What's Baking?

Recently, I have been baking Walnut Cheesecake for one of the cafes that I supply to. The manageress told me what she wanted, so I came up with this recipe. Actually, baking, or cooking, I suppose, is really like writing an essay. Once you know your ingredients, which are the "words", and the basic formulas, which is your "grammar", it should be quite easy to whip up something decent without referring to any recipe books.

So, for the baked walnut cheesecake, here is my "original" recipe. Quite easy actually.

Biscuit Base
10-12 digestive biscuits
65 gm melted butter
Optional - 2 tablespoons brown sugar

Blitz biscuits in a food processor, or laboriously crush manually with a rolling pin, or any other heavy object. If using FP, pour in the melted butter and pulse till well combined. (optional sugar would be at the beginning stage). Line the base of a springform tin, or tin with removal base, with the now somewhat soggy biscuit mixture. Refrigerate 30 minutes.

This base is your basic base. In grammar it would be like "he or she DOES, not DO". Very basic.

Filling
500gm cream cheese. (it sounds a lot, but believe me there are recipes out there that call for up to 1kg of cream cheese in a single cake).
½ to ¾ cup sugar
3 eggs
3 tablespoons cornflour
300ml thickened cream
1 cup chopped toasted walnuts

Cream the cream cheese using a paddle. (no, not a boat paddle. the K paddle attachment, as opposed to a balloon whisk. If using hand mixer, then the normal beaters).
Add sugar and continue creaming, till light and fluffy.
With the aplomb and drama of chef, break in 3 eggs and cornflour, and continue mixing till the batter is nice an uniform.
Add the thickened cream, and continue mixing till smooth and creamy, with no visible lumps of cream cheese floating like icebergs in the arctic.

Stir in the chopped walnuts.

Line outside of cake tin with aluminium foil, and fill the filling atop the biscuit base. Place pan in a larger pan and pour hot water (as in give the cake a water bath), into the outer pan, (the aluminium foil is to prevent water from seeping in to the cake pan), and bake for 50 minutes on 150C.

According to local cheesecake guru, Catherine Low, leave cake in oven with door closed, for half an hour after switching off. Then, remove water bath, and leave cake in oven with door ajar for 1 hour. Immediately refrigerate overnight, or 6 hours at least.

Below is my lemon meringue pie, and a special thanks to Boolicious who painstakingly photocopied a recipe that shows how to deal with weeping meringues. It's no problem if serving the LMP freshly baked, and consumed thereafter, but when you leave the darn thing overnight, a whole host of problems seem to crop up, such as moisture beads, and weeping under the meringue, which can cause the pastry to go limp and soggy. Very annoying.