Work In Progress – Upside Down Cheesecake

Very often while making recipes for posting and I may have 2 or 3 I’m working on at the same time I’ll also have this; a recipe I don’t want to give up on but I’ve come to a dead end with it.  The reason I don’t want to give up on this recipe is because the idea is a good one to a problem I think exist, but this good idea that solves the problem that exists also has a flaw of its own.

Baked cheesecakes, love them.  Baked cheesecakes usually have a biscuit crumb base although there’s some with a pastry base.  My problem with the common crumb biscuit base is….once baked the crumb is never as crunchy as I think it should be.  The crumb absorbs some of the moisture from the cheesecake mixture and softens it and I think the actual baking of the biscuit crumb doesn’t do it much good either.  Unbaked cheesecakes are the best for contrast of crunchy bottom and smooth creamy top and I would like the same in my baked cheesecake please….it’s the whole opposite thing like hot & cold…soft & crunchy are a perfect match.

When I came across this blog Ideas In Food (they make strange and wonderful sounding stuff on that blog) and an entry regarding this very problem of the crumb loosing its crunch in baking and the suggestion of baking the cheesecake with the crumb on top….it struck me like this…‘wow..what a brilliant idea…’ I got overly excited as I can do with food ideas.  Last Christmas I made the cheesecake that was on the blog…but now for the life of me can not locate it and I’ve gone through the whole blog more than once.  The crumb is made from butter, flour & sugar as you would make a fruit crumble / crisp…it worked…the top crumb stayed nice and crunchy and you had the soft baked cheesecake underneath.

I wasn’t happy with the cheescake mixture given on the blog and at first I put it down to the sourcream being mixed in with the cream cheese where it’s normally added in the last few minutes to the top of the cheesecake.  The cheesecake mixture was still nice and my daughter happily ate quite a bit of it with raspberry sauce.  But I wanted to see if I could change it by omitting the sourcream and follow a standard cream cheese filling.  I’ve made this cheesecake 3 times and each time the filling is the let down, not completely a let down but just not as good as a cheesecake made the right way up.

The third time I made it I think I’ve pinned down exactly why I’m not happy with the filling…it stays too wet…instead of excess moisture in the cheesecake filling evaporating during cooking as it does with the right side up cheesecake leaving a firm to cut but still soft creamy centre…well with the upside down cheesecake the water stays within the mixture and results in a slightly spongier texture…not the perfect luscious centre I was aiming for…

I can help it slightly by removing the paper I use for lining the tin and some liquid will escape though the bottom of the tin…if I remember  correctly I didn’t line the tin the first time around and the result was slightly better than this last cheesecake…don’t get me wrong it’s a good cheesecake…but not yet perfect…..just left thinking….