How to Make the World’s Best NY Style Cheesecake
By Greg B. So it wasn’t until sometime in college that I realized my mother’s cheesecake was the best in the world. I don’t recall where it was, but it was probably a dessert at a restaurant. Ordering a NY style cheesecake slice, I got something that was tall, creamy… but covered in sweet sauce with fruit, and lacking in body and uumph. My mother’s cheesecake, however, was always the opposite: Standalone without a crust, dense as can be, creamy, not too sweet but just sweet enough to be delicious. And after years of not encroaching upon her culinary space, I finally ventured in.
I didn’t necessarily want to try to make cheesecake, but she gave me a spring form pan for Christmas, basically forcing my hand (since I don’t know what else to make with a spring form pan! Any suggestions?). The recipe seems fairly straight forward, so I’m going to lay it out for you here. You will need:
- 1 lb ricotta cheese
- 2 cups (16oz) sour cream
- 16oz cream cheese
- 1.5 cups sugar
- 1/2 cup butter, melted
- 3 extra large eggs (or 4 large eggs)
- 3 tbsp flour
- 3 tbsp cornstarch
- 5 tsp fresh vanilla extract
- 5tsp fresh lemon juice
Basically, let everything come to room temperature first, since you’re going to be mixing them (especially the cream cheese, it’s not as easy to mix when it’s cold). You should also consider that, while I have an electric beater, a kitchen aid will probably be best, with a large bowl to mix all the ingredients in. The bowl I used for this was just big enough, any smaller and I’d have been ruined!
Preheat the oven to 350F now, so it’ll be ready once you are done assembling the cheesecake in uncooked form Also, move the oven racks around so that you are going to put the cake on the middle rack in the oven, not the top or bottom, as you want uniform hot air all around this thing to cook it. Combine the ricotta cheese and sour cream in a mixing bowl. Then slowly add the cream cheese, butter and sugar, all the while keeping the mixer mixing on low. Increase the speed up to medium, or whatever the middle range of whatever it is you’re using to mix the ingredients, and add the rest of the ingredients, eggs, flour, cornstarch, vanilla, lemon juice. Once these are in, turn your mixer on high and mix on high for 5 minutes. No Less!
Pour this into your spring form pan and bake in the oven for 1 hour. Once this hour is complete, turn off the heat and let the cheesecake sit in the oven for another hour. Don’t open the door! It you have to look, just turn on the oven light and take a peek through the glass. Opening the door lets out heat at a fast rate, and will cause the cheesecake to crack.
Once this hour is up, I took the cheesecake out and placed it on a cooling rack still inside the spring form pan. Once cool, I freed the cake from the sides of the pan and placed it in the oven. No cracks! This cheesecake is what I consider to be the best NY style. It’s dense (you’ve used more than 3lbs of foods in a 10″ diameter pan… it’s like a brick.), it’s sweet, it’s creamy and it has no crust except for itself. It has no inherent need for a topping, unless you really are drying to put one on (I recommend that berry topping that I use for pies, crepes, and just about everything that I make that’s sweet). Now, this cheesecake is about 90% as good as my mother’s, and I’ll try to figure out what I did wrong, however, this still is one hell of a delicious dessert!
Thanks for the recipe!
No problem, Andy! Mike claims to have a better recipe though, so I’ll look forward to a dueling cheesecake writeup/show at some point
I’m sorry, did you say without a crust? That’s the best part!!!
That said, this recipe looks outstanding…but…will go down soon enough
(Sorry Mrs. Bissonette!)
I don’t understand why the vanilla extract is listed twice,does it require 10 tsp or is this a typo?
Mike: Real cheesecake stands up on it’s own. It’s the manly man’s cheesecake (if that analogy makes any sense).
Joe: good catch! I fixed the issue, I listed it twice while typing!
This cheesecake recipe is delicious!! Tough competition here Mike – good luck! You guys going to need a judge for this? (yes I’m offering my services
)
Thanks Mike,I’m going to make it today and see how it stands up to my Dad’s recipe
Hi Joe: Thanks- but it’s Greg’s recipe. My best-cheesecake ever recipe will be posted shortly…use that one!
Greg:
lol, i’m anxious to see it mike!
You forgot to list the 5 tsp fresh lemon juice!
So, I made this recipe the other day with three different variables.
1) different stove, this time an older gas stove
2) different vanilla extract… we have a bottle of this stuff from Mexico, smells/tastes very different then ‘pure vanilla extract’ bought in teh US. less of that sharp alcohol smell.
3) ran out of granulated sugar. so i added confectionary sugar, and took the 1.5 cups down to about 1 cup (assuming that there is space between the large granules in regular table sugar that is lacking in the confectionary sugar, so i didnt want to over sweeten it).
well, the cake came out… ok. It did crack while in the oven after the cooking time. The different vanilla really gives it more of a sweet vanilla flavor, which is ok, but not my favorite, and the sugar content seems a bit low. I also noticed that it was not really as thick and creamy as the previous time, but was a bit lighter to feel and to taste.
Greg: I saw the cake…laughed, and walked right by it.
You better bring your “A” Game when we do the cake-off, son. Jill and Trudee are tough judges from what I hear
I was going to call Mom for this recipe, but you’ve explained it pretty well Greg, thanks. Hopefully Kevin will like it for his birthday. I think I’m going to top it with blueberries, but not in a sauce. I’ll let you know how it comes out!
You should make your blueberry pie, Jim wants more!
[...] our beer writer and good friend Greg Bissonette put up his mother’s recipe for a NY Style Cheesecake. While I’ve heard good things about this cake, I sadly had to inform Greg that I had the [...]
Haha – I has to be warm out to make the blueberry pie, my cooking is effected by the weather. It won’t come out as good!