Oh, this stays open. This is great. If your oven doesn't stay open, you can prop it open with a wooden spoon. Just gonna leave it just like this for another 30 minutes. And the reason we do that is because we want the cake to cool slowly and gradually. So now I'm gonna let this finish cooling, because it's still a bit warm. Then I'm gonna cover it with plastic, and you just wanna stick it in the fridge and leave it there until it cools completely, or overnight, or a couple of days. This is a really good thing to make in advance. Our cheesecakes are ready for their closeup. They've got the perfect texture at this point, and now I'm gonna unmold them and top them with the raspberries. This is gonna be enough raspberries for both cheesecakes, but I'm gonna start off with the shortcut. By the way, I just wanna point out, though, look at the color on this one. This is from the pistachio paste. Look how green it is. It is really beautiful. This one, even though the ice cream that we used was kind of green, because we added so much whipped cream and cream cheese, it really looks white. But you're gonna taste the pistachio. So as you can see, the Showstopper has a little bit of a crack, and that's perfectly fine because we're gonna cover it up. We're gonna take raspberries, and we're gonna put them all over the top. And this crack does not make it any less of a Showstopper because we are going to cover the top, and no one is gonna see it, and no one is gonna know. The shortcut is just gonna get a tumble of raspberries. You're just gonna throw them right on. For the Showstopper, we're going to arrange them really neatly, and then I'm gonna paint the top with a little bit of jelly so that they shine and sparkle. So in order to get the shiniest topping, you wanna use jelly, not jam, a clear jelly. Doesn't have to be raspberry. It could be any flavor you like. Just something clear so it shines. And then if your jelly is cold out of the fridge, just pop it in the microwave for 10 seconds just to make it a little more liquidy so it's easier to brush onto the berries. They both look great. This one looks like rustic and pretty. The nice high sides just make it look really appealing to me. So I'm gonna start with the shortcut. Do you know the secret of cutting nice cheesecake slices? You want to dip your knife in warm water. It just helps cut through the cake. If you wanna have really beautiful slices, you do it in between each slice. This one just looks creamy and luscious, just like thickened whipped cream. I mean, this is your Showstopper, right? You've got your homemade shortbread crust, your layer of vanilla cheesecake, and then your gorgeous green pistachio cheesecake with these beautiful berries on top. So this one, you have the layers. You can really see it in the slice. I'm gonna try this one first. This shortcut one is just the creamiest texture ever. It's like a cloud. It's like whipped cream held together with a wish. It's not too sweet. It tastes like pistachio. It tastes like almond. It is delicious. Now let's try the Showstopper. I mean, look at how beautiful that is. I mean, this has that pistachio intensity. Your classic cream cheese cheesecake. It's exactly the texture that you want. It is also not too sweet. I made so many versions of both of these combined. I probably made 40 cheesecakes. I thought, okay, I'm never eating another cheesecake. Then a couple of weeks go by, and I'm like back to square one. I'm like, oh, yes, cheesecake. You can find these recipes and more at nytcooking.com.