- Hey, I'm John Kanell.
And today on Preppy Kitchen,
we're making a creamy, delicious strawberry cheesecake.
So let's get started.
First off, preheat that oven to 350 Fahrenheit.
We're making our graham cracker crust for the cheesecake.
I want 270 grams.
That's like two sleeves of graham crackers.
Now, we're gonna crush them up.
You could use a food processor if you want.
If you crush your crackers by hand,
you'll get some larger pieces that are extra crunchy.
And just like that, with no mess at all,
these graham crackers are all crushed up.
Into a big bowl they go.
To sweeten the deal,
I'm adding three tablespoons of granulated sugar in here.
If you wanted to, you could use brown sugar, but it clumps.
I'm gonna give that a quick mix.
And now, I'm adding five tablespoons,
or 70 grams, of unsalted butter,
although you could totally use salted butter if you wanted.
Use a spatula, not your fingers, and just bring it together.
You should have something
that clumps up when you squeeze it,
but it's not gonna be super wet at all.
So a lot of times,
when people are making graham cracker crusts,
I think they're tempted
to add more and more and more butter,
but that kind of defeats the whole lightness
and crunchiness of the crust,
and it makes it heavy and soggy.
Some into your hands.
You can see how it's clumping.
It's not like when you make pastry dough
and it's like clumped in,
but it'll press and take shape once you bake it.
See that?
This is holding together.
Now, you wanna grab a nine-inch springform pan.
We're gonna dump this right in.
If you've ever had a cheesecake stick,
it can be a sad experience,
so for extra insurance,
just a little baking spray.
Dump this in.
Use a glass cup.
And we wanna work it up to sides about an inch,
not all the way up.
And really give a firm press
so everything sticks.
Once the side has started,
go ahead and press the bottom down.
Just giving it a final pass with my cup now.
I want it to be really nice and tight
before I pop it into the oven.
Lachlan and George are gonna be so excited
to see this cheesecake when they come home.
Oh my gosh, it's gonna be piled high with strawberries
and smell amazing.
This is gonna go into the oven
for 10 to 15 minutes at 350,
or until it takes on a more golden hue
and you have a fragrant smell coming from the oven.
(bell dings)
While that crust is in the oven,
we're gonna start the filling.
And I have to tell you, I love cheesecakes in general,
but I'm not a fan of the really dense cheesecakes.
For me, they should be like light, fluffy,
just melt-in-your-mouth amazingness.
So that's what we're gonna do today.
Into a bowl,
I'm adding three eight-ounce packages of cream cheese.
This should be room temperature.
If it's ice-cold,
it's gonna be too hard and it's not gonna mix well.
One of your enemies in a cheesecake is lumps.
And to get no lumps,
you wanna have room temperature ingredients, or softer.
Normally, I would do this recipe
in a stand mixer with a paddle attachment,
but today I'm using a big bowl and my hand mixer.
Honestly, like, I think this helps you get
a more homogenous mixture.
Almost any recipe you do that calls for a stand mixer
can use a hand mixer.
It's one of like the most asked questions
I get on the channel.
First of all, I'm gonna cream this.
I want this to really mix for about three minutes
until it's all broken up and creamy
and really gonna be accepting other ingredients.
If you don't mix your cream cheese first,
it's gonna have lumps.
One other enemy for a cheesecake is air.
You do not want to beat a lot of air into the cheesecake,
because those bubbles will get bigger when they get hot
and they'll crack the cake.
Cracked cheesecake is really not a big deal,
but I will say that if the cheesecake
has too much air in it throughout,
it'll change that creamy consistency a bit.
It's time for some sugar.
I want 1 1/4 cups, or 250 grams.
Scale is done for now.
Just gonna scrape this to go down a bit.
If you wanted to reduce the sugar in this,
I'm sure you could just take off 50 grams.
It'd be fine.
This is not overly sweet, though, at all.
It's like perfectly sweet, in my humble opinion.
Now, we're gonna mix this once again on medium low
for about two minutes, until it's fully incorporated.
Notice I'm not saying light and fluffy,
because that would mean
I'd beat a lot of air into my cheesecake.
This recipe, by the way,
is based off one that my mom would make
for Sunday dinners with my grandparents.
She would do this with strawberries
and also with a blueberry topping.
Oh my gosh, it is so good.
So throughout this process,
I'm totally just thinking about my mom
and how she would make things.
We're gonna be adding in three eggs in a minute,
but I want to give them a quick whisk first,
just so they're all mixed up.
No lumps of egg white.
Now, I want 1/2 a cup, or 120 grams, of sour cream.
One of my pet peeves is like scraping sour cream
or yogurt out of a measuring cup,
so scale's so easy now, isn't it?
So the sour cream adds a little bit of tang.
It kind of mellows the flavor out
and lifts the cheesecake up.
Because of its lighter consistency,
it's less dense.
Now, we're gonna lift up even more with some lemon zest.
You want about two teaspoons.
If you don't have a rasp, you need to buy one.
It's so good for like microplaning cheese,
lemon zest, orange zest, and even nutmeg.
I measure out two teaspoons as an entire lemon.
In case you're wondering, it's the Greek in me.
My mother-in-law calls these naked lemons,
and now I can never unhear that,
so I'm sharing it with you.
I'm also adding in two teaspoons of vanilla extract.
This is my homemade stuff.
It's so good.
You can make your own at home,
and it's really easy.
Click up here for that video.
Scale is now done for real.
We're just gonna mix this up one more time
until everything is nice and distributed.
So this cheesecake has like a classic fluffy cheesecake base
with the most incredible and easy strawberry topping ever.
I know a lot of you like to have that pink cheesecake,
so this is how you do it.
Once you get to this step,
you're gonna add in 1/4 to 1/3 of a cup
of strained strawberry jam.
To strain it, like literally just warm it up
and then pass it through a sieve to get all the chunks out.
Mix it in.
It's that easy.
And if it's not pink enough,
you could add in a drop or like a tiny half drop
of pink or red food coloring.
You'll be so happy.
It'll be a delicious pink cheesecake.
I actually love the contrast of the white with the red,
so I'm leaving it just like this today.
It's almost there.
It looks silky, amazing.
I could and have eaten this just by the spoonful,
but the three eggs are gonna help it set together
and also lighten it up even more.
I think I forgot 1/4 teaspoon of salt,
so we'll just go ahead and sprinkle that in.
Now, we're gonna add the eggs in.
Just mix us on medium low, once again,
until it's incorporated.
And you're definitely gonna wanna scrape the bowl down
because this is your final moment
to get a homogenous mixture.
This gets people so many times.
You're gonna scrape the bowl down,
but you're gonna scrape it down with your spatula
that has clumps of cream cheese all over it,
so you're introducing these lumps of cream cheese
that are gonna go into your smooth batter.
Uh-uh, let's give it a quick wipe.
That looks good, and I'm so happy.
I'm not seeing lots of air bubbles in here.
Finish mixing that up.
And that's great.
No lumps.
I'm not gonna taste it because of the eggs,
but this is ready to pour
into our cooled graham cracker crust.
You can give your cheesecake mixture
a couple taps on the counter.
Now, we're gonna pour this
into our coolish graham cracker crust.
Look at that (gasps).
Give your cheesecake just a little shimmy.
Now, it's gonna go into the oven, 350 for 15 minutes.
Then, we're gonna reduce to 300 and bake for about an hour.
You want a little bit of a jiggle in the middle,
and the edge should have risen up a bit.
Instead of baking this cheesecake in a water bath,
I'm just adding a ramekin full of water
halfway through the bake.
It'll help give me a really nice top.
(bell dings)
My cake is almost set,
so I'm gonna make my strawberry topping for it.
And this is so easy and delicious.
You're gonna love this topping.
We have two pounds of fresh strawberries.
I gave 'em a quick wash.
And now, I'm gonna hull them and slice them in half.
You should have two groups of strawberries,
the beauties and the others.
The beauties are gonna be saved for later.
The other ones are gonna get cooked and mashed a little bit.
And by the way, like, you can make your cheesecake
up to two days in advance and just keep it in the fridge.
It'll be totally fine.
Make your strawberry topping the day of,
and everyone's gonna be oohing and aahing over it
like nobody's business.
When I was recipe testing this,
I kept thinking, hmm, but there could be more strawberries,
so we ended up with two pounds.
But if you wanna have even more, have at it.
You'll just be serving some on the side with each piece,
'cause there's only so much you can mound
on top of the cake.
My strawberries are basically hulled,
so we're gonna divide these into the two batches
of the beauties and the not so nice ones.
I like to have the smaller strawberries reserved
because those look nicer on top of your cheesecake.
And the giant ones can get cooked.
Half the strawberries into a large pan.
I'm adding in 100 mLs of water.
This is just a little bit under 1/4 of a cup.
It's like six tablespoons.
1/4 cup of granulated sugar.
I'm gonna sprinkle in a teaspoon of cornstarch now.
Stir that in, and this will thicken things up really nicely.
This is gonna go over medium heat.
Yes, you're gonna be stirring.
We're gonna boil these for about five minutes,
just making sure to stir frequently.
We want to move everything around.
The heat's gonna break down
your strawberries pretty quickly.
They'll release all their strawberry juices.
It's gonna be delicious.
One thing to note, though,
is if you bought these at the market
and it's not the absolute peak of strawberry season,
chances are they might be a little bit pale on the inside.
I actually have strawberry plants in my garden,
but they only are throwing off
like a handful of strawberries right now.
These are gonna turn kind of like a sad-ish, grayish color.
If you do care, just a couple drops of red food coloring,
like three tiny drops of like the grocery store kind,
will color the juice and actually dye the strawberries
on the inside a little bit.
It'll just make it look like strawberries.
Otherwise, they'll look pale
and people will be like, "Oh, what happened?"
Just wanted to let you know that,
not do it behind the scenes and trick you.
If you really don't wanna use food coloring, I understand.
Towards the end, I think you could add in some beet powder
to get that red color,
or you can mix in some raspberry juice, too,
which actually does retain its color.
My strawberries are softening up really nicely now,
so I'm gonna grab a potato masher
and give them just a little bit of a mash to break them up.
I want more of a strawberry puree.
You see how these are mashing really quickly?
The strawberries are just the right consistency.
I'm gonna continue cooking for about 10 minutes
until the sauce is nice and thickened.
It'll also help reduce some of the liquid off, as well.
Make sure you stir frequently
because the edges will burn,
and that'll give you a not great taste.
My sauce is thickened up beautifully.
You can see it'll hold a streak.
And it just has a really luscious consistency.
I'm gonna pour this over my strawberries.
And just the residual heat in here
will kind of cook the strawberries
and just soften them up a tiny bit.
Give this a stir.
Now that it's off heat,
I'm gonna add in one teaspoon of vanilla.
Mix that in.
We're gonna set this aside
just for a little bit until it's lukewarm.
In the meantime, we're gonna grab a cake plate
and unmount our cheesecake.
(bell dings)
As you can see, I got a pretty good bake
out of this cheesecake.
That ramekin really helps.
It's gonna run a knife along the edge.
A lot of people ask why I don't use
water baths more for cheesecakes.
Finding extra wide foil is not impossible,
but it's a trek.
I don't see it the market anymore,
so I just didn't want to have people go on a search
to make something happen that's not gonna work out.
And if you can't get the oversized foil,
it's not gonna work.
Your cheesecake is gonna be totally soaked with water.
Ah, beautiful.
Just run a knife along the bottom.
It comes off right away.
All I'm gonna do now is top this
with the luscious strawberries.
Once your strawberry topping's on,
one last step is just to arrange the strawberries
so they really pop out
and they're not covered up by the strawberry puree.
This will give you optimum aesthetics.
That looks great.
All that's left is to cut in and enjoy.
This is gonna be one of your new favorite cheesecakes,
I promise you.
That cheesecake is so light and creamy.
It's basically a cheesecake cloud
topped with a crown of strawberries.
I hope you get a chance to make this recipe.
And if you like this video,
check out my cheesecake playlist.