Baking Time: New York Cheesecake

Do you want to know where I came across cheesecake for the very first time? In the classic tv show, Friends: there was a complete episode dedicated to this heavenly dessert. Ever since I saw it, I always wanted to try out and make a cheesecake. (If you missed that episode, here is your chance to catch up. It will most definitely get you into cheesecake mood!)

Yesterday I felt like baking, and decided to make New York cheesecake again - this was my second time baking this particular cake. You may have noticed by now that I am utterly interested in Anglo-Saxon  gastronomy, especially American desserts. Cheesecake is one of them, one of the most famous ones, as a matter of fact,  I had been wanting the make such a cake for a long time, so no wonder I was pretty happy when I bumped into a really good recipe on Allrecipes.com. So here is how you make a real and incredibly delicious New York Cheesecake: (The entire recipe is copied from AllRecipes. You can find useful comments and suggestions here.)

Ingredients:

• 15 graham crackers, crushed
• 2 tablespoons butter, melted
• 4 (8 ounce) packages cream cheese1 
• 1/2 cups white sugar
• 3/4 cup milk
• 4 eggs
• 1 cup sour cream
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup all-purpose flour

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease a 9 inch springform pan. 

2. In a medium bowl, mix graham cracker crumbs with melted butter.  

3. Press batter onto bottom of springform pan. 

4. In a large bowl, mix cream cheese with sugar until smooth. Blend in milk, and then mix in the eggs one at a time, mixing just enough to incorporate. Mix in sour cream, vanilla and flour until smooth. Pour filling into prepared crust. 

5. Bake in preheated oven for 1 hour. Turn the oven off, and let cake cool in oven with the door closed for 5 to 6 hours; this prevents cracking. Chill in refrigerator until serving. 

Notes:

• Since in Hungary you cannot buy such a thing as "graham crackers", I used plain ground crackers (darált háztartási keksz), it's a perfect substitution. I do not know the exact amount I used, but it's probably around one cup (25dkg?). You  need to use more than two tablespoons of melter butter to mix with the ground crackers. This batter pressed onto the buttom of the pan should not be thicker than half a cm (1/5 inch).
• The best cream cheese is probably Philadelphia, but tesco's own brand and Hajdúsági  Tejszínes Friss Sajt work just as well, and they are much cheaper. 
• 4 packages of creamcheese is about 90 dkg. 
• Once you turned the oven off, the cake does not need to be in the oven for 5 hours (you cannot hold out and wait that much anyway!). The main reason to wait this much is to prevent the crust from cracking, but my crust was pretty soft, not hard at all. A couple of hours of cooling is more than enough.
• It gets even more delicious by the following or the second day, so if you can, save a few slices for later.
• If you use this portion , you will end up with a really big cake (16 big slices). If you make half a portion, you should use a smaller pan, but you will still end up with a proper 8-slice cake.

Enjoy!