The cheesecake was always on my list, but I never had the confidence nor the clear understanding of how a cheesecake works. I went through some videos and recipes online. Since this was my first shot, I wanted to not-attempt the full-blown cheesecake. I found one easy recipe for New York style individual cheesecake on ‘Joy of Baking’ website and modified it a bit to suit me. It made sense to make 6 cheesecake muffin to get the idea right before I go on to the other forms and varieties of cheesecakes – baked and unbaked. Typically a cheesecake takes a long time to bake, but these muffins took only about 25 minutes!!

Let me share some of the ‘gyaan’ I gathered while researching the recipe. A typical New York-style cheesecake is rich, dense, smooth, and usually made using sour cream. This style of cheesecake can be frozen and eaten for days.

We don’t easily get sour cream in India, and some of the recipes of sour cream that I looked for had to be made a day before. Impatience 🙂 made me search for alternatives, and I’ve used thick yoghurt instead in my recipe.

I used a large 6-muffin tray, the recipe will work to make a full cheesecake as well. Serve the cheesecake with fresh fruit like strawberry or with chocolate drizzled over top.

 

Ingredients

For crust –
50 gm digestive biscuits – about 6 in nos – crushed
1/2 tbsp granulated sugar
25 gm butter (about 2-3 tbsp)

For filling –
225 gm cream cheese (I used Britannia)
60 gm granulated sugar
1/4 cup thick yoghurt / sour cream
1 large egg
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
a pinch of salt
little grated lemon zest

Process –

• Melt the butter for the crust. Add the crumbs, sugar and butter together and mix well.
• Line the muffin pan with paper liners. Put the crumbs equally into the 6 moulds and press them with a spoon onto the bottom. Refrigerate for about an hour.

• Preheat the oven to 160 deg C. (300 deg F)
• In a bowl, take the cream cheese (room temperature) and beat it till it’s creamy smooth with spatula/hand mixer/stand mixer. Make sure there are no lumps.

• Add sugar and salt and beat again till mixed well.
• Add the egg and beat again and mix.

• Add vanilla extract, lemon zest, yoghurt into the bowl and beat well. Scrape down the sides after each step to ensure uniform mixing.
• Take out the muffin tray from refrigerator and evenly add the filling into each mould.

• Put the tray into the preheated oven and bake for about 22-25 min at 160 deg C (300 deg F). The cheesecake should be firm but still wobbly when moved.

Done 🙂

• Remove from oven and let them cool. Refrigerate for at least 4-5 hours before serving.
• Peel off the paper liners and serve with fruits.