Second-Stab Saturday: Crack-Free Chicago Cheesecake!

I hadn't yet gotten groped at airport security and I was already cooking for strangers.

Chicago-style Cheesecake        Crust: 6 oz (about 1⅔ cups) graham cracker crumbs* 2 tbsp butter 2 tbsp sugar Pinch of salt (if butter is unsalted)        Filling: 1 cup sugar 1 pound cream cheese 2 tbsp flour Pinch of salt 1 tsp vanilla 4 eggs, separated 1 cup cream        To make the crust: Cream the butter and sugar. Mix in the crumbs. This is easiest with your hands or with an electric mixer, instead of with a spoon. Press the crumbs into the bottom of a deep springform pan. If you don't have one, you can use a 9" square pan or a very large cast-iron skillet.        To make the filling: Beat the sugar and cream cheese until well creamed. Add flour and salt, beat in thoroughly. Add the vanilla and egg yolks, mix well. Then mix in the cream. Beat the egg whites until almost-but-not-quite stiff peaks form. Then fold them into the batter. Pour the batter into the pan and bake at least one hour. It is done when the center springs back when lightly pressed with the finger, and when the cheesecake jiggles instead of sloshing. When it is done and the oven turned off, crack the oven door open and let the cheesecake stay there until it cools completely. Then refrigerate overnight. *The original recipe calls for crushed zwieback crackers, but those are surprisingly hard to find these days. Unless you really want to be period-correct, graham crackers will be just fine. Source: Mrs. Mary Martensen's Century of Progress Cook Book (recipes from The Chicago American), 1933, via The Internet Archive

Note: If you want to lift the whole cheesecake out of the pan before serving it (and don't have a springform pan), cut a piece of cardboard to fit the bottom of the pan you're using. Make sure there aren't any big gaps when you press it into the pan, but it shouldn't fit snugly either. You're going to want to easily lift it out after baking. Wrap the cardboard in foil. Next, cut two wide strips of parchment paper (say, 2 or so inches), that are long enough to lay across the pan and stick out a little over each side. Grease the pan. Then lay the paper strips crosswise across it so they cross in the center. You want both ends of each strip to stick out over the edge of the pan. Then put the cardboard into the pan on top of the paper. You now have a pan with four paper tabs poking up from the cardboard you put on the bottom. Put the crust mixture on top of the cardboard, and proceed with the recipe. After you have the batter on top of the crust, you should have four paper tabs sticking up from the edges of the pan. After baking the cheesecake and then refrigerating it until it's completely chilled, cut around the edge of the pan to free the cake, being sure to cut between the paper and the cheesecake. Then lift the cheesecake by the paper tabs. You can now set it on whatever serving platter you like. You could use just one paper strip instead of two. But I recommend using two paper strips, which gives you a backup in case the first one rips.

Greetings from semiremote Pennsylvania! I forget how persistent snow is in places that actually have winters. The temperature has hovered in the fifties (that's, like, 10° or 12° for our Celsius friends), but the snow still lines the roads. It feels unexpectedly disorienting- when the temperature says to wear a light jacket but the ground says to get out your boots.

 

This town happens to use a pole-mounted municipal siren to summon the volunteer fire department. I've been in Texas long enough to associate these things with tornadoes. The siren went off on my first night in Pennsylvania and terrified me.  I was like "OH SHIT IT'S BLOWING IN!" The calm weather outside only scared me more. I thought this would be one of those horrible storms that comes out of nowhere and takes off the roof. But no, it was just a siren on a utility pole summoning the volunteer firefighters.

While we were making plans in the week before I took flight, I offhandedly suggested making a cheesecake. A few days later, my friend said "I told everyone at work that I'd bring a cheesecake." He and his coworkers are lucky that he already said he'd do all the kitchen cleanup if we cooked anything.

This brings us to our recipe. When last we saw a Chicago-style cheesecake, it was delicious but it also cracked. I don't know why that bothered me, but it did. So this time, we left the oven door slightly cracked open until the cheesecake got cold. The result: a perfect, crack-free cheesecake. Either leaving it in the oven fixed our problems, or things are just better in Pennsylvania.

You may notice that we're using an actual springform pan. I bothering with springforms a long time ago. I only ever seem to use them once before abandoning them in the cabinets. And once again, I'm only going to use this one once before abandoning it in someone else's kitchen and flying out of the state. (He insisted on buying it. I was fully prepared to repurpose a casserole dish.)

Getting to our happy results, I could say that sag in the middle is perfect for piling in fresh fruit or whatever. But this cheesecake really doesn't need the help. Like, I could barely get the ring off the pan without someone cutting into it.

My poor unsuspecting friend was not prepared for how good this was. While d in fact give some away at work, it was a much smaller chunk of cake than I think he planned. Just like the last time I made it, I was told "This is the best cheesecake I've ever had!" 

So if you like cheesecake, you owe this recipe to yourself. But don't promise anyone else a slice.