Just unmould
Sides shrank away from the pan making it easy to unmould
I have recently been bitten by the baking bug of this Japanese Cotton Cheesecake after reading Dr Leslie Tay's (no relations to me) experiments on this cake. He was on a quest to bake the perfectly smooth top cake and finally succeeded. I, of course, being the great copy cat that I am (:P), quickly proceeded to try out his final successful method of baking this cake. It took me a whole kg of cream cheese before I managed to set the timing according to my oven! Well, I saw in his FB page recently that using the wrong (read cheaper) brand of cream cheese can also affect the result so make sure you get the better brand if you want a higher chance of success; although I must say, I still use the cheaper brand and still managed to get this beautiful cake:P
Beautiful fine crumb and smooth top at last!
Here's how I did it with some adjustments to the timing as I believe different ovens have different temperature settings.
Japanese Cotton Cheesecake adapted from ieatishootipost
Ingredients:-
Yellow Team
250g Philadelphia cream cheese (1 block)
6 egg yolks
70g castor sugar (This is half of the total 140g)
60g butter (1/4 block)
100 ml full cream milk
1 Tbsp. lemon juice
1 tsp lemon zest (or lemon essence) (optional)
60g cake flour
20g cornflour
1/4 tsp salt
2 tsp Vanilla extract (optional)
White Team
6 egg whites
1/4 tsp cream of tartar
70g castor sugar (This is half of the total 140g)
Method:-
Prepare the an 8″ round baking pan. Line the bottom and grease the sides with butter, then dust with caster sugar (I'll just dust with normal flour next time as I find the side of the cake sticky as a result of the sugar coating). Get ready a 10″ round baking pan for water bath.
1. Melt cheese with butter and sugar (70g) over waterbath. Whip using a whisk. Remove from heat and add egg yolks and continue whisking. Add milk, vanilla, lemon juice, salt and whisk. Gently whisk in the flour. Set aside.
2. Next whisk the egg whites and add sugar (70g) half way till just before firm peaks. When you lift the whisk, the meringue should droop and hang about 4 cm down. Fold the whites to the batter. You should end up with a batter that is quite runny such that you don’t need to smoothen the surface after you pour into pan. The batter should come up to 1.5cm from the rim of he pan. It should rise no more than 1cm.
Bake in water bath in preheated oven in this way:
200C – 15 minutes until top is golden brown
160C – 30 minutes with foil to tent the top to prevent further browning
Switch off oven but do not open the oven door. Allow the cake to sit for another 20 minutes.
Remove water bath and return cake into the oven still tent with foil. If you oven has bottom heat function, use it. Switch on the oven again and set at 120C and bake the cake for the last 10 minutes. The purpose I am doing this is to dry the bottom. This step is totally optional.
Open the oven door slightly and let the cake cool in the oven for 30 minutes before removing and unmould for complete cooling. To unmould, simply place a plate over the top of the cake mould and invert the cake on to the plate. Remove the paper lining and invert the cake on to a cooling rack. Cool completely before slicing. Better option is to chill it for cleaner cut.
So totally satisfying to see my cake did not crease even after it is completely cooled! :D
