Helga's Cheese Cake

Rev 0.40, last revised:  23-Sep-08

This recipe makes the kind of cheese cake that my mother used to make for me when I was a kid.  Unlike the typical shell & pudding recipes, this recipe makes a cheese infused dough, heavenly with the fragrance of lemon zest and made interesting with embedded raisins.  This recipe, such as it is at the moment, is the current iteration of my quest.  Use it with caution...

Ingredients:

• 3 large eggs
• 3/4-cup sugar
• 1/2-cup (1 stick) butter, at room temperature, divided (save a tablespoon or so to grease the baking pan)
• 1-teaspoon baking powder (2?)
• 2-cups (1, 16 oz. container of the real stuff, NEVER the "low-fat" kind!) quark
• 1-cup of flour
• Grated zest of 1 lemon
• juice of 1 lemon (try w/o)
• 1/4-cup raisins (or cherries, or cranberries, or ??)
• enough Rum to cover the raisins  (2 oz?) [try it dry?]
• about 1/2 package of graham crackers pounded to crumbs for sprinkling the mold (bread crumbs can be used)
• Confectioner's sugar
• Strawberries, kiwis or other fruit for decoration

Notes:

1. If you continue to use the lemon you should replace at least part of the BP with BS
2. Try losing the lemon juice as it seems to curdle the cheese
3. Modulate the BP at ~1-tsp/cup flour
4. Try 2, 2.5, & 3 cups flour up-rating the BP to keep track
5. Consider cream if the additional flour makes the mixture too dry

Method:

Preheat the oven to 350F.

Put raisins into the rum.  They plump faster if the rum is hot.

In a large bowl, with an electric mixer, beat together the yolks with the sugar until the mixture is pale yellow and forms a ribbon when the beaters are lifted.  Beat in the butter.

Add baking powder.

Add quark and beat until completely smooth. 

Add flour, the lemon zest, the lemon juice, and beat some more. 

Stir in the raisins. [and the rum?]

[Delete] In a clean, dry bowl, beat the egg whites with clean, dry beaters until soft peaks form, and gently fold them, a little at a time, into the mixture.

Crunch up about 1/2 a package of Graham cracker crumbs...enough to yield about 1/2-3/4 cup or so.

Butter a 10 inch spring-form pan, and sprinkle generously with crumbs.  Pour the cheese mixture into the pan and bake until the cake pulls away from side of the pan, ~1 hour.

Cool for at least 2 hours before serving.  Sprinkle with confectioner's sugar and decorate, if desired, with fresh fruit or preserved fruit.

Enjoy!

1. This version halves the ingredients because the original amounts overflowed the 9" spring-form pan I have.  I am also removing the need to whip the egg-whites separately.