This is the best cheesecake I have ever had. The memories of my Aunt Joan is filled with each bite! One evening in August of 2015, I was going through one of my mom’s old Slovak cookbooks she let me borrow the last time I visited her in New Jersey. I mostly went through the several loose papers with handwritten recipes and notes. I found one with my handwriting for cheesecake.

Cheesecake (in Slovak: tvarohová torta)

     The style of printing was the way I used to quickly print notes using a mix of upper and lower case letters in the same word. My handwriting  was really poor so certain letters I would capitalize because the lower case letters would resemble that of a different letter or even a number. I figure I was about 19 or 20 years old. Only problem, I never made a cheesecake at the age I had to have written down this recipe.

     After reading it line by line it hit me – it hit me! This had to be my Aunt Joan’s cheesecake recipe. She must have dictated it to me. It just had to be her recipe. So I decided to make it and it turned out exactly the way I remembered her making it. You know – the kind you NEED a glass of ice cold milk to wash it down.

     She knew how much I loved her cheesecakes and this recipe brought back so many memories. There were a couple of side notes of her comments that I wrote down. The comments were next to a couple of the ingredients that she made sure I would include in the recipe. One comment was for the sugar amount.

     Aunt Joan had type 2 diabetes so she adjusted the recipe when she made it for herself or my Uncle George. When she made cheesecake, Aunt Joan would often also bake a 2nd one so when I came over to visit there was a hefty slice and a tall glass of ice-cold glass of milk waiting for me. So for me, she must have wanted to be sure that I wrote down her original recipe the way I always remembered it. I miss Aunt Joan a lot but now I have a recipe of her’s and with each bite of this cheesecake my mind is filled with memories of her.

    I hope that you enjoy the making of this cheesecake recipe as much as I remembered eating it when my Aunt Joan made it – with a BIG glass of milk to go with it.

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My Aunt Joan's New York Style Cheesecake

2015-11-18 16:48:25

This recipe is for the best cheesecake I ever had which was made by my Aunt Joan. This cheesecake texture is dense and firm - the kind that goes best with an ice-cold glass of milk.

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Ingredients:

Crumb Crust

1. 1 cup Graham cracker crumbs - coarse to medium fine
2. ¼ cup Sugar
3. 1 tsp Cinnamon
4. ¼ cup Butter - melted but not hot

Cake

1. 2 ½ lbs. Cream Cheese - room temp (but not too soft)
2. 1 Pt Sour cream
3. 1 ½ cups Sugar
4. 3 Lg eggs
5. 1 ½ tsp Vanilla extract
6. ½ tsp each of lemon and orange zest (optional)
7. ¼ lb Butter - melted but not hot
8. 2 Tbsp Flour - shifted to breakup chunks

Directions:

Crust

1. In a medium sized bowl combine all the dry ingredients.
2. Dribble the butter over the top of the crumbs and mix well so that the butter become uniformly distributed.
3. Spray the bottom and sides of a spring form pan with vegetable oil or baking spray - you can also line the bottom of the pan with a round piece of parchment cut to fit.
4. Add the crumbs to the center of the spring form pan.
5. Using a large spoon or the flat bottom of a measuring cup, firmly press the crumbs to distribute an even layer and no more than ¼" to ½" up the sides.
6. Set aside in a cool area of your kitchen or an adjacent room to harden. You can also place it in the freezer for about 10-15 mins.

Cake

1. Preheat oven to 325°F
2. In a large mixing bowl, (this is important) combine the cream cheese and sugar
3. Blend well together until smooth - a hand mixer on low is perfect for this or you can use a heavy duty wooden spoon - Don't over mix.
4. Blend into the cream cheese and sugar base the sour cream, vanilla extract, butter and the (optional) citrus zest.
5. Incorporate the flour into the batter a 1/3 at a time.
6. Add 1 egg at a time as you blend them into the mixture. You don't need to wait in between to add each egg.
7. Mix until all ingredients are smooth and uniform but, again, do not over mix.
8. Pour the cake mixture into the chilled spring form pan
9. Place the cake pan on a cookie or baking tray with raised sides and put into the pre-heated oven.
10. After closing the oven door reduce the temperature to 275°F
11. Bake at 275°F for 1½ to 2 hrs or until the middle no longer "jiggles" and top is slightly brown.
12. Turned off the oven but DO NOT fully open the door... yet.
13. Open the oven door only slightly ajar (cracked open about an inch the most), leaving the cake inside for about 1 to 2 hrs to slowly cool.
14. Chill in the fridge for at least a full day (minimum of 12 hrs) or longer.

Notes:

1. Important - the cream cheese and sugar needs to be blended well to remove any clumps before proceeding but do not over mix.
2. Over-mixing will incorporate too much air into the batter and will cause cracking.
3. Leaving the cheesecake in the oven to cool for the 1-2 hrs will allow the cake to slowly cool which will eliminate or reduce cracking of the cake.
4. You can use a kitchen towel or pot-holder to prevent the door from closing thereby allowing the inch opening.to remain.

To remove pan bottom:

1. To remove bottom of the spring form pan, place a griddle on a stove burner and heat until the griddle is very warm but not hot enough to burn.
2. Turn off burner and briefly place cake with the bottom onto the griddle surface for a minute or two to soften the butter.
3. Place a plate over the top of the cheesecake and flip the cake over with the plate now as the bottom. Using a flat knife, place between the cheesecake and the spring form pan bottom and slowly and carefully pop the bottom off of the cheesecake.
4. Now, with a different plate or serving tray, place this onto the now freed bottom of the cheesecake.
5. Flip over together and remove the original plate.
6. Your cake is now ready for serving.

By Joan (Bangel) Lipovsky

SlavicCooking.com https://slaviccooking.com/

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