cheesecake Archives - Bidmead Bites

BidmeadBites visited Berlin back in 2015 and ate a bit of everything; from the classic Currywurst to Peruvian ceviche. Revisiting recently with my mum and sister, food highlights included some terrific Taiwanese dishes at Lon Men’s Noodle House and traditional frikadellen (meatball-esque German beef patties) back at Markthalle Neun, the cities funnest food market. But what I want to focus on in this post is cake. Oh, do the Germans know a bit about cake.

Cheesecake, to be specific.

German cheesecakes have a soft shortcrust pastry base and a filling which replaces the cream cheese used in typical New York cheesecakes with quark, a sort of strained cottage cheese which is then mixed in with butter, sugar and whipped egg white. Below are three different slices I tried, with a pastry base/a pastry base and crust/filled with gooseberries. All in the name of recipe research…

Cheesecake no. 1: @ Oliv Caf, Mitte

Cheesecake no. 2: @ Markthalle Neun, Kreuzberg

Cheesecake no. 3: Gooseberry filled at KaDaWe Foodhall

Looking to recreate this recipe at home, I took inspiration from a cheesecake recipe in a wonderfully old retro cookbook named “The Sainsburys Book of Puddings & Desserts” (published in 1980, and still one of my favourite baking books). The use of semolina and ground almonds adds richness to the quark, which is often sold in a very low-fat version. While the traditional pastry bottom in the German cheesecake is definitely a welcome addition, the labour intensive descriptions of handling this dough are less appealing. I anglicised the German recipe to include a traditional digestive base, because biscuits mixed with truck loads of butter is never a bad thing.

Find my tweaked German (ish) recipe below! I slightly overcooked mine, so I recommend keeping a beady eye of for the browning of your cake on the top. Once cooked, do try to wait until it’s fully chilled to eat – the wait is worth it I promise.

Retro German/English cheesecake

Use a 9 inch (23 cm) cake tin.

For biscuit base:

200 grams digestive biscuits
100 grams butter

For cake:

100 grams butter
150 grams caster sugar
Grated rind and juice of one lemon
400 grams quark
3 eggs, seperated
75 grams ground almonds
50 grams semolina (if you don’t have this to hand, you can just sub in the same amount of ground almonds)

Method

Before you start….Preheat open to 180 degrees. Line cake tin.

Firstly make your base. Either put biscuits in a big sandwich bag and bash with a rolling pin until you have fine crumbs, or put in a food processor to crush them up. Melt butter completely and mix in with biscuits, then press biscuits into base of tin until you have a nice compact biscuit base. Pop into warm oven for 10 minutes to cook, then remove.
Now for the filling. Cream the butter, sugar and lemon rind together until light and fluffy. Beat in quark gradually, then mix in the egg yolks and beat thoroughly. Add the almonds, semolina and lemon juice and mix well. Whisk the eggs whites until stiff and carefully fold into the cheese mixture.
Spoon into your lined cake line and bake for 50-60 minutes. Turn off oven and leave until cold (if you can manage to wait!).

An English/German lovechild take on the cheesecake

Jewish Deli food is a serious must for anyone staying in the Big Apple. Chicken noodle soup, creamy chopped liver and sky-high pastrami sandwiches are all typical dishes in these much-loved NYC institutions, perfect for a quick bite during the day or a sobering snack at the end of a long night out.

Katz Deli, year upon year, tops lists as the number one deli in New York. Their pastrami sandwiches draw in locals and tourists the world over, who come in the hope of leaving as pleased as Sally was in the famous scene from the well-known and loved rom-com, When Harry Met Sally.

While I refrained from reenacting the scene, it was fair to say my pastrami sandwich was orgasmic. Flavorsome, soft rye bread encapsulates the two-to-four week cured beef, which is salty, soft and filled with flavor.

The famous Katz deli sandwich, and me working how quite how to conquer it

The beef used to make these serious sandwiches has been cured, rubbed, smoked, boiled, and lastly steamed for ultimate flavor and texture. The results of this laborious process? Some absolutely beautiful meat, covered in a peppery skin with a melt-in-your-mouth softness for texture. The selection of pickles which come along with your sandwich add a great vinegary tang to each bite, and with a touch of mustard I’d say this sandwich reaches its peak of perfection.

Pickles + pastrami = paradise

Despite the gigantic portion of pastrami I had just confronted, I was eager to try out some of the desserts on offer. New York cheesecake was a no-brainer, but I was left curious about a ‘noodle pudding’, also know as a kugel or lokshen pudding. My mum told me it was a traditional Jewish dessert made up of cooked pasta, and that she had only ever know herself and her own mum to be fans. Given that it got the thumbs up from none other than mama and grandma Bidmead, I felt it was only right to give it a go, despite how weird it sounded.

The noodle pudding was pretty much as described – thick, pasta-like noodles cooked and compacted together, mixed in with raisins and baked. Obviously that isn’t all there is to this dish, and the addition of tasty and health-giving things such as cream and butter resulted in what turned out to be quite a tasty dessert. Perhaps I wouldn’t jump to order it again, and may potentially prefer to keep my pasta as part of my main, but I did actually enjoy it. As for the cheesecake…it didn’t stay around long. With practically no biscuit base, it was a slice of pure, unadulterated cream cheese delight.

Kugel/Lokshen pudding and a classic NYC cheesecake

Katz Deli was as much a cultural activity as visiting a New York city museum or gallery. From the packed out dining room to the chaotic ticket system used to pay the bill to the cashier out front, it felt like we were seeing some real New York City action. Who cares if it’s mainly filled with foreign tourists staring hopelessly at their 7-inch sandwiches and the fact that the process of getting served is a bit chaotic? Sit down, roll up your sleeves, and have what she had in New York City’s number one deli.

Bidmead in Berlin (again) – German Cheesecake recipe

Orgasmic eats at another NYC Classic – Katz Deli