Cheesecake: Intermission Reflections

In terms of the filling, I feel that maybe I have reached the pinacle of the recipe that I have been using. Frankly, I am not satisfied. It is good, but it is not great. It is a tofu pie posing as a cheesecake. The quest is not over.

I was thinking about increasing the cream cheese to a full container and playing around with the texture by using the freezer. The plan was to make three small crustless cheesecakes: one made with previous frozen the pressed tofu; one that is frozen once it is made, and then thawed; and one control cheesecake following the recipe that I have used to this point. This will happen at some point in the name of science!

My mom and I used to make amazing New York style cheesecakes for showers. It occurred to me that attempting to veganize her recipe might be a worthwhile, if not expensive, endeavor.

I decided a few days ago that the next time I am with someone who orders dairy cheesecake, I will ask for a bite. (Ethically, I feel that I am not doing anything that leads to animal suffering and I will save my friend some calories. I will get indigestion, but I will gain insight into the art of cheesecake.)

It was a friend's birthday today, and we did cake at a local cafe. Everyone ordered cheesecake, so I had a bite of a creme brulee cheesecake, a caramel brownie explosion cheesecake and a blueberry cheesecake. When I got home and saw the remaining sliver of cake two, I grew angry. The flavour and texture are still both light years away from the deliciousness of dairy cheesecake. I know that the flavour of meat substitutes is probably not nearly as satisfying as real meat, but I feel it should be more possible to realistically imitate dairy.

Determined to improve, I spent some time on the Kraft Canada Philadelphia Cheesecake Centre. It turns out that the recipe I have been using is not nearly the same composition as a classic dairy cheesecake. For the next attempt, I am going to bite the bullet and make a cake made almost entirely of dairy substitutes. Stay tuned...

Cheesecake: Round 2-The Taste Test

This cake is absolutely delicious. The top few mm are firmer and the rest is firm and creamy.

Missteps:

The crust is hilarious and sort of ruins the cake, I think. It is not terrible, as it is made of three ingredients that are all quite edible on their own. It is just not delicious, which is the ultimate goal of a cheesecake.

The one lemon was not enough for a tripled recipe.

The half package of cream cheese was absorbed by the tripled recipe and offered no noticeable flavour enhancement while still contributing 22.5 g of fat.

(The absence of extra firm silken tofu is clear, but after a few days in the fridge is stopped mattering. After a cost/benefit analysis, I think I will continue to use the $1.50 tofu for future attempts.)

The texture still is not right, but I do not think that the tofu texture is the problem. An ingredient, a step or a technique is missing...

Next time:

• Make a more appropriate crust;
• Use more lemon;
• Forget the cream cheese; and
  
• Do something (?) to improve the texture.
  

Cheesecake Round 2-The Filling

I had not been able to find extra firm silken tofu anywhere since the first cake. The local Korean grocery store has a great selection of silken tofu, but firmness was not specified. With some help from the owner, I decided to buy the six blocks of regular silken tofu for $1.50. (This entire cheesecake quest is sort of out of my budget...)

Using the same recipe as last time, only tripled, I whipped up a batch of batter so huge that it barely fit in the magic bullet blender. I made three modifications to the recipe. I only had one lemon so used as much zest and juice as I could grate/squeeze from it. Also, as decided after the first attempt, I had bought some vegan cream cheese for this cake. Some quick math determined that a full containter would have added 55 g of fat. I bit the bullet and added half the container. I baked the cake for an hour instead of 30 minutes because I left it in the oven for longer with the last cake and was happy with the results.

I put this one in the fridge overnight, pleased with how much closer this attempt had clearly come.

Cheesecake: Round 2-The Crust

I had some time to kill one morning before I left to start my day, so I decided to make a cheesecake appropriate crust. We did not have any graham crackers, and I try not to use honey anyway, so I had to get creative. I read two different recipes at fatfreevegan.com, which can be seen here and here. Surveying what we had in our pantry, I took the stale Fig Newton style cookies and threw them into the magic bullet. When I realized that there were not enough crumbs, I ground up some Nature's Path Heritage Flakes. There was absolutely no measurements used. We had very little soy milk and no juice other than my roommate's tomato. My options were water or ginger beer. I decided that the ginger would give it a warmth reminiscent of honey, so I poured it into the bowl. I mixed it together and pushed it into a springform pan that I had greased with Earth Balance margarine. Although I am not sure why, I made the crust so that it went about half way up the pan on the edges. I threw it into the fridge and left for the day.

When I got home from the daily grind and grocery shopping, I threw it into the oven at 350 for ten minutes and then let it cool before filling it.

Cheesecake: Round 2-The Recipe

(For crust recipe, see Cheesecake: Round 2-The Crust.)

3 lbs silken tofu
1 c sugar
3 tbs tahini
1 1/2 tsp salt
4 tsp lemon juice
1 tbs lemon zest
1 1/2 tsp almond extract
6 tbs cornstarch
4 tbs soymilk (rice milk is also ok)
2 tbs water

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Blend all the filling ingredients in a food processor (or blender) for about 30 seconds, or until smooth.
3. Bake for about 30 minutes or until the top of the cheesecake is lightly browned.
4. Remove the cheesecake from the oven and allow it to cool.
5. Place the cooled cheesecake in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours until it is thoroughly chilled and firm.
6. To serve, take a long knife and heat the blade in hot hot water.
7. Slide the blade of the knife along the edge of the cooled cheesecake to ensure that it will separate from the pan.
8. Release the springform ring, slice and serve cold.

Cheesecake: Round 2

Based on the same recipe of my first attempt, I made the following decisions about how I would make this cheesecake differently:

• To multiply the amounts of each ingredient by three;
• All sugar, no stevia;
• All extra firm silken tofu*;
• Adding Tofutti "Better than Creamcheese" to the recipe; and
  
• To make a crust to stop it from sticking to the pan.

Cheesecake: Baking-The Taste Test

I ate the entirety of the layer still attached to the bottom of the springform a few hours after it was made. I ate the entire second layer over the next day or two.

The following is cross-posted from my personal blog entry from November 6th because this cheesecake is now a distant memory:

"My attempt at vegan cheesecake had mixed results. It's edible, but I definitely made some key mistakes. I'm not upset because I get cheesecake now and because the next one will be perfect.

Missteps:
Stevia has no place in cheesecake, apparently. I made it 3/4 stevia, 1/4 sugar. The bites of the sugar batter are awesome. The stevia bites are bitter with a too sweet finish. Not shocking results.

Half firm and half extra firm was misguided. Cheesecake is supposed to be dense. Granted, I got greedy and didn't let it cool properly. All extra firm would have been better.

I was pretty against adding vegan cream cheese, but that might have been handy. It could do with more cheese.

It stuck to the base of the springform pan, separating the hardened top and the mushy innards which I am now eating. Parchment paper might help.

At this point, I'm comfortable theorizing that letting it set in the fridge for the recommended time, if not longer, would have been a good decision."

Cheesecake: Baking-Round 1

I followed the directions exactly*, except that I tried to be a hero and create the ultimate healthy cheesecake; I subbed stevia in instead of the sugar. It all blended up nicely and I was pretty happy with everything until I poured the misture into my springform pan. There was maybe half an inch of to-be-cake, which mirrored what someone had said in the RecipeZaar.com comments. I had half a container of silken tofu left, so I made another 1/3 batch of the recipe, this time using sugar and threw it on top. This is when I made the fatal error: I didn't mix the batches together before I tossed it into my preheated oven.

Once again mirroring a comment, the cheesecake didn't look ready after the requisite half an hour. I turned down the heat to 250 (a guess) and set the timer for another 30 minutes. I realized later than the timer had jammed at 15 minutes, having no idea how much time had passed. I pulled it out of the oven and let it cool.

Once it was cool, I put it in the fridge. The recipe said to wait 2 hours at least, but I was impatient and left it for about an hour and a half. When I tried to take it out of the springform, half clung to the bottom and half came off. It sort of became the world's thinnest layer cake. It occurred to me that this could be a result of not mixing the two batches of batter together.

*It didn't specify which density of tofu to use, so I followed an instruction and went with a block of extra firm silken and what was eventually a block of firm silken.

Cheesecake: the preliminaries

Cheesecake has always been my favourite cake. I used to make dairy cheesecakes with my mom for almost every family function and they were always a hit. I am looking for a recipe that I feel is a passable equivalent to its dairy counterpart (as I remember it).

I chose to use the internet as my initial recipe pool. I am against chocolate cheesecake, so that cut out a significant chunk of recipes. (Why? Because as long as it's chocolaty and creamy, you can forgo cheesiness. Unacceptable.)

The best vegan cheesecake I have EVER had was a lemon cheesecake made by a classmate's partner. Unfortunately, he won't share the recipe. He did say that there are only four ingredients, hence my obsession with simplicity.

The most widely available vegan cheesecake in Toronto is by Sweets From The Earth and is good, but not quite what I'm looking for. I can't find the ingredients online, but they are numerous.

I finally settled on this recipe from RecipeZaar.com. (It looked similar to another recipe that was credited as being an adaptation of a Bryanna Clark Grogan recipe, so it may be an uncredited adaptation.)

Midnight with the flu: The mission statement.

I envision that this blog will be a way for me to archive the (mis)adventures I embark on while trying to perfect recipes. The recipes I wrestle with will be in line with my dietary restrictions, so they will all be vegan. I try to limit my sugar intake and cut it out of my diet altogether for weeks at a time. Having been raised by a dietitian, I know how to eat balanced meals... I just don't always have the time/money.

Sin carne will be as much about the process than the end result.

Thus far, the battle to create a base for meat/poultry/fish substitutions and the many variations is underway. The creation of a better cheesecake than what is commercially available in Toronto is also underway. I plan to perfect lasagna and paneer, both of which I have been informally working on for some time.

In the future, I anticipate an epic battle with hard cheeses.

Come along for the ride. It should be pretty neat.