ChefSteps is a team of chefs, writers, and food lovers who develop recipes, techniques, and guides to help people cook better at home.

ChefSteps

{pdf:2DF2W2hJCHmhTKDPk31UaK} 

The chart is organized from richest to lightest, left to right, with New York cheesecake situated more or less in the exact center.

Cheesecake: A Parametric Analysis

The Infographic

“Food writers tell us that cheesecake dates back to ancient Greece,” Stella Parks writes in <a href="https://www.amazon.com/BraveTart-American-Desserts-Stella-Parks/dp/0393239861?tag=chefsteps02-20">BraveTart: Iconic American Desserts</a>, “but give me a break. Some guy might have shoved globs of cheese and honey into a kiln, but unless he picked up cream cheese and graham crackers at the agora, he sure as Hades didn’t bake a cheesecake.”

In her book, Parks offers an abbreviated history of this uniquely American dessert, tracing its origins to a cookbook published in Philadelphia in 1928 by Eliza Leslie, who swapped local cream cheese in for “curd cheese” in a recipe for a “lightly sweetened custard baked in a pastry shell.”

Parks describes the evolution of that key ingredient, as it made its way from Pennsylvania to Philadelphia Cream Cheese’s factory in Chester, New York, and documents how the recipe evolved, up until the publication of a cream cheese pudding recipe in the New York Post, which set the custard atop a crust made from crushed zwieback, a hard, dry, unsweetened biscuit. Thanks to an ad campaign advocating “Cracker Cookery,” undertaken by the Nabisco company to keep sales of graham crackers afloat during the Great Depression, the zwieback were replaced by graham crackers, and the dessert we all know and love was born.

A Very Brief History of Cheesecake

Height: n/a 
Sweetness: 🍬🍬🍬🍬
Fat content: 🧀🧀
Bake temp: [f 300]
Top: None
Texture: Pudding-like
Crust: None
Defining feature: Pipeable, not a cake
Recipe: <a href="https://www.tastingtable.com/688440/liquid-cheesecake-recipe-by-chef-christina-tosi/">Christina Tosi’s Liquid Cheesecake</a>

In form, the Liquid Cheesecake created by chef Christina Tosi (of Milk Bar fame) deviates the most from the classic cheesecake: It’s not really a cake at all. It’s pipeable and spreadable, somewhere between a cream cheese frosting and a pudding.

The mixture is paddled together in a stand mixer, then baked to denature egg proteins and activate the cornstarch. As it bakes, the edges rise slightly, just like a conventional cheesecake, and the surface sets up a little. Once it comes out of the oven, it’s mixed again to reach its final smooth and pipeable consistency. It also has the distinction of being the sweetest of all the cheesecakes we tried.

Add a little graham cracker crumble and spoon or pipe some on a plate, and you&#39;d have a deconstructed cheesecake.

Liquid Cheesecake (Christina Tosi, Milk Bar)

Height: 3 inches (7.6 cm)
Sweetness: 🍬🍬
Fat content: 🧀🧀🧀🧀 
Bake temp: [f 420] and [f 300]
Top: Deeply burnished, just on the edge of burnt
Texture: A range of textures, similar to a triple-crème cheese: a firm, thin shell-like exterior, fluffy like a New York cheesecake just below the surface, yielding to a gooey, creamy interior
Crust: No “crust,” baking process creates a kind of crust on the bottom similar to the sides of a New York cheesecake
Defining feature: “Burnt” top, almost molten, barely set center
Recipe: <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/basque-cheesecake">ChefSteps’ Basque Cheesecake</a>

The cheesecake that took social media by storm, the Basque cheesecake was created by chef Santiago Rivera at La Viña restaurant in San Sebastián.
 
Key features of the Basque cheesecake are the super caramelized, “burnt” top (it’s not actually burnt, just beautifully burnished ... at least that’s how it should be!), the silky and gooey interior that’s reminiscent just-churned gelato, and the fact that its baked in parchment because it doesn’t have a crust.

Unlike New York cheesecake, Basque cheesecake contains a little flour for structure so that it can be cooked to a lower internal temperature to achieve that molten center without the risk of it collapsing completely.

*Measured at outer edge. 
{activity:55vA9GXZjpRssXvJex8yst}

Basque Cheesecake

Basque Cheesecake (ChefSteps)

Cream cheese: The defining feature of cheesecake is the use of cream cheese, which lends it a distinctive acidic “tang.” But that acidity is often bolstered by other ingredients. 

Lemon (oil/zest/juice): Lemon juice contains citric acid, which adds acidity. Lemon juice, oil, and zest also add a little “fresh” brightness.

Citric acid: Citric acid can also be added as a standalone ingredient to heighten acidity, as we do in our <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/vegan-cheesecake">Vegan New York Cheesecake</a>.

Sour cream: Sour cream is often added to lighten up the cream cheese batter because it has a lower percentage of fat than cream cheese, while also providing an alternate source of acidity.

Yogurt: Like sour cream, yogurt lightens the cream cheese batter and adds acidity.

Crème fraîche: Crème fraîche has a higher fat content than cream cheese, so it adds richness and acidity to the cream cheese batter.

The Ingredients That Help Give Cheesecake “Tang”

Height: 2 1/2 inches (6.4 cm) 
Sweetness: 🍬🍬🍬 
Fat content: 🧀🧀🧀🧀 
Bake temp: [f 350]
Top: Lightly browned
Texture: Feathery and fluffy
Crust: Lemon sponge cake
Defining feature: Lofty, sponge cake base, light browning on top
Recipe: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Juniors-Cheesecake-Cookbook-Die-York-Style/dp/1561588806/">Junior’s New York Cheesecake</a>

Junior’s cheesecake is one of the most famous cheesecakes in the world. A New York institution, <a href="https://www.juniorscheesecake.com/">Junior’s</a> is to cheesecake like Katz’s is to <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/sous-vide-pastrami">pastrami</a>, and people from all over the world trek to the Big Apple just to get a slice to see what the hype is all about. And, like Katz’s pastrami, we can assure you the hype is deserved.

Junior’s cheesecake has a feathery and fluffy “crumb,” with a sort of cotton-candy quality to it, but when you push a fork through it, it’s got substance—it doesn’t eat like a custard. Junior’s uses a sponge cake crust (graham crackers can take a hike!) that easily supports the heft of the filling. (That sponge also helps absorb any weeping that might occur in a way that a high-fat graham cracker crust can’t.)

Thanks to the relatively higher baking temperature, the top is more browned and firmly set than other New York cheesecakes, which adds another layer of textural complexity.

New York Cheesecake (Junior’s)

For all of our cheesecake recipes, we used Philadelphia Original cream cheese.

Philadelphia cream cheese helps create a smooth and homogenous cheesecake batter because it contains carob gum, a stabilizer that, like xanthan gum and guar gum, helps prevent emulsions from breaking. For the cream cheese itself, this means it won’t weep in the packaging (syneresis). For batters that incorporate cream cheese, this means they’ll form more stable emulsions.

There is an added benefit for cooking: Because it’s a stabilized emulsion, Philadelphia cream cheese can be used from cold, and it can be heated, with very little risk of breaking the emulsion. (Other cream cheeses that don’t contain stabilizers, like mascarpone, need to be handled more delicately, as is evident in the process we use for our <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/tiramisu-icebox-cake">tiramisu</a>.)

Because formulations for cream cheese vary by brand, we recommend using Philadelphia Original to guarantee good results. If using other cream cheese brands, check the ingredients label: If it contains carob gum, xanthan gum, or guar gum (or some combination thereof), you’re good to go.

Use Cream Cheese With Stabilizers

Height: 1 3/4 inches (4.4 cm)
Sweetness: 🍬🍬🍬 
Fat content: 🧀🧀🧀 
Bake temp: [f 300] and [f 250]
Top: Smooth
Texture: Cottony, feathery, rich
Crust: Graham cracker
Defining feature: The classic, perfected
Recipe: <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/new-york-cheesecake">ChefSteps’ Classic New York Cheesecake</a>

This is the classic New York cheesecake, the one that exists like a Platonic form in your mind when you think, “Hey, I’d like to eat some cheesecake.” It’s fluffy and creamy, with a hint of vanilla and a distinctive sour tang, and the whole custard (it’s a custard, really) is set atop a graham cracker crust.

Unlike the Basque version or Junior’s cheesecake, there’s basically just two textures: a single creamy texture throughout the filling and the pleasing crispness of the graham cracker crust. There isn’t as much of that featheriness in the “crumb” as in the Junior’s version, and while it has a more pronounced tanginess thanks to the addition of sour cream, the sour cream also helps to loosen the batter up to give the custard a little lightness.
{activity:4y4Orp81IHZPwIoiJNciAh}

Classic New York Cheesecake

Classic New York Cheesecake (ChefSteps)

One of the most frequently raised concerns about baking a cheesecake is cracking, the dreaded split that can appear on the surface of the cake, usually when cooling a cheesecake, rather than during the bake.

While this is a fairly common issue, shared with other baked custards like <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/pumpkin-pie">pumpkin pie</a> and <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/ultimate-quiche">quiche</a>, there’s no real mystery about why cracking occurs: It’s just a symptom of an overcooked custard.

Just like with other <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/custard-parametric-analysis">custards</a>, cracking can be avoided simply by pulling the cheesecake out of the oven before it reaches its target internal temperature. This is because the internal temp will continue to climb even once the cheesecake is out of the oven, thanks to <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/carryover-cooking-why-you-should-let-meat-rest">carryover cooking</a>.

Unfortunately, there’s no one-size-fits-all time or temperature cue for exactly how early to pull a cheesecake to guarantee it ends up perfectly cooked with no surface cracking. Just like with meat, the amount of carryover cooking that occurs is heavily dependent on the size of the material being cooked (in this case, a cake) and the amount of heat energy being pumped into it (with cheesecake these variables are oven temperature and convection settings). Pull times and temps vary from recipe to recipe. 
{activity:6FQEDbJjgkugLyzq3b1UcQ}

Carryover Cooking: Why You Should Let Meat Rest

Pull Cheesecakes Early to Prevent Cracked Tops

Height: 2 1/2 inches (6.4 cm)
Sweetness: 🍬
Fat content: 🧀🧀🧀🧀 
Bake temp: n/a
Top: Smooth, no browning
Texture: Creamy and light
Crust: Biscoff cookie
Defining feature: Vegan, set with hydrocolloids
Recipe: <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/vegan-cheesecake">ChefSteps’ Vegan New York Cheesecake</a>

Our vegan version of a New York cheesecake is the biggest outlier in the lineup. It omits the hallmark ingredients used in cheesecakes—cream cheese (and other dairy products) and eggs.

We use hydrocolloids to transform a blended mixture of soaked cashews, coconut milk, and refined coconut oil—all of which are rich in fat, to better mimic the richness of cream cheese—into a stable fluid gel. Refined coconut oil also contributes to texture, as it’s solid at room temperature, lending the filling a pleasing density. (And, since it’s refined, it adds only a slight hint of coconut flavor.)

Silken tofu transforms the dense, pudding-like consistency of the gel into the fluffy texture that’s key to New York cheesecake. To mimic the tangy element that cream cheese naturally provides, we add a little citric acid. And to get the color just right—not white, but a little yellow-orange from egg yolks—we add a few drops of astaxanthin, a naturally occurring carotenoid derived from algae.

This is one of two cheesecake variations that isn’t baked. However, the base is cooked, as the gellan gums require near boiling temperatures to fully hydrate and activate so that the base can fully set when chilled. The hot base is cast into a pan lined with a Biscoff cookie crust—extra salty and sweet, with a toasted caramel flavor that nicely complements the cheesecake filling. 
{activity:2hqeacUTy6JhUNQVAoq0zp} 
{activity:3Th4fZm1IzAklMfcoFLej2}

Vegan New York Cheesecake

What are hydrocolloids? We explore some of the most common and popular hydrocolloids that thicken, create foams, and make modernist magic with spherification.

Enhancing Textures: An Introduction to the Hydrocolloid Universe

Vegan New York Cheesecake (ChefSteps)

Height: 1 1/8 inches (2.9 cm) 
Sweetness: 🍬🍬 
Fat content: 🧀🧀🧀🧀🧀 
Bake temp: n/a
Top: Smooth
Texture: Airy panna cotta
Crust: Graham cracker crust
Defining feature: Look, Ma, no oven! I “baked” a cake in the fridge!
Recipe: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Perfect-Cake-Ultimate-Classic-Whimsical/dp/1945256265/">America’s Test Kitchen’s Icebox Cheesecake</a>

Icebox cheesecake from America’s Test Kitchen is light, airy, and flavorful. Like other no-bake cheesecakes, it’s set with gelatin, so it eats more like a cream cheese–flavored <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/pastry-cream">pastry cream</a> or key lime pie than an eggy custard or a cake. (If you’re a fan of this kind of dessert, don’t sleep on our <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/tiramisu-icebox-cake">Tiramisù Icebox Cake</a>.)

Its distinctive feature is, of course, the fact that it isn’t baked; it isn’t “cooked” in any way at all, beyond warming a portion of the cream base to melt and dissolve the gelatin that, along with the stabilizers in the cream cheese, help to give it structure and set. 
{activity:1ThyS6xcMAKxM1OMTAtg1w} 
{activity:1p7RqZeWyL0rfkbAaBScne}

Pastry cream recipe (crème pâtissière)

Pastry Cream

Tiramisù Icebox Cake

Icebox Cheesecake (America’s Test Kitchen)

Height: 2 1/4 inches (5.7 cm) 
Sweetness: 🍬
Fat content: 🧀
Bake temp: [f 400] and [f 250]
Top: Lightly mottled brown
Texture: Super moist, feather-light chiffon cake
Crust: None
Defining feature: Super jiggly, light as a cloud
Recipe: <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/cloud-cake">ChefSteps’ Japanese Cheesecake</a>

Japanese cheesecake is the floofiest, lightest, and least custardy cheesecake of the whole bunch—it’s sort of like a cream cheese–spiked castella cake, the Japanese meringue-leavened sponge cake with the burnished top.

Japanese cheesecake boasts a light, fluffy, and super-moist crumb that’s made possible by the flour and starch the batter contains (more than any other variation), which helps the batter soufflé. Like a soufflé, it’s best enjoyed the day it’s baked. That ephemeral quality, plus its impressive lightness, is no doubt why it’s often referred to as “cloud cake.”
{activity:2FWAOiDRB5nfV6aoFEoQsC}

Ultra-Fluffy Japanese Cheesecake

Japanese Cheesecake (ChefSteps)

Want to make a super-tall and jiggly Japanese cheesecake? All you need is a rice cooker! Yep, you heard that right.

Check out the tip <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/cloud-cake">in the recipe</a> to see how it’s done! 
{activity:2FWAOiDRB5nfV6aoFEoQsC}

Bake a Super-Jiggly Japanese Cheesecake in a Rice Cooker

Chiffon cakes, castella cakes, genoise cakes, and angel food cakes are all examples of foam cakes—cakes that are primarily leavened by the air incorporated into whipped egg whites. The other defining characteristic of foam cakes is they’re quite lean, with very little (if any) fat added to the batter.

Sponge: Light cakes made of eggs, flour, and sugar that are primarily leavened by the air beaten into the eggs, although a chemical leavening agent (baking powder or soda) is sometimes used, too.

Chiffon: Chiffon cakes are sponge cakes with added fat and, sometimes, baking powder. The eggs are separated, and the egg whites are whipped separately before being folded in with the rest of the batter ingredients. The added fat makes the cake moist and rich.

Genoise: A French sponge cake in which the eggs (whole) are beaten with sugar and heated, before being whipped and aerated.

Angel food: A sponge cake made just with egg whites and no added fat, which produces a super-light, airy, and pale crumb.

Castella cake: A sweet cake with a browned top that’s leavened with whipped egg whites and is slightly more moist and delicate than a typical sponge. Castella has a unique texture because it contains a fair amount of sugar syrup—honey or mizuame (a thick and clear sweetener, also known as millet jelly or water candy).

Castella, Chiffon, and Other Foam Cakes

When making cheesecakes and custards (and even some cakes), it’s standard practice to use a springform pan because these preparations are quite delicate, both straight out of the oven and once chilled and set—you can’t invert the pan they’re cooked in to remove the cake cleanly. With a springform pan, once the clasp is removed, the sides of the pan can be lifted vertically, allowing you to slice the cheesecake directly or easily transfer it to a serving platter without messing up the sides or top.

When choosing springform pans, the most important consideration is how well the clasp seals the sides of the pan to the base. A weak seal will lead to leaks, either of the batter out of the pan or, when using a bain marie, water into the custard.

Our favorite springform pans are made by Fat Daddio’s, but Nordic Ware pans are also well-constructed. Both brands produce springform pans that have a wide area of contact between the base pan and the sides, which creates a tight seal. (An ancillary, often overlooked, benefit is that it’s easy to reattach the sides to the pan, which comes in handy for transporting a cake that has had some slices removed.)

 The Fat Daddio’s pan is superior because of its thick, anodized aluminum construction, which provides solid support and offers a hedge against the clasp shifting or bending over time. The one drawback to its construction is the base extends further than other similarly sized pans, which can present a challenge when trying to fit the pan in a bain marie.

We recommend 9-inch springform pans for our cheesecake recipes. The one exception is our <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/vegan-cheesecake">vegan cheesecake</a>, for which we use an 8-inch-diameter pan, in order to more closely approximate the height of a <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/new-york-cheesecake">New York cheesecake</a>.

We also have one recommendation for a Zulay 9-inch springform pan, which has a small base footprint. It comes in handy when cooking a cheesecake in a water bath, as we do in our updated <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/cloud-cake">Japanese cheesecake</a> recipe.

Recommended springform pans:
<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Fat-Daddios-PSF-93-Springform-Silver/dp/B001VEI060?tag=chefsteps02-20&th=1">Fat Daddio’s 9-inch springform pan</a> (our favorite)
<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Fat-Daddios-PSF-93-Springform-Silver/dp/B001VEI05Q?tag=chefsteps02-20&th=1">Fat Daddio’s 8-inch springform pan</a> (our favorite)
<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Nordic-Ware-Leakproof-Springform-Inch/dp/B000237FSA?tag=chefsteps02-20">Nordic Ware 9-inch springform pan</a>
<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Zulay-Premium-Inch-Cheesecake-Pan/dp/B07RRCKDKH?tag=chefsteps02-20&th=1">Zulay Kitchen 9-inch springform pan</a> (small base footprint)

Our Favorite Springform Pans for Cheesecakes

Cheesecake is a uniquely American dessert. While there are many cakes that include cheese in their ingredient list all around the world, today, “cheesecake” calls to mind a smooth yet feathery custard with a distinctive lactic acid tang set atop a graham cracker crust, which was made possible by the rich, spreadable “full cream” cheese developed in the early 1800s in Pennsylvania and the popularization of graham crackers by Nabisco in the 1930s. But that uniquely American thing has gone global. There are now world-famous cheesecakes from Spain and Japan, like the “burnt” Basque number from La Viña in San Sebastián and the fluffy “cloud cakes” that are all the rage in Japan. And the U.S. also has a full roster of cheesecake variations: the iconic New York cheesecake from Junior’s in Brooklyn; the more generic New York–style cheesecakes you can pick up at a grocery store or get in a million different flavors from a certain “factory” chain restaurant; no-bake cheesecakes; and more out-there riffs like the liquid cheesecake from pastry chef Christina Tosi of Milk Bar fame. With all these cheesecakes to choose from, what do you do? More importantly, what should we do? Well, duh: We’re going to make a cheesecake parametric, baby! As with our previous parametric analyses, like the ones for <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/parametric-pie-dough">pie crusts</a>, <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/the-ultimate-guide-to-chocolate-chip-cookies-when-average-equals-amazing">chocolate chip cookies</a>, <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/the-best-brownies-parametric-recipe">brownies</a>, and <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/ground-meat-skewers-parametric-analysis">kebabs</a>, we chose a few recipes from reputable sources and developed several of our own to showcase a wide range of cheesecake variations, then we created a chart that breaks them down by the numbers. For this one, we decided to show absolute percentages instead of baker’s percentages, noting any discrepancies in methods and any outlier ingredients, like the gellan gums used for our vegan version.