Japanese cheesecake recipe

I love Japanese cheesecakes. It is soft and light unlike the usual cheesecake. But who doesn't? Japanese cheesecake was always in my list of cakes to make. In fact, I have had all the ingredients ready months ago. However, I just couldn't find time to execute as it requires more than 1 hour of baking time excluding the preparation time. I wouldn't have the cheesecake on the table if I didn't realise that my cream cheese block was going to expire in 2 weeks time.

Well, Diana's cotton soft Japanese cheesecake is the recipe I followed given its popularity. I made a slight modification to reduce the sweetness and acidity. It was a success albeit some cracks on the cake top - my oven must have been too hot! Make sure you keep an eye on the cake and reduce the temperature if it starts to crack. Otherwise, you'll end up a crack-top cake like mine. Despite the look, the texture of the cake was soft and smooth. Most importantly, it tasted great!

Personally, I would prefer to eat the cake fresh after its cooled in the room. However, if you need to store the cake or the left over in the fridge, make sure you remove the cheesecake from the fridge 30mins prior to serving in order to get the right texture as chilling the cake makes it firmer/harder.

Recipe:

(Make one 8 inch cake)

100 ml milk

50g unsalted butter 

250g cream cheese 

60g cake flour

20g corn flour

6 egg yolks  

2 teaspoons lemon juice

1/4 salt

6 egg whites 

1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar

110g castor sugar

1. Heat up the milk until warm. Pour warm milk onto cream cheese and butter in a mixing bowl. Melt the mixture and mix well over a pot of hot water. Some recipes suggest to sieve the mixture at this point to get rid of the small slumps. Interestingly, my mixture was silky smooth so I didn't sieve the mixture. It's up to you to decide. 

2. Cool the mixture. Add in the cake flour, corn flour, egg yolks, lemon juice, salt and mix well. Leave the cream cheese mixture aside.

3. Beat the egg white in a mixing bowl.

4. Add cream of tartar as soon as the beaten egg white starts to foam.

5. Gradually add in the sugar when the egg white starts to thicken. Beat until soft peak stage.

6. Add the egg white mixture onto the cream cheese mixture in 3 batches. Mix until they are almost combined on each addition. Lastly, scrape down and fold until everything is evenly combined. Bang the batter on the table for a few times to release the big air bubbles.

7. Pour the batter into a 8 inch round cake tin. I used a non-stick cake tin. Otherwise, you could lightly grease and line the bottom and sides of the pan with parchment paper. 

8. Bake the cheesecake in a water bath in a pre-heated oven at 160c for 1 hours 10 minutes or until golden brown. 

9. Remove the cake from the oven and let it cool on the wire rack.

10. Gently separate the cheesecake from the cake tin. Cut (without sawing) and serve.

Note: if you want to chill the cheesecake, make sure you remove the cheesecake from the fridge 30mins before serving. Otherwise the cheesecake will be a bit firmer and not cotton soft.