- (screams) It's so fluffy, oh my God!
(upbeat music)
Hey guys I'm Brenda, I'm a tasty producer
and today we will be comparing American
versus Japanese cheesecakes.
Now I'll be taking care of the classic
creamy cheesecake that you guys all know really well.
- And I'm Alvin, and I'll be making
the jiggly Japanese cheesecake because I think it's such a
unique twist on cheesecake that you
probably seen online and it's so cool.
I'm gonna show you exactly how it's done.
- Okay let's start this American cheesecake.
So to make the base, you get your graham crackers,
and you smash until they turn into this.
The reason why I begin with the crust is that
it has to be baked twice.
Once by itself, and then with the cheesecake mix.
So while this is baking, you can just go ahead
and get started with your cheesecake mix.
I'm not gonna run all my ingredients at once.
What I'm actually doing is starting
with the sugar and the cream cheese.
I also have all my ingredients at room temperature.
All of this will make it easier to avoid lumps,
and will help me combine everything perfectly.
Let's go back in time to this recipe Alvin filled before,
which happens to inspire my recipe.
Look at the way it comes in.
The texture that it appears to have, it's just beautiful.
(upbeat music)
- Let's cook this Japanese cheesecake.
So the process is very different
than a traditional cheesecake,
this starts with making a liquid cheesecake mixture
of cream cheese, milk, butter and sugar.
And once that gets all nice and smooth,
that gets folded into egg yolks
and that becomes this sort of like creamy,
liquidish kind of batter,
and that sort of your cheesecake base.
When I went to Japan to work with the Taste of Japan team,
we had our eyes set on this jiggly cheesecake
that had been like a viral trender on there
for a really long time.
It was just as amazing as it looked.
It's a very light, fluffy, soft cheesecake
that's very airy, it's like a cloud.
So it's like almost you're making a meringue,
and then you sort of fold the meringue
back in to that cheesecake batter.
The funny thing is that you could eat the entire cheesecake
because 80% of this is air.
When we were in Japan, it was not uncommon to see
someone buying a whole cheesecake for themselves
and finishing it on their walk to work.
You need to bake it in a water bath.
So what that does, it creates like a nice steam barrier
around the cake, so the cake will never get too hot
because the water will take excess heat away from it.
- [Brenda] This is one of my favorite parts Alvin
because you're pretty much unveiling this mythical creature.
It looks super impressive,
you know it's gonna be very fluffy.
- [Alvin] You know those Tempurpedic commercials,
this is like memory foam for my hand.
(upbeat music)
- Let's taste it.
- Let's do it. - Alright.
- This cake right here, is creamy, and it melts,
it's not too dense.
- Your cheesecake, at least in my opinion,
in terms of texture is superb.
This thing is super fluffy.
Which one's your winner and why.
- It will probably be the Japanese one.
When I want something in a dessert,
I want something that isn't too heavy
so I can take more than one bite.
- I'm gonna go for the Japanese version.
Yes, this is easier to make,
but it seems a little more adventurous
to go for this one, and the texture, the fluffiness,
and the jiggling is just like out of this world.
In a taste test, one out of three,
said that they would go for your cheesecake.
I asked people on Instagram, right there.
69% on yours.
- 31% on this one so.
- There you go.
- The crowd and the internet have spoken.
Brenda, that's raw egg.
- [Brenda] It's still delicious.
(jazz music)