Fluffy Japanese Cheesecake
Japanese soufflé cheesecake. It is extra fluffy and jiggly when it is just baked. Japanese soufflé cheesecake is especially light and cotton soft and tastes so delicious. With the pillowy soft cottony, light-as-air texture of soufflé, just the right sweetness, perfectly fluffy and jiggly with a hint of tart cream cheese. After the baking, the cheesecake takes an enormously long time to cool off in the oven.
Besides the fun, jiggly dimension this tall, fluffy cake delivers as it’s placed on the table, the taste is light and with a dusting of powdered sugar on top this is a wonderful dessert. The only thing is, when you cool it in the oven, you don’t get to have fun jiggling it while it’s still hot. And really, the cheesecake is most jiggly when it’s warm. After it cools down, it deflates a bit and is more like a regular fluffy sponge cake texture rather than a jiggly puffball.
The fluffy and light texture comes from the meringue. Egg whites are beaten with some sugar to make soft peak meringue, then mixed with the batter made from the ingredients.
Because each oven is different, and the volume of the cake can vary even slightly, you may still end up with a cracked cheesecake. If you are impatient and take the cake out of the oven too early, it will shrink more than the one that is slowly cooled down. But the flavour of the cake is the same and the texture is only marginally less fluffy.
Ingredients;
- 7 tablespoons butter (100 g)
- 4 oz cream cheese (100 g)
- ½ cup milk (130 mL)
- 8 eggs, yolk
- ¼ cup flour (60 g)
- ¼ cup cornstarch (60 g)
- 13 large egg whites
- ⅔ cup granulated sugar (130 g)
- hot water, for baking
- powdered sugar, for serving
Instructions;
- Preheat the oven to 320°F (160°C).
- In a small pot over medium heat, whisk together the butter, cream cheese, and milk until melted and smooth.
- Remove from the heat and let cool.
- In a large bowl, whisk the egg yolks until smooth, then slowly drizzle in the cream cheese mixture, stirring until evenly combined.
- Sift in the flour and the cornstarch, whisking to make sure there are no lumps.
- In another large bowl, beat the egg whites with a hand mixer until soft peaks form. Gradually add the sugar while continuing to beat until stiff peaks form.
- Fold about ¼ of the egg whites into the yolk mixture, then repeat with the remaining egg whites until the batter is evenly combined.
- Grease the bottom of a round cake pan, then line the bottom and sides with parchment paper.
- Pour the batter into the pan and shake to release any large air bubbles.
- Place the pan into a larger baking dish lined with 2 paper towels at the bottom. The paper towels ensure that the heat is distributed evenly along the bottom of the pan. Fill the larger pan about 1-inch (2 cm) high with hot water.
- Bake for 25 minutes, then reduce the heat to 285°F (140°C), and bake for another 55 minutes, until the cake has risen to almost double its original height.
- Remove from oven, and carefully invert the cake onto your dominant hand and peel off the paper. Be extremely careful, the cake will be hot.
- Dust the top of the cake with powdered sugar, then slice and serve with strawberries while still warm!