Gingerbread Basque Cheesecake with Royal Icing Snowflakes | Food Wishes

Hello, this is Chef John from foodwishes.com with gingerbread bass cheesecake. That's right, we're giving a seasonal twist to what I think is the best method for making cheesecake. Since it is very fast and easy, and the results are very light and creamy, but because the method is fast and hot, we can sometimes get cracks, which is why I'm including a bonus royal icing demo we'll use to make some snowflakes to cover any imperfections. And to get started, we will very lightly butter a cake pan or just a touch to help our parchment paper adhere. And then we'll also generously butter a round of parchment paper. And once thoroughly greased, we will place that in. And then press and position it as evenly as possible. And by the way, wherever that parchment pleats around the sides, we want to make sure those seams are pressed nice and flat so there's no big gaps for our batter to get into. And that's it. Once our pan is prepped, we can go ahead and separate one egg since we need one yolk for the batter that will eventually get added to four whole eggs. And what we'll do is pop that yolk in the fridge until we need it. And then with the white, I'm going to show you how to make some royal icing snowflakes, which involves adding a pinch of cream of tartar, which is totally optional, but I have it, so I added it. And then we'll add some powdered sugar. And we'll start whisking. And we will continue whisking, adding more powdered sugar as we go until we've produced an icing that is very thick to the point where it's actually hard to whisk, which for me was looking a little something like this. And once we do get to this point, we'll go ahead and transfer that into a piping bag fitted with a small round tip. And then on a parchment line baking sheet, we'll proceed to make some beautiful snowflakes. And if you want to trace your designs on the paper first with pencil and then flip it over and use that as a guide, feel free. I mean, you are after all the snake plkins of your snowflake fixings. But I could not be bothered. So I just went freehand, assuming that I was going to be really good at piping snowflakes, which as it turns out, I was not. In fact, I think the first two were the best. But anyway, I did a wide array of different sizes and styles since I wasn't exactly sure how or where I was going to use them yet. And once piped, all you have to do is let these dry for about 12 to 24 hours or until they dry and harden completely. And once that optional step is done, we can move on to our cheesecake batter, which starts, of course, with a whole bunch of cream cheese, to which we will add our flour. And then we'll also at this point add our sweeteners, including some white sugar, as well as some molasses, which is going to help give this regular bass cheesecake a gingerbread flavor. And yes, it's true what they say. Molasses is very slow. But anyway, once we eventually get that in, we will also add a nice splash of real pure vanilla extract, followed by some salt. And then, of course, our mandatory gingerbread spices, which are ground ginger, cinnamon, plus a small touch of ground clove. And once our first set of ingredients is in the bowl, we will take a hand mixer and we will mix and cream all this together until it's light and fluffy. And if your cream cheese is room temp and nice and soft, this is really, really easy. But if it's a little too cold and stiff like mine, it'll take a few moments before it loosens up. But once it does, we can switch to a higher speed. And like I said, we'll mix that until it's light and fluffy. At which point, we'll stop and add that reserved egg yolk, plus our four whole eggs. But we're only going to add those one at a time. And what we'll do is use our mixer to incorporate that thoroughly before we attempt to add the next three eggs. And the reason we do it this way is because if you added all the eggs at once, the batter can separate, which there are ways to fix, but it's not ideal. So to avoid all that trauma and unnecessary drama, we will simply add them one at a time like this. Oh, and I should mention if you do use an electric mixer for this, you're going to end up with something that has a lighter texture because of all the little tiny air bubbles we're creating. Okay, we can if we want use a spatula to cream everything together and then just use a regular whisk to do the eggs and cream, but for this gingerbread version, I decided lighter was going to be better. And that's it. Once all our eggs have been incorporated, we will pour in the last ingredient, which is some heavy cream. And we'll give that a brief mixing. And that's all there is to making this very simple batter. And what we'll do is take a spatula and transfer that into our prepared pan. And if everything goes according to plan, it should come up almost but not quite to the top. In fact, feel free to cut your parchment paper round a little bit bigger since it would be nice to have a little bit more to work with when we try to get this out of the pan. And that's it. Before this gets baked, we will pick it up and give it the old tapa tapa just to bring up and knock out some of the bigger bubbles. And yes, it is more of a dropper dropper than a tapa tapa. But whatever you call it, once that's been accomplished, we will carefully pick this up and we will transfer this into the upper center of a 400°ree oven for 45 minutes, at which point we'll raise our heat up to 450 to help us achieve a little bit of a darker browning. And we'll continue cooking for another 10 minutes or so, or until our cheesecake is beautifully puffed. And it hopefully looks like this. And by the way, if you want that classic burnt batch cheesecake look, you can flash this under the broiler for a minute, but I didn't want to overcook it, and I thought it looked gorgeous, so I didn't. And by the way, if we give this a little bit of a wiggle, your cheesecake should definitely have a jiggle, which usually means it's cooked close to perfectly. And then what we'll do is let that sit and cool for at least an hour. During which time, because of that fast hot cooking method, you very well may end up with a few cracks, which I did. But was I upset? No, not at all. Because Chef John has tricks, which you are going to see shortly. But anyway, once that's eventually cooled down to room temp, we will very carefully lift it out and transfer it onto a plate. And now that it's out of the pan, we can peel that paper back. And you can see that gorgeous brown beautiful design left behind by that pleated parchment paper. Speaking of which, before I wrap this up, I am going to go ahead and trim that off since it served its purpose. And once that's done, we can wrap this up and pop it in the fridge until we need it, which for me was overnight. And speaking of overnight, by the next day, my royal icing snowflakes were nice and hard and dry. And if you're careful, those should come off the paper pretty easily. And once they do, we can transfer our now cold cheesecake onto a platter, and we can proceed with Operation Snowflake cover up. And no, I don't mean that time you scrubbed your social media accounts. What we'll do is cover any and all cracks or imperfections with our snowflakes, which not only makes those disappear, it also makes this already gorgeous looking cheesecake even more beautiful and seasonally appropriate. And once those were on for a final touch, I gave this all a beautiful dusting of powdered sugar. And after taking way too many pictures, I grabbed a knife and cut out a nice slice. And by nice, I mean a way too small slice. And we'll go ahead and serve that up. And of course, we can garnish with our royal icing snowflakes if we want. And maybe another dusting of sugar, which yes, I got all over the place. But anyway, I cleaned that up and grabbed a fork and went in for the official taste. And that, my friends, really was an incredible bite of cheesecake. Okay, just plain bass cheesecake is incredible. But for someone that loves gingerbread as much as I do, I thought those flavors worked incredibly well in this. And besides the simple batter and the hot fast cooking method, the other thing that makes bash cheesecake so easy is that we do not need a crust. And generally, I do love crusts of all sorts. But here, I really don't think we miss it. But having said that, if you really do want a crust, you could just simply take your favorite graham cracker crust recipe and use ginger snap cookies instead. And I think that would work out quite well. But whether you make a crust or do this as shown, I really did love everything about this gingerbread flavored bass cheesecake, which is why I really do hope you give it a try soon. So, please follow the links below for the ingredient amounts, a printable written recipe, and much more info as usual. And is always in joy.