Food You Can Eat: Cheesecake Kuchen

9/6/21 butcherbakertoiletrymaker 12
No I didn't take this picture. You can tell because it looks good.

First things first:  I am slowly, but surely, plowing through the dessert section of the family cookbook.  “Kuchen” is just the German word for “cake”, but kuchens come in all different forms including a cake-like pastry crust, which is the case here.  As with most of the recipes in this cookbook, I’ve not made this one before so it was a real crapshoot but it came out perfectly thank you very much. 

A caveat before we get started:  The pictures don’t show the strawberry topping I put on it because the recipe doesn’t specify any kind of topping and the picture at the top of this post is for the benefit of the cookbook—but ain’t no way I’m eating a cheesecake-anything without some kind of topping or sauce because that’s just criminal.

Here’s what you’ll need:

Crust:

1 ½ Cups Flour

¾ Cup Butter

1 tsp. Baking Powder

¼ tsp. Salt

1 Tbsp. Sugar

Either 1 Egg or 2 Egg Yolks

2 Tbsp. Water

Filling:

1 Lb. Cream Cheese, softened

1 Cup Sugar

2 Eggs

2 Tbsp. Flour

1 tsp. Vanilla

12 oz. Can Evaporated Milk

1 Cup Water

½ Cup Milk

Using a pastry cutter, mix together the flour, butter, and baking powder until thoroughly combined.  Mix together egg, water, salt and sugar.  Then add to dry mixture until well combined.

Pat into a 9 x 13 pan, going up the sides with the crust.

Patience, grasshopper. You have to be gentle with this dough so it spreads evenly.

To make the filling, mix cream cheese together with sugar, pouring the sugar slowly in a steady stream, until well blended.  I’ve mentioned before that it is important to NOT just dump the sugar in there, so you should have retained this vital information.  Add eggs, one at a time, then add the flour, evaporated milk, water, milk and vanilla and mix well.  Scrape down side of bowl with a rubber spatula to get any unmixed cream cheese and mix again until thoroughly incorporated. 

It’s not in the picture, but I use a bowl collar to keep it from splashing out. After scraping down the unmixed cream cheese it really splashes like crazy.

Pour into unbaked shell.  This filling is not what you’re used to for cheesecake.  It is a thin liquid so don’t think you did something wrong—unless, of course, you actually did do something wrong.

Ever make a custard pie? That’s what this is like–only custard pie sucks and this doesn’t.

Bake in a 325-degree oven for 60 minutes.  Give it a little shake to make sure it jiggles like Jell-O and doesn’t make waves like water. If it’s not done, keep checking it in 10-minute increments until it is done. Let it cool in the oven for about an hour and a half before removing to a cooling rack to cool completely.

Perfect on the first try because I am just that good.

Cover with plastic wrap and place in the refrigerator to chill before serving.

After cooling in the oven.

This dessert is awesome.  The texture of the filling is very light, and the crust has a unique texture that isn’t dry and crappy like most pie-like crusts I’ve had over the years. I will almost certainly make it again.

avataravataravataravataravataravataravataravataravataravatar
About butcherbakertoiletrymaker 603 Articles
When you can walk its length, and leave no trace, you will have learned.

12 Comments

  2. Is this a standard pie crust or is there something special about it? Because this looks really good but I don’t do homemade pie crust. * read in a whiney voice*

  3. A great thing about this recipe is you don’t need a spring-form pan, which most cheesecake recipes call for, even the no-bake ones. The spring-form pan is often just for aesthetics, so you serve a triangular slice of cake, but not always. 
     
    The entire Crawley family is a huge fan of crust + filling in a 9 X 13 or 8 X 8 pan, especially if no oven is involved, just a fridge. As you all probably know, these are commonly called bars or squares and the internet is groaning under the weight of all the recipes that are variations on this theme. I’ve written up a couple that you’ll be seeing later, and I could, and may, post a couple dozen more.

      • not sure about that one…i see it with or without over here…but then my german isnt that great
        anyways…the translation isnt straight forward as the germans use kuchen for pretty much everything from pies to cakes to cookies depending on what word is in front of it…they are efficient like that
        the dutch have like 40 different words to do the same job….half of which arent even really dutch

      • Nope, no umlaut, but should be capitalized, like all German nouns. Where the cake is made is called die Küche, the kitchen, and that needs an umlaut. The one who does the cooking is der Koch, if a guy, or die Kochin, if a female. 

Leave a Reply