Souffle Cheesecake is a popular cheesecake sold at western-style dessert shops in Japan. As you can guess from the name, it is a light and airy soufflé-like dessert as opposed to dense and thick American cheesecake. Soufflé Cheesecake is not overly sweet, as with other Japanese cakes, but it still has a good enough cheese flavor to be called a cheesecake.
There are mainly two kinds of cheesecakes in Japan; rare and baked. Rare cheesecake uses gelatin to solidify and set in the fridge. Its texture is more like mousse or bavarois than the cheesecake we typically see here in the US. Baked cheesecake is the soufflé type in this recipe. Today, although there may be American or New York-style cheesecake available at some cake shops in Japan, the rare and soufflé cheesecakes will be sold at almost all stores.
There are a couple of tips to succeed in making Souffle Cheesecakes. First, you have to prepare the mold with paper liners very well. Use parchment paper a little taller than the cake pan in case the cake rises higher than the pan. Butter well on the paper and sprinkle powdered sugar so that the batter doesn’t stick to the paper and pull the cake as it’s baked. That pulling force will cause cracks on the cake. It also eases the release of the cake from the pan. Another important point is to whip the meringue well and fold into the cake batter without deflating too much foam of the meringue, just like when you make sponge cakes. If there are cracks on the cake, don’t worry. When cooled down, the cake will shrink a little and lines will be less noticeable. Finally, this recipe uses a hot water bath in the oven. Watch our video for details, but this is basically just placing the cake pan with the batter in hot water in a larger pan in the oven (the water is only deep enough to come partially up the side of the cake pan; also, don’t use a springform pan in the bath, or it may leak).
Soufflé Cheesecake is not something you see at pastry shops often in the US, but this light dessert may be a perfect ending after big dinner or a feast. Make this one at home if you’d like to try a new dessert during the holidays!
Souffle Cheesecake Recipe
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Equipment
Ingredients
- 150 g cream cheese, room temperature
- 2 Tbsp butter room temperature
- 90 g sugar
- 3 eggs separated
- 150 g warm milk
- 50 g cake flour sifted
- 1/2 tsp lemon peel grated
- 1/2 tsp lemon juice
- 1/2 tsp vanilla
- Melted butter and powdered sugar for parchment paper
Apricot glaze
- 1 Tbsp apricot jam
- 1 Tbsp water
Instructions
- Preheat oven at 320 F (160 C). Measure all the ingredients. Separate eggs into yolks and whites. Sift cake flour. Grate lemon peel. Prepare hot water for water bath.
- Coat a 6″ round cake pan with melted butter. Place parchment paper in the pan, on the bottom and side. The parchment paper should also be coated with butter very well (the melted butter is not in the 2 Tbsp measurement). Sprinkle powdered sugar over the butter-coated parchment paper.
- Cream soft cream cheese and 2 Tbsp butter with whisk, add 1/2 of sugar, and mix well. Add yolks one at a time, mixing well each time. Then add warm milk and mix until smooth. Add sifted cake flour and whisk well until there are no lumps. Mix in lemon peel, juice, and vanilla.
- Separately, whip egg whites in an electric mixer, adding the rest of the sugar in 3 parts, until it forms a meringue with soft peaks.
- Fold in 1/4 amount of the meringue into the cheese mixture. Then add the rest of the meringue, folding in, taking care not to deflate the foam of the meringue.
- Pour the cake batter into the prepared pan. Place the pan in a hot water bath, and put in the oven. Bake at 320 F (160 C) for 20 minutes. Reduce to 285 F (140 C) and bake about 30 minutes. Turn up to 350 F (180 C) for 5 minutes for browning. Turn off the oven leaving the cake inside and the door open for 1 hour. Take the cake out from the oven and let cool completely before unmolding. Refrigerate at least 2 hours.
- Heat jam and water in a small pan and let boil for a minute, and strain through a fine mesh. Cool for a few minutes, and brush the glaze on the top of the cheesecake.
Video
