I have fond memories of going to a Japanese supermarket with my mum as a child and buying these Japanese Soufflé Cheesecakes with a little chef branded on it. The cake was packed in a pink paper box. Inside the box was a little cake with a golden top and a beautiful crinkled cream coloured sides. It was not sweet, delicately flavoured and very well aerated; light. So light that 3 of us could finish one cake in a sitting.
These days, it isn’t as easily available as then. Recently, I had a craving for it, and proceeded to conduct a test kitchen to try and replicate that cake. After baking 4 cakes in 3 days, I’m happy to share with you this lovely recipe. I hope that you’ll enjoy this cake as much as I do and maybe for some of you, it bring back the memories of you enjoying it as a child.
Makes a 15″ cake.
Ingredients:
200g Cream Cheese
20g Butter
50g Milk
3 Egg Yolks
40g Cake Flour
3 Egg Whites
55g Caster Sugar
Method:
Preheat your oven to 100degC, fan forced.
In a heavy bottom sauce pan, over low heat, add in the cream cheese, butter and milk. Let it soften.
Use a whisk to mix it through till smooth and remove from heat. Add egg yolks into the cream cheese mixture.
Use whisk to incorporate them.
Add in cake flour, mix it till you don’t see any lumps. Set aside.
Using a hand mixer, beat egg whites in a big bowl till they become frothy.
Pour sugar into the frothy egg white then continue beating with a mixer till you get shiny soft peaks.
Put a sieve over the egg whites and pour your cream cheese mixture into the sieve. Filter out lumps if there are any.
Using a whisk, mix it like in the video below until it’s well mixed. Be light handed.
I would pre-cut my baking paper to come up around 2 cm higher than the sides of the pan, I would use the batter to stick the paper to the pan. Line the bottom too.
Pour the batter in and then hit the pan on the countertop like below to remove big air bubbles.
Put the baking pan in a deeper dish and into a baking tray. Pout hot water into the dish and it should come up to 2 cm to 1″ high on the side. Some people will have differing views about how to do a bain marie. I personally feel that when the baking pan is in a metal tray, and water is added in, the heat from the bottom of the metal tray introduces heat very quickly to the baking pan. A deep dish, may it be ceramic/terracotta or glass helps to encourage a more gradual cook.
Put the tray into the oven and set your timer for 60mins. At the 60min mark, turn the oven temperature up to 180degC and further bake it for 15mins. Don’t worry about cracks on the surface. After which, turn the heat off, leave the oven door slightly ajar and let it cool down for 10 mins then remove it from the oven.
When it deflates to the top of the tin, you may remove the baking paper and decide whether to eat it warm or put it in the fridge to eat it cold. It’s yummy either way.
Dreaming in Flavours 