There is no Uncle Tetsu cheesecake selling in my hometown at the time of writing this. I have never tasted it but my friend who came back from Taipei gave a five star review of the cake.
When I was in Taipei, I did try to find their outlet at Taipei Main Station but failed to locate it. However I did eat a piece of cheesecake bought from a bakery in Taipei. That was the cake that inspired me to do a research for the recipe.
The problem I had with some of the online recipes is not the taste but how the cake looked after baking. The first two times I kept getting a shrinking cake and the third time a crack cake.
No matter what tips you get about stopping the shrinking and cracking of a cake, bottom line is the characteristic of your oven. Other tips might not work for your oven so it is a trial and error until you get it right.
You can also watch how we made our own Strawberry version of this cake. Super easy and fast.
The Must Do
There are a few steps that you should not avoid when you bake this cake.
- Line the cake pan with baking paper is a MUST. Top and around the sides. The paper for the sides must be higher by 1 inch.
- The cake must be left inside the oven to cool down for one hour. Removing it immediately will cause major shrinking.
- Water Bath is a MUST.
- Bake in low temperature and over longer time.
- No Fan.
- Put the tray it at the lowest shelf in the oven
Incorporating the egg white
Separation of egg whites during incorporation is not required. I tried dumping the whole egg yolk mixture into the egg white and IT WORKS FINE! This way is so much faster than dividing it 1/3 each time.
The Right Recipe
There are many cheesecake recipes out there. Its a little try here and there until I found one that does the trick. The main thing about Japanese Cheesecake is the brown fluff look with no shrinking and wrinkling. Not forgetting the moist and soft texture of a sponge cake.
Ingredients
250g cream cheese
5 egg yolk
125ml milk
1 tbsp lemon juice
1/2 cup flour
1/4 cup corn flour
5 egg whites
1/2 cup caster sugar
Method
- Line prepared baking pan with parchment paper.
- Melting cream cheese, milk sugar together. After cool, add the yolks and lemon juice.
- Shift in flour, salt and corn flour, beat well.
- Whisk egg white, cream of tartar and add the sugar a bit at a time until soft peak. Add the egg yolk mixture into the egg white and continue the folding movement until incorporated.
- Put the cake pans on top a large baking pan. Fill up the large baking pan with hot water to 1 inch below the top of the cake pan.
- Heat oven to 150C heat up then down and bake for 60 mins.
