Mini New York Baked Cheese Cake

This is the last recipe in the the set of three that follow the picture in the first recipe that i blogged, it was a trio of desserts.....creme brule, chocolate mousse and a mini New York Baked Cheese Cake, this is one of my favourite recipes, i never weight anything with this one either, but yet again i have a fairly good hand and judge pretty well, i have always preached that recipes are guidelines, if i ever pick up a recipe book the only things i ever do is look at what ingredients are used and never how much is used, it's all about the fundamentals the building blocks and understanding how different ingredients influence each other, once you start to understand these basics then the rest is just up to your hand, so i am going to try and guess backwards here back into a usable recipe.

Ingredients
250g smooth cream cheese (not cottage cheese, this makes a massive difference in the end product of the cheese cake)
25g Castor sugar or white sugar
1 egg
zest of half a lemon
1 tablespoon of lime cordial
1 tablespoon of milk
1 roll of store bought short crust pastry (when we get into the more detailed recipes i will blog short crust and puff pastry as homemade is far superior to any store bought you can get, they are however not the easiest pastry's to make from scratch.

to make these you will also need 500g of uncooked rice
a roll of cling film
a muffin tray or foil pie cases (fairly small ones, about the same size as "mama's pie's"

for this recipe it is best to have an electric beater if you do not you can get away with a whisk, i however am fortunate enough to have 2 kitchen aids in my kitchen,

ok now to start it is best to have all of your ingredients at room temperature, take the cream cheese put it into a deep mixing bowl and start to soften it with a whisk or electric beater until all the lumps are out and it is smooth, it usually takes around 3-5minutes, then you can add the milk whilst continually beating it, beat for about another 2 minutes now add in the lemon zest and lime cordial whilst still beating, beat this in for another 2 minutes, now add in the castor sugar and the one egg and carry on beating for about another 5 minutes. now set this mixture to one side.

Roll out the short crust pastry as to half the thickness of it cut it out in a small round about 3 centimeters bigger than hole of your muffin tray, now put these little disks into the muffin tray and push it all the way in ( i know i haven't mentioned anything about lining the muffin trays but usually with short crust or puff it has enough fat in it, so it doesn't stick. once the pastry is in the muffin tray line the inside of the pastry with cling film and fill it with uncooked rice and close the cling film as to make a little packet of rice, leave this in the pastry and bake them in a pre-heated oven at 200c for about 10minutes, then take them out and remove the little "rice" packets out of the pastry (this process is what is called blind baking) now drop the temperature of the oven to 140c.

Now take the pre-baked pastry cases and fill it 3/4 with the cream cheese mixture and bake it in the oven for around 30 minutes, take it our and check it, it should wobble like a set jelly, but not more than that, if it is not set yet, then put it in for another 5 minutes.

This recipe should yield around 6 or 8 mini cheese cakes. if you would like to make 1 large cheese cake you can multiply the recipe by 4 but not the egg you will only use 3 eggs and don't add them all at once either you must add them about 2 minutes apart whilst continually mixing. And don't use pastry for the base take some of your favourite biscuits and crush them and mix them with about 80g of butter, this would make a 20cm cheese cake.


happy baking guys, you can create the last two recipes a day or two before your dinner party and leave this one for the morning of the day you are doing the dinner party, it will impress even the hardest of food critics as they say the proof is in the PUDDING funny things is i do not favor doing pastry and desserts, but that doesn't mean that i can't do them, any good chef must have the know how.