A well-made cheesecake is a rich, decadent dessert and surprisingly straightforward to make at home. If you’ve never made a cheesecake, you may be wondering about the best ingredients, methods, and techniques. For example, do cheesecakes rise?
Dense baked cheesecakes usually puff a little and settle as they cool. Other styles, such as Japanese soufflé cheesecake, are meant to rise more. Follow the recipe’s mixing, temperature and water-bath instructions rather than trying to prevent all rising.
The advice below is for dense baked cheesecakes. Japanese-style soufflé cheesecake deliberately uses whipped egg whites for a lighter, taller result.
How High Do Cheesecakes Rise?
Most cheesecakes don’t rise too much – they puff up slightly and become airy.
A lack of rising doesn’t mean a cheesecake has a heavy, dry texture: cheesecake batter does incorporate air to make it light and creamy.
The ingredients and mixing method explain why dense cheesecake rises differently from a sponge cake.
Why Don’t Cheesecakes Rise?
The components of a cheesecake are a crumb crust and a cheesy custard, with or without a topping.
You usually bake the crumb crust first and then pour in the cheesecake batter before baking and chilling.
Cheesecake batter is a custard that contains cream cheese or ricotta cheese, cream, sugar, and eggs.
Many dense cheesecake recipes omit baking powder, but some include flour or starch. Ingredients vary by style.
Baking powder produces gas, while mixing, steam and whipped eggs can also contribute to a cake’s rise. Flour helps provide structure.
A dense cheesecake is not designed to hold the same airy structure as a sponge cake.
In a dense cheesecake, eggs help the filling set while the recipe limits the amount of incorporated air.
For a dense cheesecake, modest puffing and settling are normal; a soufflé-style recipe behaves differently.
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How To Stop Cheesecakes From Rising Too Much?
The following tips help control excess puffing in dense cheesecake. Follow the directions for your chosen style.
1. Mixing
One of the biggest cheesecake-baking challenges is overbeating the batter.
If you mix too much air into a cheesecake batter, the air will expand as it heats.
This will cause the cheesecake to puff up like a soufflé while it bakes and collapse and crack when it cools.
Dense cheesecake and soufflé-style cheesecake use different mixing methods.
Your aim is to stop it from rising excessively. The way you beat the batter is an integral part of this.
First, ensure that your ingredients are at room temperature, including the cream cheese or ricotta, eggs, and cream.
Using ingredients straight from the fridge leads to overworking as you try to beat the cold cheese smooth.
Overworking leads to overmixing and too much air in the batter.
If you have forgotten to take the ingredients out of the fridge, pop the eggs in warm tap water for a few minutes.
Heat the cheese in the microwave for 10 to 15 seconds at medium power (not high) to reach room temperature.
To get your ingredients smooth and luscious, choose the paddle attachment on your stand mixer.
Use the mixing equipment specified by the recipe. Some cheesecake recipes use a food processor successfully; avoid unnecessary mixing after the batter is combined.
Begin by beating the cheese on low speed until it’s completely smooth and creamy, without lumps.
Try to get rid of lumps at this stage because it will be impossible to remove them once you add other ingredients.
Add the rest of the cheesecake ingredients and continue to beat on low to medium speed until the ingredients are just combined.
Scrape the sides regularly to ensure the thicker cheese mixture and the thinner egg mixture blend.
Don’t beat on high, and don’t continue beating after the ingredients come together, especially once you have added eggs.
If you have to add whipped cream or egg whites, fold them in with a spoon or whisk, scooping the batter to draw them to the bottom of the mixing bowl.
These ingredients will add air to the batter and make it light and delicate.
With a cheesecake batter, you want a balance between airiness and denseness.
2. Low Temperature
Another way to ensure that your cheesecake doesn’t rise too much is to bake it low (to moderate) and slow.
As your cheesecake bakes, it gives off a lot of moisture.
Baking your cheesecake at too high a temperature converts this liquid to steam too quickly and too much, making the cheesecake expand and then collapse.
Your cheesecake will crack and deflate as a result.
Use the tested recipe’s oven temperature and doneness checks, such as those in King Arthur Baking’s NY cheesecake recipe. Do not lower the temperature arbitrarily; cheesecake styles need different baking schedules.
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3. Water Bath
A water bath can moderate heat and reduce cracking in recipes designed for it, but it cannot guarantee a crack-free result or correct overmixed batter.
There are several advantages to baking a cheesecake in a water bath:
- The surrounding water moderates heat at the sides of the pan; it does not mean the cheesecake’s center should reach 212°F.
- It creates a humid, steamy environment that prevents the cheesecake from drying out.
- It helps the cheesecake bake more gently, reducing the risk of dry edges and cracks.
Use a water bath when the recipe calls for one; some cheesecakes are baked without it.
To bake your cheesecake in a water bath, follow these steps:
- Wrap your springform pan containing the cheesecake crust in a double layer of heavy-duty aluminum foil to avoid a soggy crust.
- Fill your pan with the cheesecake batter.
- Place the cheesecake pan into your deep baking pan. The pan needs to be big enough to hold the springform pan with an inch space or more around the sides.
- Pour boiling water into the deep pan, making sure it comes halfway up the sides of the springform pan. This step is more straightforward if you place the pan in the oven. That way, you don’t have to carry a hot pan.
