Mastering Japanese cheesecake with Gemma's simple approach

Hi Bold Bakers, since starting Bigger Bolder Baking I have been inundated with requests to show you how to make a Japanese cheesecake. Now for those of you who don't know, a Japanese cheesecake is a much lighter and fluffier version of the well-known baked cheesecake. Now this recipe is usually very detailed and it takes a long time, however, you asked me to simplify it and make it much faster and still get big and bold results, so that's what I did. Now the recipe for this cheesecake along with all of my other recipes can be found on BiggerBolderBaking.com. Okay, let's get started in a nice big bowl. So in here we're going to add in some cream cheese, butter, and milk. And then all we want to do is pop this into the microwave for roughly around a minute, a minute and a half, or until everything melts. So here's our cream cheese mix, our butter has melted, our cream cheese is nice and soft, this is perfect. Now all you want to do is just give this a little whisk, make sure there's no lumps in your cream cheese. Just so you know you don't want to get this mix too hot because we're going to be adding egg yolks into it so you want to make sure that it's nice and cool. Okay lovely, now we're going to add in the rest of our ingredients. So in here I'm going to add in some sugar, some vanilla extract, lemon juice, now lemon juice is really important because it helps it set, and then our egg yolks. Then once your egg yolks go in, straight away with your whisk, mix it all together. Lovely, it's nice and smooth. So into here we're going to add in our dry ingredients. So here I have a nice sieve, I'm gonna lay that over the bowl, and into it I'm going to put in my flour. Now this is cake flour, now if you don't have cake flour in your country, I have a recipe of how you can easily make it on my website. Then we're gonna add in some cornstarch, now this is also something that helps the cheesecake thicken and set, and then salt. Because all of our baking needs salt. And then just sift them in. I generally only sift ingredients when you need them to be nice and light and you're folding them into something else, you wanna make sure there's no lumps in there. Okay, gorgeous. And then back with our whisk, and all you want to do is just whisk these in until there's no lumps in your batter. This is looking great. And actually it's a really lovely yellow color from the egg yolks that I used. Okay, I'm going to set this aside and we're going to whip up our egg whites. So here I have all of my egg whites and we already use the yolks. So now this is what's going to make our cheesecake lovely and light. So what we're going to do is whip up our egg whites. And just a note about egg whites, they're always best when they're at room temperature because they whip up so much better. So I'm going to use my stand mixer to whip them up but feel free to use an electric hand mixer as well. So now what I'm going to do is turn the machine on to like a medium low speed, let them whip up a little bit get nice and foamy. And then we're going to add in the next ingredient. So now next we're going to add in a very important ingredient. I don't want you to leave this out. It's cream of tartar. And what this does it helps stabilize the egg whites. Now there is no substitute for this in this recipe, you're going to have to use this but you can buy it online and it's really easy to find. You'll notice after you add this in your egg whites will start to whip up much bigger. So our egg whites are looking good. They're around soft peaks. So at this stage, turn your machine up a little bit higher if you want. And then very slowly add in your remaining sugar. And you just do this little bit by little bit so it has time to incorporate into your egg whites. Fantastic. So after a few minutes, your egg whites are lovely and fluffy. They're a little bit shiny as well from the tartar and the sugar. These are perfect, you're kind of going for stiff peaks. So I'm going to turn off my machine. And then I'm going to take these and fold them into my mix that I set aside. So here I have my egg whites, they're lovely and stiff as you can see they're not falling out of the bowl so that's a good sign. Now all you want to do is just take a big dollop of it and put it into that cream cheese mix. Now what we're going to do here is just fold that in. So this technique is called introducing and it's really important because it loosens up the rest of your mix before you add in the rest of your egg whites. So once that's folded in, just go ahead and add in the rest of your eggs. And then very gently all we want to do is just fold these in. Now I use a nice metal spoon because it has a thin edge. You don't want to damage all those lovely bubbles that you created in the meringue. You want to keep everything intact. So a metal spoon is the way to do that. So I had never heard of a Japanese cheesecake until you guys started letting me know in the comments. So then I made it one day and it is absolutely incredible. So I'm telling you if you haven't tried it, put this on your baking list because it is just gonna change your world. Okay, this is looking good our egg whites are in there now let's get this into our tin. So to bake off this cheesecake there are some important steps to follow. First off we have to create a water bath. So here I have a nice big tin that's going to fit my cheesecake tin into it. Now I have lined it with a little kind of kitchen towel to stop it from bouncing around in the oven. Then here I have my cheesecake tin it's around 9 inches you can use a little bit bigger or a little bit smaller. This has been lined and buttered. I'm just gonna to place that in there, then I'm gonna get my cheesecake mix, and I'm gonna fill it all the way up to the top. You can just tell already by how fluffy this mix is, how light and airy this cake is gonna be. Okay let's bring this over to the oven now and we're gonna pour in our hot water. Put your cheesecake on the bottom rack of your oven, and then fill your dish halfway full of hot water. Then close it up and let it bake. So now a lot of times where people go wrong with cheesecakes is that they bake it in a hot oven or they bake it for too long and the top cracks. Now this part is crucial. What you want to do is bake your cheesecake at 400 degrees Fahrenheit, or 200 degrees Celsius for 18 minutes. Then after the 18 minutes, you want to turn down your oven with the door closed. And we are going to bake it at 320 degrees Fahrenheit or 160 degrees Celsius for around 12 minutes. So now our 30 minutes of cooking is up. So here's what we're going to do. Turn off the oven, leave the cheesecake in there but open the door ajar to let all that hot air out. The cheesecake will sit in there for half an hour and just cool down by itself. There are common problems that people can have with a Japanese cheesecake and I've written on my website how you can avoid all those so make sure you check out that post. So our cheesecake is out of the oven and it looks amazing. Now you'll notice that it is a little bit jiggly, just like the way cheesecakes are and that's because the eggs haven't set yet but what we're going to do is just take this out of the water bath, and we're going to set it aside, let it cool down at room temperature and let it go totally cold. Now you can make this like one or two days in advance so it has time to set. But what we want to do is just for it to cool down, then we can take it out of our tin and decorate it. So now these cheesecakes already look amazing. We know that they're going to taste amazing. They only need a simple decoration on top, but we're going to do something really big and bold. You know, these doilies that everybody has in their house, they're inexpensive, and they're great to have around what they also are is a lovely decoration for the top of a cake. So we're going to lay it on top, then I'm going to get my icing sugar and then very generously dredge the icing sugar on top of your cake. And then as you can see, what we're going to do is simply peel it away and just look at that fantastic design, simple, elegant, absolutely gorgeous. And then all I'm going to do is just put a few strawberries, some blueberries on top, it a little pop of color, and that's it. Absolutely gorgeous. Now I know we went to all this trouble to get the air in the egg whites, make it nice and light and fluffy, all those things that I told you, so let me cut into the cake and show you what it looks like on the inside. This Japanese cheesecake is without a doubt a show stopping dessert, and it will definitely have people coming back for more. Da da da da, my favorite part of the job. It's like a cheesecake cloud in your mouth, it's absolutely delicious. You are going to want to put this on your baking list, there's no doubt about it. I really hope you enjoyed this episode, and let me know in the comments below what other desserts you'd like to see me make in the future, and I'll see you back here really soon for more Bigger Bolder Baking.