I promised to find the cheesecake recipe for a cooking workshop I participated in. Easy right? Not. The workshop only lasts 4 hours. I thought, we can just do a no bake recipe and it'll have enough time to chill if we put it in the freezer. I settled on a Martha Stewart recipe, and decided to test it with actual fresh cheese, instead of cream cheese. It was a disaster. One of the cheeses had started to have a little bit of funky flavor, and it ruined the whole cheesecake. So I tried it again, with regular cream cheese. Even after 24 hours it was soupy. So I called on my pastry chef friend for help. The answer- Use Gelatin! Unfortunately gelatin takes at least twice as much time to jell as the workshop actually lasts, and half the people in the group are either vegetarian or muslim. So I was left with the choice of trying agar-agar, or eating warm cheesecake in the middle of summer.
I'd never used agar-agar, so I took to researching it. I never could find a plain no bake cheesecake recipe made with agar-agar. Apparently mango cheesecake dominates in this category. I also found that a lot of sites give you information that's totally inaccurate, for instance, telling you that you can just substitute agar-agar for gelatin. Agar-agar is much stronger than gelatin, and you could end up with something more like cheesecake jello if you don't adjust the measurements. Whereas gelatin isn't supposed to be boiled, agar-agar has to be boiled for 4-5 minutes to activate. The hot agar-agar is then supposed to be blended into something that's already warm. Otherwise you can end up with lumps. Neither can be frozen. What's great about the agar-agar though, is that it starts to firm up in 15 minutes, even before it cools down, and will stay firm at room temperature. So on the third try, I finally came up with my own recipe that turned out great. It's a light summer time cheesecake, that you don't have to turn on the oven for, and you don't have to wait 24 hours for either.
No Bake Cheesecake
with Agar-Agar
Ingredients
For
the Crust :
50g - ¼ Cup Sugar
125g - ½ Cup Melted
Butter
240g - 2 Cups Sablés
Anglais crumbs (apx. 16 cookies) McVities brand
For
the Filling :
450g - 16
oz. Philadelphia cream cheese
400g - 14 oz. Sweetened
Condensed Milk (Lait sucré concentré, a 397g can)
1 tsp. Vanilla extract
2-4 Tbsp. Juice of ½ a
lemon
¾ tsp Powdered
Agar-agar (1.5 g or half a 3g package)
33cl - 11 oz. Whipping
Cream – In France use Elle & Vire,
Crème liquide entière
professionnel 35% from Monoprix
Instructions
Make
the Crust :
-Process the sablés
anglais into fine crumbs in a food processor.
-In a bowl, mix the cookie
crumbs with the sugar, then add the melted butter, and combine.
-Press the mixture firmly
and evenly into your pie plate.
-Refrigerate
Make
the Filling :
You need two sauce pans,
and electric beater, a whip, a metal strainer, two bowls, a spatula
and spoons.
Prepare the ingredients :
-Put the powdered
agar-agar in a sauce pan with a cup of water.
-Put the sweetened
condensed milk in a second sauce pan.
-Start by whipping the
cream. Beat the cold whipping cream with an electric beater until
stiff peaks form. Store in the refrigerator until you are ready to
use it.
-In a second bowl, beat
the cream cheese, vanilla, and lemon juice together.
-Start heating the
agar-agar, boil for 4-5 minutes. At the same time, heat the
sweetened condensed milk on low heat. You may need to whip the
agar-agar as it boils so that it's well incorporated.
-Pour the agar-agar into
sweetened condensed milk through the strainer. Quickly whip the
agar-agar and the sweetened condensed milk together with a whip.
-Immediately after, use
electric beaters to incorporate the hot mixture a little bit at a
time into the bowl of cheese mixture.
-Fold in the whipped cream
with a spatula until it's well incorporated.
-Pour the filling into the
crust and refrigerate until completely cooled.
Post by Dori, 9 July 2015
