This cake is definitely not what many of us are accustomed to when it comes to a heavy dense creamy cheese cake. It does posses the flavor of cheese cake, but is ultra light and airy - I can best describe it as it melts in your mouth , like a chiffon cake with a rich taste.
After doing alot of research and watching others attempts, I modified the recipe I to the most SIMPLISTIC way for my readers - plus I believe baking should be fun - not nail biting !!
Ingredients:
8 oz Cream Cheese (softened)
1 Stick Margarine or Butter (softened)
1 TBS Vanilla Extract
1/2 Cup all purpose Flour (sifted)
1/2 C- Corn Starch (sifted)
3/4 C- Powder Sugar (sifted)
5 Egg Yolks
11 Egg Whites
1/4 Tsp Lemon juice
Directions :
1) Preheat oven to 300 degrees
2) Prep a 8 or 9 inch spring form pan . Grease it and cut a parchment circle for bottom. Then cut strip of parchment to go around sides about 3 inches above the pan. Set pan aside.
3) Grab a baking pan and place on lowest setting of oven and fill with water 1/2 way up.
4) In a med size pot - ad in softened cream cheese, softened margarine or butter, milk
5) Gently on low heat , use a whisk to melt it together until nice and creamy. Remove from heat, ad in vanilla and whisk. Let cool for 10 minutes till just warm. Then ad in Egg Yolks and whisk briskly and mix Next soft your sifted flour and corn startch and ad to your egg and cream mixture and whisk until creamy and smooth. At this point set aside.
6) Make the Egg whites- In a large bowl ad your room temperature egg whites. With mixer ( stand or hand) Mix till frothy , then ad in lemon juice , and continue beating on high for 3 e minutes. Next ad in powder sugar - I personally ad in 1/2 at a time and incorporate then ad the rest in. Beat on high for about two more minutes or until you have nice stiff peaks.
7) Now take 1/3 of your egg whites and ad to your batter and gently fold in ( do not heavy hand this. I suggest using a whisk and cutting through and folding till the egg whites are mixed in. Do this in again with next 1/3 of egg whites. For the last - I pour the batter into the remaining last egg whites as the volume has increased and batter bowl/pan is to small. To fold and mix in last bit.
8) Pour batter into your lined spring form pan and give it 2-3 Nice taps to release air bubbles and smooth top
9) Place in oven on a rack above your water pan. I did not back directly in the water bath. I placed the next rack above the water bath . The reason I did this was watching too many people end up with a soupy cake batter on bottom and wanted to avoid that ! This worked perfect still giving the moisture during baking to the cake needed.
Bake for 70 minutes - then turn off oven and let sit for 15 minutes.
Remove cake from oven and invert onto your hand with a kitchen cloth covering hand - remove bottom parchment from cake all parchment and place platter over the bottom and turn over - then remove parchment from sides - dust with powder sugar - very simple You should have a very nice light airy jiggly Japanese Cotton cheese cake.
The flavor of this cake changes. We tried ours warm, cool and cold. I liked it best cold after being in fridge a few hours.
Tips
Measure and organize everything
Separate all eggs and let them come to room temp ( you will have 6 egg yolks left over - you can freeze them for other recipes or the next cake)
