Simple Viennese cheesecake

I’m waiting for Kitchen Revolutions to come on (I can stomach that show), and it strikes me that kids today have it rough. An advert, the voice of a kid who can’t be more than ten: “Every Easter my mum makes Winiary sour rye soup.” Stop! How are you supposed to believe that?

Anyway, that wasn’t what I meant to write about. I outdid myself today. I made a cheesecake and, hand on heart, I have to admit it’s better than my Czeladź cheesecake. Well, how could Czeladź ever rival Vienna?

It’s a simple Viennese cheesecake. More or less my own recipe. I did look up a few recipes beforehand, but the result and the ingredients are really my own experiment. I even bought something for this cheesecake that I’ve spent the last few hours kicking myself about. Madagascar vanilla extract. Fancy stuff.

Do you know what a little, teeny-tiny bottle of that extract costs? It’s not even the size of a miniature vodka, but it costs as much as a half-litre bottle. Well, Easter only comes once a year. I splashed out.

The important thing is that the cheesecake turned out well. Admittedly it’s still cooling. So it’ll be tomorrow before I really know how it tastes. Oh, but don’t imagine I haven’t tried it. That’s putting it mildly. In fact, 1/7 of the cake is already gone. I tried it when it was still really warm (a microscopic slice), again when it was a little less warm and again when it was cool enough for the fridge.

It’s a special cheesecake and probably not strictly Viennese, because I put three cheeses in it. A cheese feast 😉 There’s classic ground Polish curd cheese, twaróg, there’s the King of Tiramisu, aka mascarpone, and there’s creamy twaróg.

It’s good. I’d even say very good. I wouldn’t call it the height of cheesecake finesse, like my favourite at Prosta Historia in Saska Kępa, for instance, but it’s very respectable. Best of all, it’s unbelievably simple to make. Just as simple as the Czeladź one. I recommend it.

PS

I have to admit I may have overdone the chocolate. I mean there’s too much of it, so I suggest using less for the topping. I’ve listed exactly what I used, though. That’s what you see in the photos, imperfect as ever :p

UPDATE 18.04.2014

Actually, what I wrote above about the cheesecake is already out of date. I wrote it shortly after the cake made it into the fridge. This morning it’s a completely different cheesecake. Like this, it’s not far off the one at Prosta Historia. It’s truly delicious. I mean, I like it at least 3 times as much as I did yesterday. And today I even think I didn’t overdo the chocolate after all. So I recommend it all the more.

At a glance: 

Prep time: 20 minutes (+20 minutes for decorating)

Baking time: 90 minutes

Oven temperature: 150 degrees Celsius

Cooling time: a long time, several hours

Serves: enough for 16 small portions or 8 “adequate” ones

Calories: I think… it definitely has some calories

Ingredients for Viennese cheesecake:

• 600 grams of twaróg (Polish curd cheese) (I used Piątnica, the kind that comes in a kilo tub)
• 125 grams of mascarpone
• 280 grams of creamy twaróg (I used Président)
• 5 hen’s eggs (do you check what eggs you buy? I learnt today that if the code starts with a 1 it means the hens walked this mortal earth, zero means they had a brush with paradise and anything higher means they murdered someone in a previous life and got life behind bars)
• 1.5 tablespoons of wheat flour
• 1.5 tablespoons of potato starch
• just under a cup of fine cane sugar (that’s the pricier brown stuff)
• 150 grams of butter (120 grams for the cheesecake, the rest for the chocolate topping)
• 20 ml of Madagascar vanilla extract (I poured in about two and a half tablespoons)
• 1.5 bars of white chocolate (I had Milka)
• 4/5 of a bar of dark chocolate (I had Wedel)
• 100 grams of 18% sour cream

How to make a simple Easter cheesecake:

I said it’d be simple and it will be. I started by cracking the eggs (whole eggs) into a deep mixing bowl. In went the sugar and the butter cut into little pieces. I gave it all a stir with a big spoon.

A note here: I don’t own a food processor or a KitchenAid or anything of the sort. I don’t even have an electric whisk. So I made the cheesecake mixture with a stick blender. It works. It really is quick and easy.

I blended the eggs, butter and sugar until smooth. Added the mascarpone and blended again. Added the twaróg and blended. Then the creamy twaróg, and out came the blender again. I had a smooth, fairly runny mixture. I added the flour and the potato starch and blended again. The vanilla extract went in last. This time I mixed it in thoroughly with a big spoon. Batter done. I lined a rectangular tin (about 25 by 40 cm) with baking paper and poured in the mixture.

I heated the oven to 150 degrees Celsius. I set it to bake for exactly 1.5 hours and went for a walk (exercise is good for you, apparently). When I got back the cheesecake was getting there. At precisely 90 minutes it was done. I turned the oven off, left the door slightly ajar and let it cool. It cooled there for almost an hour.

After that I took it out and got started on the chocolate topping.

I put a tablespoon of butter and the broken-up white chocolate in a small saucepan. When they started to melt (over a low “flame”, in my case induction setting 3 on a scale of 1–10), I poured in 100 grams of 18% sour cream (that’s 1/3 of one of those larger tubs) and stirred. Once the mixture was smooth and completely liquid, I poured it over the cheesecake and spread it evenly over the whole surface.

Into the same saucepan went the broken-up dark chocolate and another tablespoon of butter. I melted those too (again on “flame” setting 3 on a scale of 1–10). This time I used the spoon to make rather rustic stripes across the white chocolate. I’d actually had another idea (white on one side, dark on the other), but the simpler option won out.

And that’s pretty much the cheesecake done. It’s awkward to eat warm, though. You have to wait. After about an hour you can more or less start munching, but I reckon it’ll be better for 2–3 hours in the fridge (the pictures below show the Viennese cheesecake before chilling, and right at the bottom you’ll find pictures after a few hours in the fridge: the chocolate has set and the flavour is at least 3 times better). So hang on in there, then enjoy!