We’re making a dreamy, luscious lemon Lemon Cheesecake Recipe. So let’s get started. First off, set that oven to 350. It needs to be nice and toasty for our crust. In the bowl of my food processor or just a big bowl, if you’re gonna stir this together and already have crumbs, I’m adding 2 1/4 cups, 270 grams, or 17 1/2 gram crackers. You don’t have to use gram crackers.
You can make this with shortbread cookies, or Biscoff cookies. Any crisp cookie is gonna be delicious, even lemon shortbread cookies. We’re gonna whiz this up just to get this broken up. Now that that’s started, let’s add three tablespoons of sugar. And three. A couple more pulses. Now, it’s time to add six tablespoons of melted butter. Just drizzle over the top like this, get it all out, and pulse until it just comes together. Sometimes, I like to go with 2/3 cookies and 1/3 toasted pecans.
Foil Preparation for Springform Pan:
This cheesecake, by the way, has been, by popular request… I have a lot of cheesecake lovers on the channel, and I love you for loving cheesecake too. It is always delicious. And this is gonna be light and fluffy, full of lemon flavor, topped with a lemon curd. It’s gonna look gorgeous and be delicious. No dense cheesecake for us. The food processor’s all done. Before I dump my crumbs out, grab two layers of foil. And here’s the deal.
You can’t have regular foil for this. Regular foil is not wide enough for your nine-inch springform pan. You want to have the extra-wide aluminum foil. This will save you a soggy headache. Just trust me. If you don’t have the foil, just don’t try and make it work with regular foil. I’ll show you how to bake the cheesecake without a water bath. It’ll still be delicious. I bought the foil specifically for the cheesecake, though. I bought the foil because I make so many cheesecakes, and I want to have it on hand.
Crust Assembly:
Just scrunch it up. Give it a good hug. I love you, cheesecake. The saddest thing is when you accidentally poke it, and it has a little hole, and the water seeps in. I’m gonna fold it over the edge now. Now, we’re gonna add our crumbs in. Scoot them around so you have a nice even base. Now, use a flat bottom glass or measuring cup and just press it down to compress everything together.
That’s the secret of a cookie crust. And don’t move those graham crackers up the side. You just want one inch. Ioying when graham cracker crusts come up too high because they’re crumbly, so they crumble into your cheesecake and you’ll be annoyed. Cheesecake exists to remove annoyance from your Cheesecake is supposed to make everything better.
Lemon Sugar Preparation:
If it comes up too high, just use your handy-dandy finger and tamp it back down. All right, that looks nice. This is gonna bake at 350 until it’s fragrant and a little bit more golden. 10 to 15 minutes depending on your oven and your springform pan. While that crust is baking, it’s time to make some amazing lemon sugar. So I wanna have all the lemon flavor and that’s coming from the skin.
The skin has all these amazing lemon oils and you want to extract them all. And there are two ways to do that. A food processor is the least labor-intensive, except for washing out that bowl, which we have to do now. So one cup and 1/4, 250 grams. Grab a microplane or a rasp. These are great. And you’re gonna remove the skin from two lemons about. You want a tablespoon of packed lemon zest that’s 10 grams.
Lemon Cheesecake Recipe
But I read that and saw two nice lemons. If you don’t wanna use the food processor, like let’s say you don’t wanna drag them out, you don’t have one. You could make the crust by hand. And for this part, instead of using the food processor, you use your clever little hands, and just rub the sugar and the lemon zest together until you have a beautiful wet sand that’s yellow.
It’s like a light yellow color. It’s fun to do. And kids love helping with that. Right, lemon number two. And whenever I use lemon zest, I like to give my lemons a thorough wash. And I prefer to use organic lemons if they’re not coming directly from my mom’s backyard. We’re gonna whiz this up until it’s a beautiful pastel lemon color.
Cheesecake Recipe
It’ll be a second. You’ll notice that the sugar starts clumping up pretty quickly and it changes color. It’s about 30 seconds of mixing. If you take a look inside, you can see it’s like wet sand. It’s totally different as far as the texture, and this beautiful light lemon with most of the zest broken up. The same goes for using the hand method. It’ll look the same. Now, our food processor is done.
You can grab a big bowl or a stand mixer with a paddle attachment. And we’re gonna get to mixing. It’s time to add the cream cheese. And I have a couple of words to say abouOne, so delicious. How is it possible? But two, this should be nice and soft. I have a warming drawer, so I just popped this into the warming drawer to warm up.
Cream Cheese Filling:
You could microwave it on 40% power for 30 seconds outside of the foil wrapper, please. Or put it in your oven with the light turned on, but the oven off, and just let it come to room temperature so it’s super soft. Cream cheese lumps are not your friend in a cheesecake. You want a smooth, gorgeous mixture. I want four eight-ounce packages of cream cheese for this recipe.
And if you’re making this and you’re not in the States and you can’t get cream cheese, this should work just fine with Neufchatel cheese. Cream cheese was invented by Americans to mimic Neufchatel cheese. And in trying to do so, they came up on something even creamier and more delicious. They’re both delicious, but cream cheese can’t be beaten.
Best Cheesecake Recipe
Just to show you, this is how soft it is. It’s almost softer than softened butter. So you can pop your finger in, it’ll leave a very easy indent. It bends super easily, too. That’s what you want. I also want 1/4 teaspoon of salt for a little bitwithf contrast. And don’t think I forgot about that lemon sugar. Pop your paddle attachments on, and you’re gonna mix this on medium-high to medium until it’s nice and smooth.
And you have to scrape the bowl down at least once. This is a foolproof cake. Almost nothing can go wrong aside from leaving it in the oven and just burning it. But you do want everything to be smooth and homogenous. Little lumps just aren’t gonna taste right, they’re not gonna look right, and they can also kind of help lead to cracking, too.
Achieving a Silky Mixture:
So a smooth mixture is where it’s at. But look at this, it’s been 30 seconds, and it is so silky smooth because our cream cheese was soft. Scrape the bowl down, especially the bottom of the bowl. Okay, and back to mixing. This looks nice, but it’s time to crack some eggs. I want three eggs for this. It’s gonna help make things nice, aight, and silky and also hold the cake together.
If possible, room temperature is best. Now, working a low, I’m gonna add the eggs in one at a time. Let the first one incorporate before adding the next. The reason we do this is so you’re not just injecting a ton of water, ’cause the eggs are very watery, into this thick batter. You want it to mix in evenly before you add the next.
Number two. After this one, we’re gonna scrape the bowl. So here we go. We have a creamy, beautiful light yellow mixture on top. But on the bottom, still creamy, but it says paler. So you wanna scrape the bowl down and fix that all with your spatula? Very nice, oh, my gosh. The smell is so light and luscious. The last egg goes in. And while that mixes, I’m also adding in 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla.
Baking in a Water Bath:
Just a little kiss of flavor. I forgot to juice the lemon. It’s not just the lemon zest. There’s 1/4 cup of lemon juice in this as well. Before you finish making your filling, it’s time for some boiling water. We need to bake this in a water bath of really scalding hot water. So grab a kettle, fill it up, and pop it onto your stove. I’m adding 1/3 of a cup or 80 mils of heavy cream or double cream, depending on where you live.
Just while the mixture’s on low. This will lighten up our cheesecake a little bit. We don’t want it to be super dense. It should be like fluffy cheese lemon clouds that dissolve on your tongue, Doesn’t that sound nice? And don’t think I forgot about my 1/4 cup of freshly squeezed lemon juice. You have one last scrape down and then you are home free.
Look at this, no lumps. It’s like magic. Another reason to not use ice-cold cream cheese, aside from it being lumpy and hard to mix, is you’re making a cake. They should be at room temperature to even warm. It helps things bake evenly. One thing a cheesecake wants is to evenly bake. That’s how you avoid cracking. They filled it high. And I like the sound of that kettle I had.
Chilling the Cheesecake:
So many people told me they did not find it soothing at all. We’re done with our mixer. I can smell that crust. I know it’s ready. Pop that out of the oven, let it cool completely, and reduce the temperature to 325. This fits just inside my roasting pan. And one word about this. This is a nice roasting pan. I have a super mega roasting pan that’s basically for Christmas and Thanksgiving.
if I ever bake a cheesecake in it, it adds 20 minutes to the baking time. So just be aware that depending on your roasting pan, if it’s really thin, maybe a little bit less bake time. If it’s thick and big, you’re gonna add some thyme that’s okay. It just insulating your pan extra well. I’m gonna pour the batter in now, get it into the oven, and then we’re gonna pour the boiling water.
Lemon Cheesecake Recipe
So a little shimmy will fix a lot of things. And if there’s any nonsense on the top, I’m just gonna give it a little swipe. We’re covering this completely with lemon curd later, but it’s nice to have a smooth top. All right, this goes into the oven, 325 for about 50 minutes. You’re gonna add boiling water halfway up. And don’t forget to check on it, starting at 40.
Just keep an eye on it and make sure that it’s not getting too much color. If you don’t have that tin foil and you’re not gonna do the water bath method, I would pop this onto a baking sheet and then have a big tub of boiling water underneath so it steams up and it’ll help keep the top nice and smooth. And by the tub, I mean a large casserole dish of boiling water.
Easy Cheesecake Recipe
The cheesecake’s done when the center has a nice wobble. If it’s too wobbly, just give it five more minutes, and then five more minutes, and then five more minutes, until that wobble is just really in the center. Then, turn the oven off, keep the door closed, and let it sit there for about an hour until you take it out. I let this chill overnight, so it’s perfectly firm. And now, we’re gonna get all of this foil off. It’s bone-dry on the inside. That’s what you want.
Use a small knife and just run carefully along the edge to make sure your cheesecake isn’t gonna stick ’cause sometimes, if you don’t do that, you’ll open the collar, and the cheesecake will crack open ’cause it’s stuck on two sides. And you’re like, “No!” Then you cover it up completely and nobody knows. Moment of truth. This looks great, look at that. Get the crumbs away.
Unmolding and Decorating:
Put this into your mouth. Grab an opposite spatula or knife and we’re gonna run it just along the bottom to loosen things up. Now, in one confident motion, remove the base. It’s on the stand. This is delicious. It looks nice, but we want the cheesecake to sparkle. So I have some homemade lemon curd here. I made it a couple of days ago. You can just buy it from the store, though, and it’s still delicious too.
So you don’t have to make everything from scratch. I want about 1/2 a cup of lemon curd for the top. Just plop that right on there, and we’re gonna smooth it out. Just a little bit where I’m eyeballing this this time. Smooth the curd out all over the top. I whipped up some cold cream with powdered sugar and a little bit of vanilla to taste. We’re gonna add this into a piping bag and make it super pretty.
Zesting for Finishing Touch:
And before you pipe anything, always use your spatula and give it a test. Like, what do you wanna do? So this is your practice. I’m marking where my dollops go because I’m always so lopsided. So I want them to be nice and evenly placed. look at that evenly-spaced situation. I’m using my zesting tool to get these beautiful little ribbons.
And this is something you wanna do right before serving just because they dehydrate kind of quickly and they don’t keep their beautiful shape. This cheesecake was so beautiful at the end and easy to decorate and cut so beautifully. It makes it even more delicious. That is so creamy, but, stuffy, amazing, and full of lemon flavor. It’s like my heart is beating faster right now. I hope you get a chance to make this lemon cheesecake recipe.
