- Hello, have you ever been scared of a cheesecake?
Today, I'm making my first ever New York cheesecake,
and I am genuinely scared.
I don't know why. I've wanted to make this for years.
I loved the sound of it
and it's kind of like this old wives tale,
and like different styles of doing it,
and I'm, yeah, I'm scared of a cheesecake. (laughs)
Even on our walk earlier, he was like looking at me going,
"Are you alright? You look apprehensive today."
I spent the last few days
researching different New York cheesecakes.
And there's so many different ways, and twists,
and tips of doing it.
I've picked out what I think is the best way,
and I'm welcome to your comments.
And I think the best thing to do is just get going.
All right, we did this fairly recently actually.
We wrapped a loose bottom tin,
but we actually took out the bottom and trapped it in
to stop any potential leakage.
Now, the problem with doing that,
that was one of the tips that I found,
(foil tearing)
is that the base, which we're gonna start with first of all,
(foil rustling)
the base, the biscuit base, could get baked into that foil,
which is gonna be a nightmare
when you try and strip it back.
So it's not gonna be in there, all right?
(foil rustling)
All right, I'm happy with that.
And whenever I use tin foil,
it makes me feel like I work for NASA.
But anyhow, biscuit base, I feel comfortable with this step.
All right, so I've got some digestive biscuits here,
and Ken is gonna blitz them up for me.
Randomly, I've got a pack for the supermarket own brand
double the weight for half the price
of a very, very well known brand.
And I did reach out for a brand deal recently
and I'm not gonna say who they are.
(upbeat music)
You can't really see me too well,
but this is five tablespoons of butter
that I'm just putting in the microwave.
And look how quick that absorbs it.
It's always one of those things that's fascinated me.
It's actually salted butter as well.
So sometimes these recipes have said
about adding a pinch of salt.
I just bought the salted butter, so not really needed.
Now, this is interesting 'cause obviously
once you've done this
you can just press it into a dish and chill it.
And that does form a crust too, but we are gonna bake it.
This is greasy enough, it's got butter in it,
so don't really need to grease the bottom of the dish.
I say that like I've done this before,
but that's just my thinking.
All right. I am happy with that.
It looks actually a lot, whoa.
It does look quite thin, but it will be strong.
I should have pre-heated my oven.
So pre-heat your oven before starting that.
I've wasted a bit of time here.
All right, so that's go in for 10 to 12 minutes to firm up,
and then we actually let it cool down.
So whilst that's baking,
I just wanna say a big thanks to some of you guys
'cause I teased this recently
that I wanted to do a New York cheesecake
and wanted your advice because I'd seen some potentially
that had a cake base sponge,
and I wanted to know how common that was.
But the overruling thing was, no, do a biscuit base,
so there we are.
I wonder why like I'm scared of this cheesecake?
One of my favourite videos I did
was a four-in-one cheesecake recipe attempt,
and I didn't care what it looked like.
I just knew it was gonna taste good,
and I know I'm gonna love this.
Eh, one thing to add for the last minute.
I've actually started to lower the oven temperature already
'cause it's critical.
That's one of the tips I got.
Make sure it's not too hot
before we put our filling in there.
So whilst we're prepping it,
we know that it's gonna slowly lower.
Side note. I'm really scared of using new oven gloves.
Do you ever get that using oven gloves for the first time?
You're like, urgh?
Well, yeah, the oven gloves work and there we go.
Oh, that smells amazing.
Slightly darker in colour,
and dropping the temperature of the oven.
So a standard cheesecake normally uses cream or sour cream.
There's loads of different versions.
Of course, you've got the no-bake versions too.
Whereas the New York one is like more rich,
and dense, and even creamier
because you're really going for cream cheese overload.
So these are all the ingredients we've got.
And straightaway I wanna say
I have got full-fat cream cheese.
The only problem is I've not got the branded one,
and I have had problems in the past
with not using branded cream cheese.
I don't know why.
And it's even worse if you use a lower fat cream cheese.
Sometimes it doesn't like bond together as well.
And the feedback was you needed to use
full-fat cream cheese.
So I'm just hoping that the supermarket version,
which again was so much cheaper, that might be why,
I hope it helps me.
So this is a massive wedge of cream cheese,
and it's been at room temperature,
like all of these ingredients, for at least two hours.
Apparently, that's another critical tip.
We've got sugar, salt.
A lemon. We get zest and juice from that.
Vanilla extract.
Now, I've got us some really good quality stuff that I love.
There's actually four teaspoons there, which is quite a bit.
But then when you consider how much
of the cream cheese we've got, it's gonna get lost in there.
So got the sour cream. Flour.
Now, apparently, this is optional,
but a lot of people say just adding a couple of tablespoons
will help sort of bond it and bind it better
to hopefully give you a better chance of it not cracking.
But as I say, if I do all this and it still cracks,
I don't care.
I'm just gonna show you all the tips that I've found
and hopefully yours will look better than mine.
It always does. Finally, eggs.
Now, yep, these have been out for two hours too,
but I cracked them when they were cold.
It's just personal choice.
I find that the yolk comes out better,
but I've sat them all together like that.
Some people use slightly less eggs,
but then one or two eggxtra yolks.
Oh yeah, another tip I found with the eggs,
obviously being room temperature,
don't add them until the last minute.
And in fact, not just the eggs, the whole mixture,
you just need to beat it until it's just combined,
which is something I'm gonna be really bad at
because I love over mixing stuff.
Basically the theory is the more we beat the eggs in,
obviously when you beat eggs normally,
it is gonna add potentially more air in
and we wanna kind of reduce that.
Anything that we can do to help it the best, we're doing it.
(upbeat music)
Dun, dun, da, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun.
(whisk whirring)
So even that was about 20 seconds.
And I'm just making sure with a spatula,
and of course trying to get my hand as messy as I can,
that the flour and sugar is not resting at the bottom here.
Now, that looks pretty good.
All right, so now we can add in the salt, vanilla.
Oh, wow.
I can really tell the difference
when you buy a good quality vanilla extract.
I've learned that from a cheap versus steep video.
Oh, my gosh, that smells amazing.
All right, so now the lemon zest,
and then we're gonna take the juice
of probably half the lemon.
It's really interesting.
Some of the recipes were like, nope, add the eggs first,
but I actually really agree
with that theory of adding them last.
I'm gonna add them in batches.
(whisk whirring)
Just a little bit, so it's not fully there.
Ooh.
(gentle music)
And it probably is a bit of overkill,
but I'm just gonna do a couple of courtesy whisks.
I am happy with that. I am really happy.
I mean, it looks super smooth. Okay.
All right, so our base is actually nice and firm now,
so we're gonna grease it.
But again, doing this actually should help with the cracking
because as it cools, it's gonna like contract.
So by having like greased sides,
it will stop it potentially clinging to that
and pull inwards a little bit
rather than being like (slurps)
like an old Stretch Armstrong.
I always wanted a Stretch Armstrong as a kid.
Oh, my gosh. That looks beautiful in colour.
(alarm beeping) Ooh, me oven's ready.
Kettle's boiling, whoa, so that we can pour it in the tray.
We'll get that pan in first
'cause obviously we don't wanna be putting the pan
in the hot boiling water.
That is exactly what I would do.
So this is effectively a water bath,
and we are going about a third of the way up the pan.
Another reason why that foil is there.
It's gonna help create a moist sort of atmosphere,
prevent it from getting dry, and ultimately, hopefully,
again, helping with the cracking
because it will cool in this.
It's also called a bain marie, of course.
And if you've got a friend who is called Marie as a teenager
that might have mucked about too much in the cinema
and effectively got banned, it might trigger some memories.
That's all I've gotta say about that.
The oven is 20 degrees less than before.
The other tip was to put it on the middle shelf.
All we can do is try.
At this point we've kind of just got to wait.
There were so many different methods here.
There's some where you bake it for a little bit,
open the oven, let it vent and cool down,
and naturally do that thing.
I personally prefer the idea of baking it
and then letting it cool in the water bath.
Just my thing that I think personally is gonna work.
Remember, we can all do our own tips and suggestions.
If you have any more, do let me know down below.
So in conclusion, we've greased the pan to stop it cracking.
We've done room temperature ingredients to stop it cracking.
We've done eggs last and whisked as minimal as possible
to stop it cracking.
We've done a water bath to stop it cracking,
and we've done a middle or even slightly lower middle shelf
to help stop it cracking and over baking.
That's a pretty good opportunity to make this work.
I am guaranteed now, after all of this, it's gonna crack.
- [Announcer] 12 seconds later.
- No pun intended. I just had a bit of a wobble.
I wanted to go for the like deep golden colour
to give it hopefully more flavour, and we've got that.
The only problem is one side was starting to catch quick,
so I quickly open the oven.
This foil was foil a minute ago.
I was gonna drape it on,
but unfortunately some of the foil skagged two sides
that I was trying to cover, so it's not a huge split.
In the words of Monty Python, "It's a bit of a flesh wound,"
but the other side looks amazing.
So I'm a bit gutted. I'm gutted.
Yeah, sorry, I'm just absolutely gutted. Gargh.
Argh, oh.
Unfortunately I've just put Slash from Guns N' Roses in it.
Hey, ho, it's fine. Alright, one final tip.
Obviously we greased the side of this pan
and it's working really well,
but if you want to just loosen it with a knife
as it cools to stop it contracting and sticking to the pan.
A little bit like "Spider-Man" with Toby McGuire
where he's like holding back a train
with a web or something.
That's what the cheesecake could try and do.
And to be fair, the oil has done its job,
but it's just a bit of a peace of mind thing.
We'll let this cool to room temperature,
and I'll see you in a bit.
I just wanted to show you this angle, right?
So when I first took it out the oven, there was this huge
mountainous brown rounded mushroom-style cap on it
well above the tin,
but now after like 10 minutes, it's sunk.
Not sunk in a bad way, but it's gone well below.
And as a result, some of those slashes
have actually filled in a little bit.
It's starting to hide them.
I am taking that as a small win. I need it right now.
Yeah, look at it. It's closing up.
All right, so now the bad news, taking the foil off.
It's now at room temperature, which took quite a while.
We have got to wait even longer now. Ideally overnight.
I think six to eight hours
seemed to be the sweet spot of chilling it.
I might do the internet fridge or a freezer
for like 15 minutes and then put it in the fridge
to speed it up just for this video.
So we'll wrap it.
(upbeat music)
And that's going in our fridge.
It's really funny, whenever I say that, the internet fridge,
and I say about the freezer, everyone else is like,
"Yeah, I'm gonna do that too.
I don't care. I'm in a hurry."
So it's completely up to you.
For authenticity, do chill it.
Right. Huh.
(uplifting music)
Oh, look at that.
So the suggestion seems to be to come in at one side
and just get under the crust to create an opening.
All I wanna do is get it to there. Please don't fail.
(tin base banging)
Uh. Oh, there we go.
That was not bad. Oh, I've lost some of me crust.
Oh, no.
None of the recipes told me to line the bottom.
None of them.
This is greasy enough.
It's got butter in it,
so don't really need to grease the bottom of the dish.
Tell you what, I'm really proud of that.
Just gonna aim for the middle.
Oh my gosh, that is delicate.
Oh. Oh, you beautiful thing.
Look at that.
It's been quite emotional, this recipe.
I am really proud of that.
Awesome. Yeah, baby.
Yeah, I've got most of the base off of that,
but I'm gonna add that to my notes as my Barry tip.
I think a little bit of baking parchment
just with a lip hanging out.
Boom. Straight off there.
Oh, that is creamy and dense. Mm, wow.
That is got a surprisingly crazy amount of flavour,
and it is creamy,
and it just melts in the mouth, it dissolves.
The kind of like chilled freshness element,
just kind of is whoa.
It kind of adds to it.
I don't think I would've wanted it whilst it was still warm
as tempting and as much I've had to wait as possible.
But it's kind of like creamy and fluffy at the same time.
Mm. I've never had one before.
I knew that day would come.
I feel like I've given it as much help as I can
with the tips that I researched,
and no doubt you guys have got some too,
but that is phenomenal.
I genuinely want to try one in America now for comparison.
Although we put in all that cream cheese, all that sugar,
all the eggs, it should be like quite filling.
And it might be after a few more bites,
but it's very addictive.
It kind of still feels light in a way,
which is extremely worrying. (laughs)
So I'm gonna stop right there.
If you try this recipe,
remember I have my own notes to it and my own Barryfication.
Do send me a photo on your social media platform of choice.
I love to see it,
and of course they always look way better than mine.
But take on board the tips that I've suggested.
Give it a go, and I'll see you later. Ciao.
Folks, this is completely genuine. Mrs. B is not a fan.
This is her first ever baked cheesecake,
let alone a New York one.
- Mm. I'm hungry though.
- She like, "It tastes like that eggy thing the other day."
Remember that magic cake that I did?
- Baked cheesecakes just don't seem right.
It should be like.
- If you only knew the pain that just put through.