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Overview
To taste the Ultimate Cheesecake is to love it!
Imagine the creamiest, dreamiest, yummiest cheesecake you've ever tasted. Now imagine having it all for yourself whenever you want it! The Ultimate Cheesecake Cookbook makes homemade cheesecake so incredibly easy and fun, you'll be hard-pressed to find a more perfect dessert for every occasion. Famed radio personality Joey Reynolds and the queen of cheesecakes herself, Myra "Mother Wonderful" Chanin, have created lighthearted and simple-to-follow recipes for dozens of delicious cheesecakes--some fancy enough for your most formal dinner parties, some so easy they're practically instant--in lucsious flavors like Butter Nut, Apricot Almond, Strawberry Rhubarb, Chocolate Mint, Jomocha, and Ginger Pear. Joey and Myra also teach you how to make cheesecake muffing and cookies, as well as no-bake cheesecakes for those hot summer days, and they supply the key to creating your own custom cheesecake flavors.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781429979740 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | St. Martin's Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 04/01/2011 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 272 |
| File size: | 237 KB |
About the Author
A South Buffalo, New York native, Joey Reynolds is one of the most beloved and longest-running radio personalities in America. His nationally syndicated talk show broadcasts from WOR Radio 710 AM in New York City. He was inducted into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame in recognition of his role as a significant rock DJ and for his accomplishments in radio, television, and music. The Joey Reynolds cheesecake sells by mail order across the country. Joey Reynolds has two daughters.
Known to cheesecake lovers and food readers alike as "Mother Wonderful", Myra Chanin is the author of Mother Wonderful's Cheesecakes and Other Goodies, Jewish Penicillin: Mother Wonderful's Profusely Illustrated Guide to the Proper Presentation of Chicken Soup, and The Secret Life of Mother Wonderful. Chanin is the food editor and restaurant critic for Philadelphia Style magazine and a contributor to several other publications. She's a frequent culinary and travel commentator on NPR's nationally syndicated show A Chef's Table with Jim Coleman, and on The Joey Reynolds Show.
A South Buffalo, New York native, Joey Reynolds is one of the most beloved and longest-running radio personalities in America. His nationally syndicated talk show broadcasts from WOR Radio 710 AM in New York City. He was inducted into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame in recognition of his role as a significant rock DJ and for his accomplishments in radio, television, and music. The Joey Reynolds cheesecake sells by mail order across the country. Joey Reynolds has two daughters.
Known to cheesecake lovers and food readers alike as "Mother Wonderful", Myra Chanin is the author of Mother Wonderful's Cheesecakes and Other Goodies, Jewish Penicillin: Mother Wonderful's Profusely Illustrated Guide to the Proper Presentation of Chicken Soup, and The Secret Life of Mother Wonderful. Chanin is the food editor and restaurant critic for Philadelphia Style magazine and a contributor to several other publications. She's a frequent culinary and travel commentator on NPR's nationally syndicated show A Chef's Table with Jim Coleman, and on The Joey Reynolds Show.
Read an Excerpt
The Ultimate Cheesecake Cookbook
By Joey Reynolds, Myra Chanin
St. Martin's Press
Copyright © 2001 Joey Reynolds with Myra ChaninAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4299-7974-0
CHAPTER 1
THE CHEESECAKE GOSPEL
READ BEFORE BAKING!
Cheesecake is the easiest dessert to make!
How did it get such an awesome reputation? Bakers lie. When you find out how easy it is to make cheesecake, you'll stop paying $25 for theirs and start baking your own.
Bakers pass on anxiety-producing instructions that tell you to let your cheesecake sit in the oven after it's baked for 78 minutes with the door ajar. Utter nonsense! If the cake is done, it can go right into the fridge. If it isn't, it should be baked longer.
Even worse are those recipes that tell you to put your cheesecake pan in a pan filled with boiling water — a baking principle we think was devised by the marketing director of some pharmaceutical company who hoped to double the sales of adhesive bandages and first -aid sprays. We've never removed one of those from the oven without acquiring several blisters when hot water sloshed out of the pot and onto our delicate arms.
Cheesecakes should be custardlike in the middle and creamy around the edges. Why do people overbake them? Mostly because they're afraid they'll fall apart when they're shifted from the metal bottom of the springform pan onto a serving plate. On the other hand, if you're taking a cheesecake to a party or picnic, transporting and serving it on the original metal springform bottom usually rewards you with yet another tambourine ring when the bottom disappears. Solution: Before you start to bake, put the metal bottom plate that comes with the springform pan away in your closet. Buy a cardboard round from a baking-supply or paper goods store that's the same size as the metal bottoms, and wrap the cardboard round in a sheet of heavy-duty aluminum foil. Use the foil-wrapped cardboard round to replace the metal bottom, and bake on this instead. You can even cut out a round from a corrugated box that's lying around your house. And if the foil -wrapped round isn't a perfect fit, trim the excess cardboard with a scissors or knife.
You can protect your oven from butter leaks simply by wrapping a second sheet of heavy-duty foil around the outside bottom rim of the springform pan and baking away. It's a good idea to do this even if you bake in a springform with the original metal bottom. Butter tends to leak out of these pans unless they are brand-new.
When the cheesecake is ready to serve, remove the cake ON ITS FOIL-LINED ROUND, put a paper doily under it, and place it on a tray or carry it to your destination. Baking cheesecakes on foil-wrapped rounds helps to cement friendships because your original metal bottoms don't get lost in the back of someone's cupboard, and if they do, you know how to replace them and keep your pans viable.
The subtleties of flavorings always make these cheesecakes exceptional. Many of these baked cheesecakes have been featured in restaurants and have won prizes through the years. Now we're passing all our secrets on to you in this book. Every one of these cheesecakes can be stored — uncut and boxed — in the refrigerator for seven days, and they can all be frozen for several months. We suggest that you freeze leftovers after you've served the cake at a dinner party. Left too long in the refrigerator, the sour-cream glaze on baked cheesecakes deteriorates first. It develops an unappetizing yellow tinge and dries out around the edges, so that you don't want to eat it, although you really could. If you freeze the leftovers, the glaze stays creamy. It's very little trouble to cut when it's frozen. Just use a sharp knife that you've run some hot water over and wiped dry.
Finally, we want to answer the question that people always ask us: Which cheesecake is our favorite? Our reply has always been the same: whichever one we happen to be feasting on.
CHAPTER 2CHOICES
Our grandmothers taught us that the three most important elements of cooking were ingredients, ingredients, and ingredients. Even when times were hard, in the middle of the Great Depression, they always turned up their noses at the weekly special and asked their food purveyors for the best quality of anything that they stocked.
After the merchants displayed the cream of their wares, our grandmothers always asked them a second question: "How much?" and then always gave the same comment to any reply they received: "Are you crazy? You want me to take out a mortgage to buy a pound of ground meat?" But everyone knew they were going to buy the best.
We do believe that quality costs more and we advise you to follow our lead. We want to give you the benefit of our experience by recommending some of our favorite ingredients here.
For crumb crusts, we prefer Nabisco 'Nilla Wafers because they grind up very finely. We think Nabisco Famous Chocolate Wafers are the absolute tops. Unfortunately, Nabisco Famous Chocolate Wafers are off limits for kosher cooks, because they don't have kosher certification, but any kosher chocolate cookie may serve as a substitute.
For baked cheesecakes, we also prefer sweet chocolate, which doesn't mean that the chocolate contains loads of sugar. It merely means that it contains a higher ratio of cocoa and is thus more deliciously dense. Our favorite is Maillard's Eagle Sweet Chocolate, but we also find Baker's quite acceptable, and it's easier to procure.
Don't look for bargains in cream cheese. The fewer the additives, the better the flavor. We've tried many of the no-frills store-label brands, and we generally find them mushy and gummy. We've been very satisfied with the Philadelphia Brand Cream cheese (which, by the way, has no history in Philly, though we like to say that Mother Wonderful is Philadelphia Brand Myra Chanin). You can see the difference in quality as soon as you remove the foil wrapper. The block of good cream cheese keeps its shape.
The high road to imaginative cheesecakes is paved with flavorings and extracts. We're always on the lookout for them, no matter where we may be. Most people leave Harrods in London with adornments for their bodies. Myra ignored all the marked-down fashions on sale the day after Christmas and walked out with an entire line of extracts which she'd never seen anywhere else. In the States, McCormick natural flavors and extracts come in vanilla, almond, anise, lemon, orange, peppermint, pineapple, and sherry, and are available in 1-ounce bottles at most supermarkets for a nominal price. Wagner extracts in adorable little 1 ½-ounce bottles include almond, anise, banana, black walnut, butter, rum butter, butterscotch, caramel, cherry, chocolate, cinnamon, ginger, lemon, lime, maple, mocha, orange, peppermint, pineapple, raspberry, rum, spearmint, strawberry, and wintergreen for about $2 — $3 per bottle in gourmet and specialty food shops. The most exotic may be the La Torre extracts, which are artificial but artful flavors. Even though they were designed as cordial and liqueur flavorings, they blend perfectly into cheesecake batter. Because they are artificial flavors, even a recovering alcoholic can use them with no fear. La Torre flavors include cinnamon, peach, almond, cherry, peach brandy, amaretto, cherry brandy, pineapple, cognac, raspberry, anise, crema di cacao, rock and rye, anisette, crema di menta, apricot, curaçao, Jamaica rum, apricot brandy, Galliano, rum, brandy, banana, gin, rye, B&B, Sambuca, Benedictine, Grand Marnier, blackberry, Kaiser pear, strawberry, blackberry brandy, kirsch, Strega, bourbon, lemon, tutti-frutti, vermouth, Chartreuse, marsala, whiskey, cherry, and orange. They're priced at around $1.40 per ounce bottle and are available by mail from the Spice Corner, 904 South Ninth Street, Philadelphia, PA 19147.
Another great source for nut and fruit flavorings and syrups is the Cook's Wares catalog (www.cookswares.com) which carries both Monin's brand nut and fruit syrups and Cook's brand flavorings and extracts.
Made in France since 1912, Monin syrups are highly concentrated, certified kosher, made entirely from natural fruits and nut essences and white beet sugar, and contain no preservatives.
Monin's flavors include almond, caramel, cherry, cranberry, hazelnut, Irish cream, kiwi, mango, raspberry, strawberry, Swiss chocolate at $5.30 per 8 ½-ounce bottle, and all of the above plus anise, apple, apricot, black currant, blackberry, blue curaçao, blueberry, chocolate mint, cinnamon, coconut, coffee, frosted mint, gin, ginger, grapefruit, green banana, green mint, grenadine, honey, jasmine, lemon, lime, lychee, mandarin, melon, orange, passion fruit, peach, pear, pineapple, pistachio, rum, triple sec, vanilla, and yellow banana in 25-ounce bottles for $11.
A Cook's Wares catalog also offers Cook's brand flavorings and extracts, made with no additives, sweeteners, or coloring. Cook's line includes anise, blackberry, bourbon, brandy, chocolate, cinnamon, hazelnut, Java Crème, Pure Lemon, Pure Lime, Pure Maple, Pure Orange, Peppermint, Red Raspberry, Pure Rum, and Pure Strawberry in 2-ounce bottles for $6.00.
Another excellent source of flavoring is found in a collection of Boyajian's 5-ounce bottles of pure citrus oils which are naturally cold pressed from the rind of fresh fruit and retail for between $6 and $14 as follows: orange ($6), lemon ($12), lime ($11), tangerine ($14), and grapefruit ($8). These citrus oils are very potent and intense. It takes about 220 oranges, 330 lemons, or 400 limes to produce a 5-ounce bottle of citrus oil. I suggest you start by adding 1 ½ teaspoons of any of these citrus oils to a batch of batter, then taste, and if you want a more intense flavor, add from 1 ¼ to 1 ½ teaspoon more.
Boyajian's natural flavorings (available in sets of three 1-ounce bottles for $9) come in the following combinations — strawberry, cherry, and raspberry; anise, clove, and cinnamon; peppermint, spearmint, and wintergreen.
With these flavorings, syrups, and extracts, you can make any cheesecake that's in this book!
CHAPTER 3MEASUREMENTS
To help you figure out how much of what you'll need to make one cup of crumbs, here are some meaningful measurements we've made. We do recommend getting a small kitchen scale because we think its weight determinations are more consistent. You don't need a state-of-the-art wonder that tallies how many calories you swallowed while no one was looking. A small kitchen scale is adequate and will do the trick — the kind that people who claim to be on diets use to measure the amounts they hope they'll be eating.
NUMBER OF COOKIES REQUIRED TO PRODUCE ONE CUP OF CRUMBS
TYPE OF COOKIE COARSELY CHOPPED FINELY CHOPPED
Chips Ahoy 8 cookies 11 cookies
Chocolate wafers 14 cookies 18 cookies
Graham crackers 10 crackers 14 crackers
Shortbread 13 cookies 14 cookies
Vanilla wafers 20 cookies 25 cookies
Gingersnaps 12 cookies 18 cookies
Chocolate sandwich 9 cookies 13 cookies
More Than You Ever Wanted to Know About Nuts
For crusts, we prefer nuts chopped medium fine — somewhere between small chunks and nut butter. Ideal nut bits should be the size of kosher salt, and fine but fluffy.
Never Chop Nuts in Advance and Store Them!
You want them as fresh as possible so they don't get oily — even rancid — and make your crust too greasy when they combine with the other ingredients. You can start with either whole nuts or nut pieces/chunks in your processor. Run it for 20 seconds and then continue chopping using the on-off pulse — checking the texture of the nuts every 15 or 20 pulses, as well as stirring them around to keep their texture consistent; otherwise, some of them will turn into nut butter. Hard nuts like almonds acquire the desired texture easily. Softer nuts like macadamia and pine nuts have to be closely watched or they will mush up.
The following nut chart is direct from the horse's mouth — Planters', but slightly corrected. Since so many people end up buying those little packets found on supermarket racks, these measurements will help you buy just the amount that you need. Don't pay any attention to the measurements on the outside of the package. We've reweighed and remeasured them and gotten quite different results. We don't know what kind of measuring equipment Planters uses, but ours come directly from the "Nothing Above 99 Cents" store. We kept all the measurements in 2-ounce portions, so they'd be consistent.
BAGGED 2-OUNCE PACKAGES OF NUTS
TYPE OF NUT CHOPPED MEDIUM FINE
ALMONDS
Blanched, slivered ½ cup + 1 tablespoon
Blanched, whole ½ cup + 2 tablespoons
Sliced, with skin ½ cup
Whole, with skin ½ cup
BRAZIL NUTS
Whole ½ cup + 1 tablespoon.
CASHEWS
Pieces ½ cup
HAZELNUTS (FILBERTS)
Whole, with skin ½ cup + 1 tablespoon
PEANUTS
Whole, without skin ½ cup + 2 tablespoons
PECANS
Pieces ½ cup + 1 tablespoon
MACADAMIAS
Whole ½ cup scant
PINE NUTS
Whole, without skin ½ cup
PISTACHIOS
Whole ½ cup + 1 tablespoon
WALNUTS
Black, pieces ½ cup scant
English, pieces ½ cup
Here's another nut table we designed to be used as a rule of thumb for readers like us who are overwhelmed by fractions:
1 ounce nut meats = ¼ cup chopped nuts
2 ounces nut meats = ½ cup chopped nuts
3 ounces nut meats = ¾ cup chopped nuts
4 ounces nut meats = 1 cup chopped nuts
Weigh them, chop them and then measure them. If you're short, you can always grind a few more. Just be warned that 1 ounce of overchopped nuts gives you 2 tablespoons of nut butter, so if you have to choose the lesser of two evils, underchop rather than overchop. Chopping the nuts in your food processor along with your cookie crumbs will prevent the nuts from turning mushy because the cookie crumbs will absorb the excess oil.
CHAPTER 4TWENTY-THREE TIPS FOR MAKING PERFECTLY BAKED CHEESECAKES EVERY TIME
READ BEFORE BAKING!!!!
1. Think Positive
Stay out of the kitchen when you're feeling guilty or distracted. Your cakes will end up either raw or burned. You'll gain fifteen pounds while making them — from nibbling on the ingredients. You'll scald and cut yourself and end up covered with bandages from clavicle to wrist. Never bake when you're feeling depressed. Take to your bed with a trashy book or meet someone amusing for lunch. Even better, take to your bed with a trashy man or woman who's amusing; but if you knew someone trashy and amusing, you probably wouldn't be feeling depressed.
2. Pardon Our Redundancies
We've always hated cookbooks that are designed for the convenience of the author, with instructions that make you shift from the page you're working on to a different section of the book that contains some important information for some part of the cake. We write for flawed folks, like ourselves, with short attention spans, imperfect vision, and faulty memories, who hate flipping through cookbooks searching for parts of recipes (like ingredients for a crumb crust) that were included only in a preceding chapter.
Each recipe has every pertinent bit of information and almost every applicable tip. However, we do run on and offer nitty-gritty advice on procedures that really do not need to be included over and over. These extensive explanations of procedures are usually covered in these tips, and we suggest that you read them to determine if the detailed instructions will be useful to you.
3. Do Not Worry About Running Short of Crumb-Crust Mix
If you run out of crumb-crust mix before you have covered your entire springform pan bottom, either flatten the mix you've pressed against the side of the pan and use that on the bottom, or just use some plain cookie crumbs or chopped nuts to fill the empty spots.
4. Use Plastic-Wrap Mittens to Press Down the Crumb-Crust Mix Around the Pan
The easiest and best way to spread the crumb-crust mix around a springform pan is to cover the fingers of your pressing hand with plastic wrap. This keeps the grease off your hands and in the mix, where it belongs.
5. Never Bake Cheesecakes at the Last Minute
Cheesecakes should be baked about two days before serving and allowed to mellow in the refrigerator. They will keep for at least a week refrigerated and several months frozen.
6. Use Professional Equipment
Throwaway aluminum containers are a no-no! They simply don't conduct heat properly.
In our recipes, when we say a mixer, we mean a mixer with a bowl that stays stationary and beaters that move. A little hand mixer just doesn't do a good enough job whipping up cream cheese, and it won't incorporate the eggs quickly enough. Good equipment costs more, but it does more and lasts longer. The right mixer will make whipping egg whites a snap and folding them into batter a dream instead of a nightmare. We've been using the same KitchenAid mixers for fifteen years and have never had a single problem with any of them. Buy a KitchenAid mixer and a good food processor, and stop struggling with cheap appliances.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Ultimate Cheesecake Cookbook by Joey Reynolds, Myra Chanin. Copyright © 2001 Joey Reynolds with Myra Chanin. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Title Page,Introduction,
CHAPTER 1 - THE CHEESECAKE GOSPEL,
CHAPTER 2 - CHOICES,
CHAPTER 3 - MEASUREMENTS,
CHAPTER 4 - TWENTY-THREE TIPS FOR MAKING PERFECTLY BAKED CHEESECAKES EVERY TIME,
CHAPTER 5 - BAKED CHEESECAKE RECIPES,
CHAPTER 6 - WORDS OF WISDOM ABOUT NONBAKED CHEESECAKES,
CHAPTER 7 - NONBAKED CHEESECAKE RECIPES,
CHAPTER 8 - CHIC CHEESECAKE MUFFINS,
CHAPTER 9 - CHEESECAKE MUFFIN RECIPES,
CHAPTER 10 - LOWER-CALORIE CHEESECAKES,
CHAPTER 11 - LOWER-CALORIE CHEESECAKE RECIPES,
CHAPTER 12 - OTHER PEOPLE'S CHEESECAKES,
About Myra Chanin,
The Joey of Cheesecake,
Index,
Notes,
Copyright Page,