The Best Maple Cheesecake You’ll Ever Make

Welcome friends, welcome back to the kitchen. So a couple of weeks ago in my time frame, I made an eggnog cheesecake just to test out the recipe. It's one that we had made a long time ago on the channel. I wanted to test it out, test it again, see if I liked it. And then I made it a second time to bring to a dinner party and I realized I really like cheesecakes and I don't know why I stopped making them because they're really super easy to make. Probably because Julie and I don't need a whole big cheesecake in our lives all that often. But they're super simple, especially if you're not worried about them cracking on top. If you're someone who's worried, super worried about cracking them on top, they can be a little bit finicky and there are some things that you need to do in order to keep them from cracking. But for the most part, the ingredients are really easy. They're super easy to bake. And I thought, oh, I'm going to make another one. Let's make one with maple. So today we're going to make a maple cheesecake. Graham cracker crust. So that's one sleeve of graham crackers, depending on where you live. I think that's about 100 grams. Recipe is always down in the description box. There's also melted butter and a little bit of sugar in here. So we've got that all mixed up. Springform cake pan and put that mixture in and press it around with my hands. So I like using my hands when I cook, so I press it in with my hands, but you can use the bottom of a teacup or the bottom of a drinking glass or something like that. You can sometimes you'll need to play around with the amount of melted butter. I've used about six tablespoons of melted butter for that amount of graham cracker crust. Just a little bit on the dry side this time. Last time I did it, it was perfect. This time it's a little dry. And so it's because it's a little dry and crumbly, it starts to fall apart a little bit more. Very easy. Take it out of here. Dump it back in your bowl. Put a little bit more melted butter in just a touch. Moisten up a little bit and then put it back in. It's very forgiving. You can play with it a little bit. I'm happy. I'm going to put this in the oven to par-bake it. Oven set to 350 degrees, 10-15 minutes. Okay, so while the crust is baking, we'll make the filling. I'm going to use the big mixer because there's quite a bit of cream cheese here. Cream cheese has been out of the fridge for two or three hours. That's how long it takes me to get everything set up and ready to go. So a couple of hours and it'll be almost roomish temperature. I'm going to put that into the stand mixer first and we'll get that creamed up. There we go. So you don't need a mixer, but it certainly makes everything easier. You can do this with a wooden spoon. I've done it in a blender, that Blendtec back there. Works just fine. Wooden spoon takes a little bit longer, but you'll get there. So I'm going to put in now some white sugar. Not a whole lot because we are going to put maple syrup in. That'll be really sweet. I'm also going to put in some salt and now I've got five eggs. I'm going to put those in one at a time and let them completely mix in before I put in the next one. Now I'm going to put in a cup of sour cream. People ask me about this sour cream because it is very thick. So this particular brand of sour cream is just cream and bacteria. There's no guar gum or things like that. So it has a different texture. I can be pretty thrifty, but that's one place I will splurge. Okay now vanilla. Let's talk about vanilla. This is one of those recipes where I don't think vanilla is strictly necessary. There's going to be so much flavor from the maple syrup. You're going to get some tang from the sour cream. You're don't strictly think that the vanilla is necessary here. It is certainly one of those places where artificial vanilla would work just as well as pure vanilla. There are places where you can tell the difference between the two, where the flavors jump out and you go oh that's artificial vanilla. This is one of those places where I don't think you could tell. You can leave it out completely if want to. Now the star of the show, maple syrup. About that much. Did anyone watch The Sticky on Amazon Prime? It's all about a maple syrup heist. I thought it was pretty funny. Get every last bit of that maple syrup in there. Scrape it clean. So I've wrapped the cake pan in tinfoil because I'm going to cook it in a bain-marie today. I've lowered the temperature of the oven to 325. I've already got the bain-marie in the oven with some water in it. The idea of the bain-marie is that it regulates the temperature a little bit better. No oven, even a really great oven like this one, no oven keeps a constant temperature. It's a roller coaster ride inside of temperature. And so that that water bath keeps it much more stable. Okay into the oven. Hey Glenn. Hey Jules. Hey friends. Didn't we just have one of these? Well we did and I realized how much I like cheesecake and that you know it's really not that hard to make. Although it is hard to make, but it's not hard to make. So I gotta, it didn't crack this time. It looks beautiful. But the tinfoil leaked. Uh-oh. Right? So the tinfoil leaked. Never gonna win. But it looks okay. Let's give it a try. Yeah so you know in the bain-marie it got wet. That's really good and creamy. I don't see any problem with that. That's wonderful. Yeah. Like the the crust is not like the crunch, but it's still really good. Just a hint of the maple. Right? So three quarters of a cup of maple syrup just gives a hint of maple. You could cut back on the white sugar a little bit because it's sweet, but it's not too sweet. I don't think. That's a really nice cheesecake. Now do it in a bain-marie. Very good chance that your tinfoil is going to leak. It's going to happen. Don't panic. Don't panic. Not a big deal. If you live in the United States and Canada and you see a recipe that calls for four blocks of cheesecake or five blocks of cheesecake, know in the back of your mind and you're going to forget because I forget. I forget. It's very easy to forget. Canada and the United States both sell different amounts of cream cheese in those blocks. So did you use too much or not enough? I had too much. Okay. I had a little bit too much because it was five blocks of cream cheese and I didn't make the conversion. And? It's fine. It's fine. Yeah. So just know that when you see, if you're in Canada and you see an American recipe, it's less cream cheese than you're going to buy in Canada. And if you see a Canadian recipe and you live in the United States, it's more cream cheese than you need. Okay. Well, there's still... This is a great cheesecake. Thanks for stopping by. See you again soon.