Brie Cheesecake with Shortbread Crust and Strawberry Sauce . . . (Step aside, Chocolate Bunny.)

Dear Chocolate Bunny,

Your appeal is undeniable. No question about it. You've shown up faithfully, year after year, in Easter baskets across the continent. Though your crinkly pastel foil is often askew, you'll always be a snappy dresser in our eyes. We love you, it's true. But, this year,  we're opting for the cheesecake with strawberries on top. 

Hey, you had a great run, but isn't it time to take a break? Maybe reassess your career goals? Think about it, won't you?

Fondly,

 Jane

P.S. The truth can hurt, I know. But I had to give it to you straight.

About this recipe . . . 

Don't be thrown by the presence of the brie in this voluptuously rich cheesecake. It's a secret ingredient that pretty much stays hidden.

I was a bit concerned, while mixing the filling, that the brie's edgy bitterness might lend an odd aspect to the flavor of the baked cake, but that didn't happen. Which, I suppose, begs the question: Why even use the brie? Why not just use all cream cheese? After all, a wedge of high-quality brie costs a heck of a lot more than a brick of good cream cheese. So what's the point of the brie? Hmmm. Well, honestly, I'm not sure. The texture of this cake is beautiful, but is that necessarily because of the brie? I don't think so.

Would this dessert have been any less wunderbar had I used all cream cheese, instead of the called-for cream cheese and brie combo? Seems like further research is the only thing that might solve the mystery. Perhaps we'll do a double-blind study. Shall I apply for government funding?

Anyway, I found the recipe here, in a Wisconsin milk industry site. For the crust, I decided not to use their graham cracker version so I winged my own, using some homemade shortbread cookies I had in my freezer, and adding in the usual suspects (melted butter, sugar) along with a scant pinch of salt and an even tinier pinch of cinnamon. The fresh strawberry sauce is so simple, I just improvised that one, too.

Brie Cheesecake with Shortbread-Crumb Crust 
and Fresh Strawberry Sauce

(For a printable version of this recipe, click here!)

Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Wrap the bottom and sides of a 10" spring-form pan in heavy duty foil. Have a large shallow roasting pan, or a 12" to 14"-round cake pan, on hand to use for the water bath.The use of a water bath helps prevent the top of the baked cheesecake from cracking. Have a tea kettle full of water on hand as well. You'll need to boil the water shortly before you put the cheesecake in the oven to bake.

For the crust:
1 and 1/4 cup finely ground shortbread cookie crumbs
1/3 cup almond meal (finely ground blanched almonds)
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup unsalted butter, melted
1 scant pinch coarse kosher salt
1 tiny pinch ground cinnamon


For the filling:
16 oz (1 lb). cream cheese, softened to warm room temperature
10 oz brie; rind completely cut off, and cheese softened to warm room temperature
1 cup granulated sugar
Seeds scraped from 1 vanilla bean (I used a Madagascar bean.)
3 large eggs, room temperature (not at all cool)
3/4 cup heavy cream (not ice cold)

For the sauce:
1 pint ripe strawberries; hulled, cleaned, and quartered
1 pint ripe strawberries; hulled, cleaned, and halved
3 to 6 Tbsp granulated sugar
1/2 tsp fresh lemon juice

To make the crust:
In a medium size bowl, mix together all of the dry ingredients.

Add in the melted butter, and mix together using a fork until the crumbs are well coated.

Dump the crumbs into the spring-form pan. Press the crumbs evenly and firmly onto the bottom of the pan and an inch or so up the sides.

To make the filling:
In the large bowl of your mixer, on its lowest speed, mix together the brie, cream cheese, and sugar, and vanilla seeds. Mix until smooth.

Still on the lowest speed, mix in the eggs one at a time. Make sure each egg appears well incorporated before adding the next one. The batter should look quite smooth when you're done adding in the eggs.

Slowly add in the cream, mixing just until well combined, still on the lowest speed.

Pour the batter into the crust in the foil-wrapped pan.

Lift the pan off of your work surface by an inch or two and drop it one or twice, or hold onto it and bang it straight down. This helps allow air bubbles hiding within the batter to float up and be released before baking.

Don't forget, also, to start some water boiling on the stove shortly before you need to put the cake in the oven.



Place the foil-wrapped spring-form pan into the large roasting/cake pan. Place it onto the middle shelf of your preheated oven. Pour the boiling water into the roasting pan so it rises only about an inch or less up the side of the wrapped cheesecake pan. Be very careful not to let any water get on the cheesecake batter.

Bake the cake for 70 - 80 minutes, or until it's just a little jiggly. (I would not, personally, bake this until "golden" on top as the original recipe states.) Let the cake cool in a somewhat warm and draft-free spot, for about one hour.

Run a very thin metal spatula or knife all around the outer edge of the crust. Then let the cake cool another hour at normal room temperature. Refrigerate it in the pan, lightly covered, several hours or overnight before removing the sides of the pan and slicing. 

To make the strawberry sauce:
In the bowl of your food processor, puree the strawberries until extremely smooth.

Place a fine mesh sieve over a medium size bowl and pour the puree into it, pushing it through the sieve with a spatula or spoon.

Mix in the sugar to taste (start with just a couple of tablespoons and add more as you prefer) and sprinkle in a few drops of lemon juice. Add in the quartered strawberry pieces and stir to combine. Let the sugar dissolve completely before using the sauce.

Serve on individual slices of the cheesecake. Be sure to keep the cheesecake, as well as the sauce, refrigerated.

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Retro Desserts, Part I : The American Dream of Banana Cream

Banana cream pie is not what you might call a fashionable dessert. It contains no exotic ingredients, requires knowledge of no arcane methodologies for its preparation, and--God knows-- it's not low in either fat or calories. And yet, despite all of those factors, a hefty percentage of casual American restaurants still offer it on their menus. Why? Besides its obvious creamy lusciousness, there must be something more behind its perennial appeal. Personally, I think it's due to a pervasive nostalgic yearning. Let's call it Go to the Diner for a Piece of Pie Syndrome. Enjoying a nice slice of a traditional cream pie, especially if we're under the impression it's been made from scratch, satisfies a deeply rooted need of ours to believe that the Soul of Americana still thrives, despite fierce odds. Afterall, if little restaurants from coast to coast are still crankin' out the cream pies, then I guess everything can't be all bad, can it?

Banana cream pie even looks comfortingly retro, don't you think? There's all that soft, fluffy, whipped cream on the top. That's all, just whipped cream. No fancy spun-sugar garnishes. No bittersweet curls carved from chunks of pricey European chocolate. And I could be wrong, but as far as I know, there is no dessert wine that exists solely in order to be paired with it. Banana cream pie is humble. It doesn't discriminate. I'd wager it will never be the focus of a full-blown Food Network Challenge, but that's okay because you see . . . it doesn't care. Banana cream pie didn't seek fame; fame sought the banana cream pie.

And so begins a series of periodic posts I plan to do on retro desserts. That is, desserts that don't even come close to fitting into the ultra-modern mold but that still persist within the American psyche. What kind of stuff am I talking about? Well, maybe things like classic devil's food cake with chocolate frosting, Boston cream pie, chocolate bread pudding, cherries jubilee on vanilla ice cream, and so on. Maybe even baked Alaska, if that's not pushing the anachronistic envelope too much. Do you have any ideas or suggestions? Because I could really use some. I'd like to have a good-sized list to choose from. Let me know if you think of anything, okay? Seriously. :)

So now for today's recipes. There are actually two--one for the pastry cream, and one for the crust, which I made out of the crumbs of homemade cookies. The pastry cream recipe is from the King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion cookbook, and it's a very good one. I wouldn't hesitate to use it again. The cookie recipe, which I've included below directly after the pie recipe, is from the book Cookie Craft by Peterson and Fryer. It's the recipe I typically use if I am making the type of cookies that will be elaborately decorated. These cookies, ground into crumbs, are perfect for pie crust because they're not very sweet (thus I hesitate to call them sugar cookies, though that is in fact what they're called), they're very firm (these babies are built to be tough), and they have very little moisture.

If I do say so myself, my pie turned out to be extremely delicious. One might say it was a stark raving success, and that's the best kind of success to have in the kitchen.


Banana Cream Pie with Cookie-Crumb Crust

(For a printable version of this recipe, click here!)

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Have ready a 9" pie plate.

1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 Tbsp. unbleached flour
1 Tbsp. plus 1 tsp. cornstarch
1/2 tsp. salt
2 large eggs
2 cups whole milk (I didn't have whole so I used 1 cup 2-percent milk and 1 cup heavy cream)
6 Tbsp. unsalted butter, softened
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract or almond extract (I used vanilla)

3 medium-sized bananas, cut into pieces that are sliced on an angle (the recipe said 2 medium but I found that wasn't enough)

Enough cookies to yield 2 cups of crumbs
4 Tbsp. unsalted butter, melted
1/4 cup confectioner's sugar

To make the crust:

Place several cookies, broken into small pieces, into bowl of food processor. Pulse repeatedly until they're the proper consistency (not too finely; you don't want them to be like paste!).


In a medium bowl, place the cookie crumbs, confectioner's sugar and mix together.


Add in the melted butter and mix well with a fork until all the crumbs are a bit moistened.


Pour the buttery crumbs into your pie plate. Press them down evenly in the pan, and up the sides.

Bake the crust for approximately 10 to 12 minutes. Check the crust early to make it's not getting brown. You just want it to be golden. Set aside the baked crust to cool.


To make the pastry cream:
In a medium bowl, whisk the sugar, flour, cornstarch, salt, and eggs.


In a medium-size saucepan, over medium heat, bring the milk/cream to a boil.


Add the hot milk/cream to the egg mixture slowly, whisking constantly to ensure smoothness. Pour the liquid back into the saucepan and return it to the stove; bring it back to a boil. Stir continually with the whisk (if you don't, you'll get undesirable lumps!).



The pastry cream will thicken quickly. When you see it start to boil in the center, immediately remove it from the heat.


Add in the butter and vanilla and stir until smooth. Set aside.


To assemble the pie:

Place the sliced banana pieces in the pie shell in concentric circles, more or less.

Spoon or pour the warm pastry cream over the bananas and smooth out the top.


Cover the top with plastic wrap; the wrap should touch the pastry cream to help prevent a skin from forming.


Refrigerate the pie for at least a couple of hours before serving. If you like, top it with sweetened or unsweetened whipped cream.


Recipe for Sugar Cookies (to use as crumbs for pie-crust)

3 cups All Purpose flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg 2 tsp. vanilla extract

Whisk together flour and salt in a medium bowl. Set aside. Using mixer, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, using the paddle attachment. Add the vanilla. On low speed, add in the flour mixture gradually, mixing until the two are thoroughly blended.

Chill the dough. Roll sections of dough out to about 1/4 inch thickness (or thinner if you prefer; adjust baking time accordingly if thinner). Bake on parchment covered cookie sheets, on middle oven rack, at 350 degrees for about 12 minutes--not until golden brown all over. They should just be light golden on the bottom. Cool on sheet for a few minutes, then remove from sheets to finish cooling on racks.


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Recipe full disclosure! Besides any changes mentioned in the post above, the only other change I made to the recipes was to reword the instructions for clarity.