The Easiest and Creamiest Cheesecake Of All Time

Few things in life is easier for your happiness than dumping 800g or 3 1⁄2 cups of smooth room temperature cream cheese into your favourite extra large bowl for the creamiest cheesecake of your life. Burnt on top with an almost runny, extremely naughty centre. And to make it vegan, use chicken cream cheese instead. To the cream cheese we add a familiar ingredient if you watched last week's tiramisu video 450g or 2 cups of mascarpone, 250g or 2 cups of powdered sugar or 1 1⁄4 cups of extra fine sugar and sadly, often forgotten, 6g or 1 teaspoon of fine salt. Everything should be room temperature so they befriend each other without any issues. Into a separate bowl go 7 whole eggs and 3 extra egg yolks. Keep the whites so we can send them to New Zealand or Oz with the lovemaking pavlova with them. Now this is same same but different to a busk cheesecake. Because there's one little step in here that fixes the problem cheesecake has had for decades, we'll get to that in a second. For the eggs we use a whisk or a fork but we don't want to whip it. Simply break up the yolks then stir it round the outside, round the outside until you have a roughly homogenous egg mixture. We don't want a load of air bubbles in here as they puff up in the oven and crack your top and avoiding problems is logically yet somehow evasively much easier than dealing with them later on. Whip out your sieve and pour the eggs through it to get rid of any snotty bits, those you want to avoid like the plague. Straight into the big bowl it goes with your cheese and all that. Slowly start working it together with a spatula or a whisk. You won't get it very homogenous like this so we want to move over to a stick blender. Blend carefully without incorporating a ton of air until it's smooth. If you don't have a stick blender you want to temper it by adding a little bit of the egg mixture at a time to the cream cheese and working it in until it's smooth. A few big bubbles on the surface is fine but it should not be excessively airy. If it is, don't worry too much for now. Into a sauce pot goes 500g or 2 cups plus 2 tablespoons of heavy cream, 35% fat and up. Anything less will leave you with a taste of disappointment. To the cream we add 15g or 1 1⁄2 tablespoons of cornstarch, also called cornflour in Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Mazena in Mazekintland. Next a vanilla pod. The other thing apart from mascarpone that makes this not a classic Basque cheesecake. Slice it open lengthways and then scrape out the tiny little beans with the same knife. And into the cream they go. If you can't find fresh vanilla, simply use a touch of paste or essence. Do not throw away the pods. You can use it to make vanilla sugar, flavoured vodka or infuse a little bit of milk or cream overnight. Whisk it all continuously over low heat until it just starts to thicken and show a few bubbles here and there, taking care not to let it burn. And here's the step I promised. Pre-cooked starch means a gooey centre, without any raw starch hanging around inside. Because when it's baked correctly, the centre never gets hot enough to cook the starch on its own. Which means we just fixed a problem no one even knew existed. Or even worse, turned a blind eye to it for decades. Anyway, let it cool down for 15 minutes and whack your oven up to 230°C or 440°F fan assisted. That's 245°C or 475°F conventional. You may have a 23 by 65 cm or 9 by 2.5 inch springform tin. But anything that holds 11 cups or 2.6 litres of water will do. We line it with foil as well as parchment. To make it stick, spray the tin with a touch of cooking oil. A little water will also do the trick. First we line the bottom with foil, leaving a bit of overhang so it's easily lifted out when it's done. Work it carefully into the sides without any air pockets. Follow up with parchment, then close the clip. Next, take a long piece of foil and fold it so it's about 10 cm or 4 inches high or wide. You won't need all the height for this recipe, but if you want you can scale it up and make a tall cheesecake that won't overflow your tin. By the way, my book comes with a free lifetime updates online version, where you can scale as big or as small as you like. And memberships are now live where you will go deeper on exactly this kind of technique. For the sides, cut a fitting piece of parchment and line them so it sits flush. A light spray between the layers so the next one sticks. You should end up with a perfectly neat lined tin. If you're a bit lazy, just scrunch up some parchment and get it in there. And be done with it. Your life, your choice. Once your cream has cooled down a touch, pour it into the cream cheese mixture while stirring with a spatula. No whisk or blender at this point and it should look very smooth. And most, if not all, the air bubbles should be gone. Pour this concoction into your lined tin and give it a few light taps on the countertop if any bubbles are still hanging around. And the reason the center stays runny comes down to one little number we'll get to in a second. Place the cake onto a tray and onto the middle baking rack to insulate the bottom a touch. It bakes for about 30 minutes, but every oven is different, so it might be a little less or a little bit more. Turn the cake 180 degrees every 5 to 10 minutes. Through the horizontal of course. So it browns evenly all around. Color is flavor. We want it properly dark, almost burnt. And that's the whole point. But the internal center temperature is where the magic lies. Pull it out at 55 degrees Celsius or 130 degrees Fahrenheit. The edges should be set and the center will be wobbly like a waterbed. Out of the oven and onto a wire rack, still in the tin of course. The carry over cooking takes this to about 65 degrees Celsius or 150 degrees Fahrenheit. And that's the magic number. It's hot enough to set, but low enough to stay soft and oozy. We want to let this cool down to room temperature before slicing it. Or place it into the fridge for a few hours to help it along. To cut it we warm a long knife in boiling hot water. Then wipe it dry before you want to make the slice. Like a samurai, there's no back and forth here. And what you now have is a delicate, yet wonderfully creamy cheesecake. Smooth on the tongue, nicely browned and barely holds itself together. And it should give you a wide range of forbidden thoughts. It's best for your enjoyment without berries, sauces or any other useless bits. But most importantly, before you go do any of that, go live a happy life.