With Easter just around the corner, and with it its delicious French toast, it seems that we have no appetite for other sweets. Except if it is a cheesecake, because there is always room for good desserts. And more if you can prepare them at home with the tricks you need to make it perfect, told by the creator of the
cheesecake Best seller in Barcelona.
An aeronautical engineer by training and a cook and pastry chef by vocation, this Bilbao native who has lived in Barcelona since he was six years old has become a
a real teacher of the cheesecakes. And a good example of this is the place that bears his name in Barcelona, which is so successful that sometimes they have to hang the “All sold/Sold out” sign on the door.
Cake, whose passion for cheesecakes comes from “I really liked them a lot,” explains over the phone that making a good cheesecake at home depends on several factors. «I think you have to do a lot of tests, because we always give tricks, we tell a thousand stories and really
every oven is a thingeach cream cheese works in a different way and each mixture is made in a different way”, he explains.
In his book Joncake: the
cheese cakes more gourmet, we can find dozens of different recipes and each of them has a cooking time. “But we have included a note that makes it clear that these times can vary greatly from oven to oven. If you put a very large cake in a small oven, it is not the same as in a larger one or in a professional one. “For me,” she continues, “one of the keys is that, testing, is premise number 1.”
The oven, key ingredient in cheesecakes
It is also important “that the oven is at maximum temperature, a few
220-230 degrees with air. This is important so that the cooking is rather homogeneous. If we do it with heat above and below, because there are many people whose ovens do not have air, I would even raise the temperature a little more ».
With this level of heat, cooking would be much faster, “about 20 or 30 minutes. The distance between 20 and 30 is a lot, but it depends on each oven. We cook
until it’s goldenthe time is around 23-27 minutes.»
In 20-30 minutes we can have our cheesecake ready. /JONCAKE
Continuing with the necessary materials to get a cheesecake that you will fall in love with, the pastry chef points out that a removable metal mold is preferable to make it, a material that “communicates heat better and helps
the cake cooks better from the outside in.” And he explains that he only puts baking paper between “the base of the mold and the cookie, I leave the sides without paper.”
After knowing our oven like the back of our hand, Jon Cake points out that another of the keys to making the perfect cheesecake is that we use «
quality ingredients, this is non-negotiable. If we want to make a quality cheesecake we have to start from something that is of quality”. Obviously, «there must be cheese present, which gives it a differential flavor. And if we want to do something different, we can go to other things ».
Nougat, cookies and donuts to accompany the cheese
The confectioner dedicates his own section in his book to these other things, with creations that are as innovative as they are surprising. Cheesecake and coffee with Lotus biscuits, your favorite, chocolate and smoked chilies, white chocolate and matcha tea, from
Jijona nougat, dulce de leche, Donuts. Jon has not stopped experimenting since he opened his own workshop and now he shares with us the tricks to make a cheesecake something more… If we feel like it.
As for the cheese, Cake reckons you can make a cheesecake “practically” out of
any cheese». «I have always said that for me the only ones that do not make sense to use are the soft ones, such as Burgos cheese, Mató or Ricottas. In the end, if you are going to use cream cheese, the flavor has a certain acidity and the presence of those cheeses will load, you will not notice any flavor. They only help you to get textures or lower intensity », he explains.
Cheesecake and donuts, because in the world of sweets there is no impossible union. /JONCAKE
Another of Jon Cake’s tricks to make his cheesecakes is to use a
kitchen robot, a grinder or turmix instead of a rod mixer, because the latter “incorporates a lot of air and the dough is not so fine.” And it is that the latter, the density of the dough, is another point to take into account when making this dessert, something that is achieved by adjusting the ingredients ».
«If we add a lot of cream, the cheesecake will be more liquid, and if we add
more cream cheese than cream the texture will be denser. In the end it is about playing with the amounts and correcting them based on the result”, he details. «»If when you make a recipe you see that later the cake has become very liquid, your thing would be to replace part of the cream with cream cheese, and if it is very dense, on the contrary».
The confectioner points out that, for him, and despite the purists, “it is very important to
cookie base And the butter, for me is something that makes the difference, because it gives it a crunchy touch and the flavor of butter”. “As a teacher of mine used to say,” she points out, “without a cookie it is “a dessert for people without teeth, the one without it is a creamy cake, the one that does add a crunchy touch that makes it more interesting.”
Taking the cheesecake out of the oven
When we have made the cake, Cake points out that we should keep an eye on the temperature. When removing it from the oven “it is important that it lose heat and then rest
an hour in the fridge, so that the texture acquires consistency. For those who are in a hurry, the cheesecake specialist points out that “fifteen minutes in the fridge for the temperature of the whole cake to balance” would be enough.
Although you have to take into account the outside temperature, the one with which the cake will be when it comes out of the oven, so it will not be the same to make a cake in winter than in summer, nor in Asturias than in Murcia. The ideal is «
let it rest when it comes out of the oven two or three hours” and then put it in the fridge for between fifteen minutes and an hour.
Joncake’s successful tiramisu. /JONCAKE
In
Joncake: the most gourmet cheesecakes The author has also included the recipes for some of the most popular creations, such as those by La Viña, Oriol Balaguer or Zuberoa, by Hilario Arbelaitz, his favorite because “I’m a fan of
blue cheese». With this section, Cake wants to pay tribute to its authors “because I managed to make my cheesecakes thanks to everything they had already done.”
And if tiramisu is your favorite dessert, the Planeta Gastro book also interests you, since the pastry chef has included his recipe. A license that has a good reason because “my wife doesn’t eat cheesecake, because she doesn’t like cheese, but
Tiramisu He freaks out even though it has mascarpone. When we met, I made a tiramisu cheesecake for her and now it is one of the best sellers and the one that our clientele likes the most », he confesses.
