Cheesecake! The milky, japanese kind.

Finally, back from hiatus! Here's a slice of milky, airy cheesecake- the way I grew up eating it. I just can't understand the love for American-style cheezy cake. 

I just watched Julie and Julia, and it's hard to believe that blogs can ever achieve such fairytale-like fame and glory. I'm having a hard time finding time to post, let alone everyday... but I guess that's why her dedication attracted visitors. 

Anyway, I realized that I have been making this cheesecake for 3 years now. Although, the last time I made it was a over year ago. It's very simple to make, but needs attention to detail. You need to separate the eggs from the whites absolutely... and slowly tend to the milk over boiling water. 

The recipe was originally from a class I took with friends a long time ago, but I guess it's a different recipe from the one I first learnt, since I've added tips as I've baked cake after cake.

Ingredients

1. Fresh Milk  60g

Cream Cheese  125g

Butter  50g

2. Egg yolk 4

Plain flour 30g

Corn flour 15g

Lemon zest a little

3. Egg white 4

Sugar  90g

Tartar powder 1/3 tsp

4. Cookies  200g

Butter  60g

Method

1. Crush cookies in a bag until they are a fine powder. Add to butter (see list 4) and mix. Press into round cake tin, making it slightly smaller than the cake tin. Refrigerate.
2. See ingredient list 1. Add milk into a bowl and heat it gently by immersing it into boiling water. Stir butter and cheese in a bowl until smooth. Pour into the milk, while on low fire. Stir slowly, until the mixture is smooth.
3. Remove from heat, and add in ingredients from list 2. Mix well and leave aside.
4. Beat list 3 contents slowly, until it becomes fluffy. Don’t mix too fast or too long, just until soft peaks can form. Otherwise your cake will collapse. Pour in the mixture from step 3 and mix well.
5. Optional: If you want it to be marbled, this is when you split the batter into two and add chocolate paste into one of them. Layer the batter and use a spoon to form swirls of chocolate in the cake.
6. Pour into the baking tin, and bake at 150 degrees Celsius in a baine-marie (meaning just put the cake tin in a basin of water) for 1 hour. Make sure that water can’t get into the cake mixture, by placing the cake tin and its contents into another metal bowl.
7. Don’t open the oven until at least 20 minutes, to prevent it from cracking. If the top is browning too much, add a cover of aluminum foil.
8. Check if it’s done by touching the top softly. The center may be firm to the touch or jiggle just slightly.  Don’t poke it because it could crack.
9. Once done, let it cool for ½h before using a knife to loosen the cake from the tin. Subsequently, refrigerate it for 4h. After that, please cover the cake if left in the fridge to prevent it from picking up odors or drying up.