Israeli cheesecake

When baby Moses was pulled from the Nile by the daughter of Pharaoh, she looked for a woman to breast feed him. But Moses kept refusing any Egyptian woman. “The Talmud explains that his mouth needed to be kept totally pure, as it would one day communicate directly with God,” explains Aish website in its special Shavuot section. When Pharaoh’s daughter finally found the one, she turned out to be none other than Yocheved, Moses’ real mother!

This is one of many reasons for eating dairy products in Shavuot. So many in fact, it makes one thinks none of them really apply… Is it because when the Israelites received the torah near Mount Sinai, which is what we’re celebrating in Shavuot, they first learned about the laws of kashrut, realized their pots were not kosher for cooking meat and had a dairy meal instead? Was this tradition inspired by the phrase from Song of Songs “Like honey and milk [the Torah] lies under your tongue”? Personally I tend to agree with Gil Marks z”l who said in the Encyclopedia of Jewish Food that for Ashkenazi Jews in Eastern Europe this was the time of year when animals were able to graze and dairy products were in abundance.

The same Ashkenazim who kept the tradition of eating dairy in Shavuot also brought with them to Israel and America the German cheesecake. The original recipe used quark cheese, a smooth yogurt-like cheese that produced a dense but not fat cheesecake. Quark cheese, known in Israel simply as “White Cheese”, is still being used in Israel for making cheesecakes.

In the U.S. cottage cheese initially substituted the quark, and in the 1930’s, Marks says in his book, Jews in New York City substituted cream cheese and sour cream for the cottage cheese and the New York style cheesecake was born.

Marks and me never reached an agreement as to which is better… There’s no doubt in my mind that the German-Israeli version is superior. It’s not as rich, but in a good way. But although I’ve tried and baked many good cheesecakes, I’m still searching for an almost forgotten taste, not too sweet, maybe with a crumbly texture, that I’m not even sure whether it was my grandmother’s cake or not.

Living in the U.S., where quark cheese is not so easy to find, I tried to work with ricotta and farmers’ cheese and both yielded really good cakes. I also tried combinations of labneh and cream cheese, or Turkish labneh (which is less tart than regular labneh,) but the latter is as hard to find as quark.

At the end, I discovered that a combination of cream cheese and Greek yogurt results the perfect textured cake, with just enough tartness, and the right balance between being light and rich. 

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Israeli cheesecake

Recipe by Vered GuttmanCourse: Cakes and cookiesCuisine: Israeli, JewishDifficulty: Medium

Servings

12

servings

Prep time

30

minutes

Baking time

1

hour 

10

minutes

Total time

1

hour 

40

minutes

Israeli cheesecake is a light and just a bit tart thanks to the specific cheese that’s used.
The original recipe calls for Israeli “white cheese”, which is actually a German cheese called quark. The cheese is very light, a little tart, and results a cake that’s just wonderful.
Quark is usually available these days at Whole Foods, and at many Kosher supermarkets.

*Note: If you cannot get it quark, just replaced it with a combination of cream cheese, labneh and Icelandic yogurt, such as Skyr. Labneh and Skyr are available at most specialty supermarkets, like Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s, as well as some chain supermarkets. The results are surprisingly similar and are just perfect.

INGREDIENTS

• 8 oz. shortbread cookies or tea biscuits like these

• 4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

• 3 lb. quark cheese (or 1 lb. cream cheese, 1 lb. Icelandic yogurt and 1 lb. labneh, see note above*) at room temperature

• 1 cup sugar

• 8 tablespoons instant vanilla pudding mix

• 2 eggs, lightly beaten

• Zest of one lemon

• 1 lb. sour cream

• ¼ cup powdered sugar

DIRECTIONS

• Preheat the oven to 300 degrees. Grease a 9 inch spring-form pan.
• In the food-processor crumble cookies until fine. With the food-processor still running add the melted butter. Flatten the crumbed cookies into the bottom and sides of the pan.
• If you’re using quark cheese, especially if it’s NOT an Israeli brand, it’s better to strain the cheese and let some of the water run out. To do that, pour the cheese into a fine sieve, or a few layers of cheesecloth, and let stand for an hour or until it’s a bit thicker.
• For the filling – mix cream cheese the bowl of a food processor until smooth. Transfer to a bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whip attachment. Add labneh and yogurt and mix briefly. (If you’re using quark, simply put in all in the bowl of a stand mixer.)
• Add sugar and instant pudding and mix to combine, make sure the mixture is smooth with no pudding powder pockets. Add eggs and lemon zest and mix briefly. Stop the mixer, scrape the sides with a spatula, then mix just a little more to combine. You do not want to whip the eggs.
• Pour cheese mixture into pan and bake for 1 hour.
• While the cake is in the oven mix sour cream and powdered sugar in a medium bowl.
• After one hour take the cake out of the oven and use an icing spatula to very gently spread the sour cream on top. start from the sides of the cake and slowly work towards the center. The center of the cake will be very soft at this point so be careful not to break it.
• Return the cake to the oven for another 10 minutes. At this point the center of the cake will still be very shaky and this is fine. Turn the oven off, place a folded towel to keep the oven door slightly open, and leave the cake to cool down in the oven for another couple of hours. Cover pan with aluminum foil and refrigerate over night before serving.