Ube cheesecake
A baked cheesecake carrying ube halaya, with the sugar cut back because the halaya brings its own.
Egg. Not vegetarian — contains cream cheese whose setting agent the source does not name.
Ingredients
base
- 250 g digestive biscuits, crushed
- 120 g butter, melted
- 2 tablespoons caster sugar
filling
- 700 g cream cheese, at room temperature
- 350 g ube halaya
- 150 g caster sugar
- 3 eggs
- 200 ml soured cream
- 1 tablespoon cornflour
- 0.25 teaspoon salt
Method
- THE SUGAR IS CUT BACK BECAUSE THE HALAYA BRINGS ITS OWN. 350 g of ube halaya carries roughly 100 g of sugar and a good deal of butter and condensed milk with it. A standard cheesecake quantity on top of that is sickly, and it is the mistake that makes most ube desserts unpleasant. 150 g is right here and it will look wrong in the bowl.
- The halaya also brings fat and starch, so the cornflour here is only 1 tablespoon -- any more and the set goes stodgy.
- Base: crushed biscuits, melted butter and the 2 tablespoons of sugar pressed hard into a lined 23 cm springform tin and up the sides by 3 cm. Chill 30 minutes.
- Bake the base alone at 170C for 10 minutes and let it cool. An unbaked base goes damp under a wet filling.
- Beat the cream cheese smooth ON ITS OWN first, 2 minutes. Lumps of cold cream cheese never disappear once anything else is in the bowl.
- Sugar, salt and cornflour in, beaten just until combined. Then the halaya, beaten smooth.
- Eggs in ONE AT A TIME on the lowest speed, and stop the moment each disappears. Beating air into a cheesecake batter is what makes it rise, crack and sink.
- Soured cream folded in by hand.
- Wrap the tin base in foil and bake in a bain-marie at 150C for 1 hour 10 to 1 hour 20. The edge should be set and the middle should wobble as one piece.
- Oven off, door ajar, leave it inside 1 hour. Then room temperature, then chilled overnight. Every crack in a cheesecake comes from cooling it faster than this.
Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.
Filed under Philippines · All recipes