RUSTIC PRESSED COTTAGE CHEESE CHEESECAKE

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This rustic pressed cottage cheese cheesecake is an old-fashioned cheesecake. With smooth texture and thick buttery sweet pastry crust. Perfect for Sunday’s coffee afternoons or any special occasion. For all cheesecake lovers this is one of the best traditional old-fashioned cheesecake with cottage cheese

I have fallen in love with this rustic and old-fashioned cheesecake the first time I have tried it. It has the perfect texture, not too sweet and the buttery pastry crust is melting in your mouth. I love having a slice with my Sunday afternoon coffee.

What is Dry Pressed Cottage Cheese

Have you heard of pressed dry cottage cheese? If not, I will explain. Cottage cheese can come in two different textures. Dry pressed cottage cheese and classic cottage cheese, which has more milky runny texture. You may find this cottage cheese in the tubs, in any grocery store.

The dry pressed cottage cheese, or dry-curd cottage cheese is a soft, crumbly unripened cheese with white & dry curds. Pressed dry cottage cheese is made from fresh skim milk, and it curdled by adding an acid or rennet. Regular cottage cheese has milk added to it after the curd has been formed. This cottage cheese is left without adding any milk. The moisture content in cottage cheese stays at a maximum of 80%.

Where to buy dry pressed cottage cheese

Pressed dry cottage cheese is sold in plastic bags or tubs. You can find two brands in Canada, who produce this rare kind of cottage cheese. In Costco store; brand MC Dairy, they sell it in the plastic bags 2 × 500 g of pressed dry cottage cheese. Western (Gay Lea) company sells the same type of pressed dry cottage cheese.

What is Pressed Dry Cottage Cheese used for?

Pressed Dry Cottage Cheese is mostly used in baking, particularly in European sweet recipes. But it is also used in low-fat recipes or low calories diet. For example, it’s used as a substitute for rich and fat Ricotta. And how does it taste? Less bitter and tart than usual cottage cheese. Ricotta cheese might be one to be compared to dry pressed cottage cheese, but it’s less creamy and less heavy.

Ingredients for cottage cheese

• all- purpose flour
• unsalted butter
• fine sugar
• eggs
• baking powder
• milk
• rum
• lemon zest
• salt
• pressed cottage cheese
• vanilla pudding powder or corn starch

How to make Rustic Pressed Dry Cottage cheese cheesecake

Sugar pastry crust. Rustic Pressed Cottage Cheesecake recipe is done in two steps. First we will make the buttery sugar pastry crust. The base of this cheesecake is similar in taste to sugar cookie dough with flakiness of French pastry. And I enhanced the flavour with two little adds-on. One is spiced dark rum and the second is fresh zest from lemon.

Creamy pressed dry cottage cheese filling. Second step is creamy cottage cheese filling, made out of  mixed pressed dry cottage cheese, vanilla pudding, egg yolks and sugar. The texture will be creamy (but not as creamy as classic cheesecake), and with whisked egg whites, the filling will be light and fluffy.

How to make the sugar pastry crust

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Gather ingredients & prepare spring form pan

Before you start with the base of this cheesecake, prepare 9″ inch spring form pan. I have used this non-stick spring form pan from Amazon. There are two ways of preparing the spring form pan. Either you butter the bottom and the sides, and then you run fine sugar all over the pan. On the bottom and on the sides as well.

Or you follow the same step with buttering the pan only on the sides and put parchment paper on the bottom. Trick if you will use parchment paper, smudge a little piece of butter in the middle of the pan, so the parchment paper sticks to it and will sit on the bottom. Still use the fine sugar on the sides of the pan. It will help the sugar pastry dough, not to stick to the sides and at the same time it will leave, a light crunch of sweet sugar on the pastry dough, once baked.

Important note before you start. The whole recipe calls for a total of 5 eggs. For the sugar pastry crust use only 2 (two) egg yolks and reserve the remaining 2 (two) egg whites for later use in cottage cheese filling.

Make the sugar pastry crust

This sugar pastry is very crisp with a melting texture. It tastes a bit like sugar cookies and short pastry together. The whole process should not take longer than 6-8 minutes, or the pastry will be tough.

Mix dry ingredients and set aside

In a large kitchen bowl, mix together all-purpose flour, baking powder, salt, zest from lemon, stir and set aside.

Combine in egg yolks with butter

In another large bowl of a standing mixer (with paddle attachment), soften unsalted butter by beating it on medium speed (approximately 2 minutes). Reduce the speed to low and add egg yolks one at a time. Mix until eggs yolks are incorporated (it should take around another 2 minutes.) Don’t over mix, the dough would be tough.

Add sugar, milk & rum

Take the sugar and stir it into the warm milk with rum in a cup. Keep the speed on low and pour this onto the softened butter in a thin stream, mixing on low speed constantly.

Stir in dry ingredients

Gradually mix in the flour into the butter mixture. Mix on low speed, until it creates a ball of dough. This should take 2 minutes maximum.

Knead the dough and chilling time

Remove the ball of dough and knead gently on the floured surface, with hand until the dough is soft. Give the dough just a few kneads, so it comes easily together. The pastry dough should be soft.Take the dough ball and wrap it in plastic food wrap and let it chill in the refrigerator for 1-2 hours.

The recommended chilling time cannot be reduced. This is because the resting time in the refrigerator gives the gluten in the flour chance to relax. Chilling prevent the dough from shrinking too much when it goes into the hot oven.

Roll the pastry dough and place in spring form pan

With a rolling pin, roll out the dough evenly on floured surface to 15″ inch large circle. Slip the metal spatula underneath to prevent the pastry from sticking. Drape the pastry over the rolling pin and roll up halfway, so you can lift it. Unroll the pastry over the spring form pan.

Press the pastry dough gently into the bottom and up the sides of the spring form pan. Cut off the excess pastry dough with food scissors. Using fingertips, press the pastry dough into and up the sides of the pan. Refrigerate for 30 minutes. Make the cottage cheese filling.

Can I make the sugar pastry dough in advance?

Yes you can make the pastry 2 (two) days in advance. The pastry can be stored in a refrigerator for 2 days. It can also be frozen tightly wrapped with plastic food wrap. Thaw slowly in the refrigerator before using. Do not knead again or if you do, the pastry will lose its melting texture.

How to make and achieve creamy cottage cheese filling

Pressed dry cottage cheese is little crumbly, unlike it’s modern form cream cheese. But you can very easily achieve smooth texture with cottage cheese as well.

If you prefer the smoother texture, you can blend the cottage cheese in the blender before you will be adding the rest of the ingredients. Follow the rest of the steps to make the filling.

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Preheat the oven

Preheat first oven to 320 F / 160 C, middle rack position, before preparing the cottage cheese filling.

Make the filling

In a large bowl of stand mixer, on medium speed, beat the pressed cottage cheese, until smooth. The smoother consistency of cottage cheese should be achieved in about 1 minute. Add sugar and mix until combined. Then add 3 egg yolks, one by one and mix until they are well incorporated.

Scrape the sides with spatula time to time, so all is well incorporated. Stir in vanilla pudding powder or corn starch powder (if you are using corn starch, you can add 1 tsp of vanilla extract or 2 tsp of vanilla sugar for the aroma). Add softened butter and mix until well combined. Scrape with spatula the sides again.

Whisk the egg whites

In another large bowl, whisk 5 egg whites until stiff peaks are formed. With spatula, fold in gently the egg whites in the cottage cheese mixture. Pour the creamy filling into the prepared spring pan with sugar pastry dough and run the spatula on the top to even the filling.

Bake the cheesecake

Bake the cheesecake in the oven 325 F/160 C for about 45 minutes or until the crust starts to be golden brown and the cottage cheese filling starts also show signs of very light browning on top. Let cool the cheesecake for 1 hour on the counter or on the wire rack, leave the cheesecake inside the spring form pan. Then cover the cheesecake with plastic food wrap and chill for another 2-3 hours in the refrigerator. After chilling the cheesecake will be ready to slice. Slice 2″ inch large slices and serve it as is or with fruit coolies or salty caramel sauce.

Don’t have cooking Vanilla pudding? Read down below.

Which Vanilla Pudding to use

I used Dr. Oetker brand for this cottage cheesecake (see the picture right before the recipe card). I found mine in a European grocery store, and it’s a cooking version of pudding. (But we won’t be cooking the pudding). It has 43 g of pudding powder in the bag and I used two bags. If you can’t find in your store cooking version of vanilla pudding (Dr. Oetker), you can substitute vanilla pudding for the corn starch.

For the vanilla flavour, add vanilla extract or vanilla sugar. Basically cooking puddings are a corn starch with natural or artificial flavours. So don’t get disappointed if by any chance you will use corn starch and your cheesecake won’t have the same yellow colour as mine. It’s simply because the Vanilla pudding contains some yellow colouring.

There also exists Dr.Oetker cooking pudding powder, very similar to the one I buy in my grocery store. But it is in larger packaging, and it is already sweetened. You may use this one as well, but I would then suggest removing 1/3 of the sugar from the cottage cheese filling. Otherwise, it might be very sweet. I have not tested this recipe with this kind of pudding powder.

You might like more pressed cottage cheese recipes like STRAWBERRY DUMPLINGS WITH COTTAGE CHEESE.

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