Goat Cheese Cheesecake

I quite like cheese­cake, but was nev­er moti­vat­ed enough to try mak­ing it myself — until I tried the goat cheese cheese­cake at one of my favorite restau­rants in San Diego, The Smok­ing Goat. It was love at first bite, and I knew I had to try recre­at­ing it, espe­cial­ly after mov­ing away from SoCal post-col­lege. Now, goat cheese cheese­cake may sound a lit­tle off-putting at first blush, but the only real dif­fer­ence between it and clas­sic cheese­cake is that it sub­sti­tutes goat cheese for the more tra­di­tion­al sour cream. The end result, I think, is a cheese­cake that is both slight­ly rich­er and less sweet than most others. 

There are a few things to note about mak­ing this par­tic­u­lar cheesecake:

• The type of goat cheese you use can mat­ter in that it can influ­ence the taste of your cheese­cake. On my first try, I used a stronger goat cheese, and my fam­i­ly (a.k.a. my some­times reluc­tant pan­el of taste-testers) remarked that the fin­ished prod­uct was a lit­tle salty. The sec­ond time around I used a goat cheese that was fla­vored with orange hon­ey, which fixed that issue.
• The prin­ci­pal con­cerns in mak­ing a cheese­cake are ensur­ing that it does­n’t crack or deflate. There are a num­ber of pre­ven­ta­tive mea­sures that you can (and that this recipe will) take, including: 
  • Ensur­ing the ingre­di­ents are room tem­per­a­ture will allow them to blend togeth­er more eas­i­ly, reduc­ing the chances that you will over­mix. Over­mix­ing may result in too much air being whipped into the bat­ter; the air bub­bles will burst after bak­ing, caus­ing the cheese­cake to col­lapse and crack.
  • Bak­ing the cheese­cake in a water bath pro­tects your cheese­cake both from crack­ing and tak­ing on a rub­bery tex­ture by allow­ing for a gen­tler bake. The water bath essen­tial­ly cre­ates a moist envi­ron­ment that pre­vents the cheese­cake from dry­ing out and shields it from uneven oven heat.

To begin, make the gra­ham crack­er crust. Using a food proces­sor, pulse the gra­ham crack­ers into crumbs (if you don’t have a food proces­sor, you can mash the crack­ers man­u­al­ly by plac­ing them into a ziploc bag, seal­ing it, and then rolling it over with a bak­ing pin). Mix the crumbs in a bowl with the melt­ed but­ter, salt, and sug­ar, until well combined.

Press the mix­ture into your pan, using a mea­sur­ing cup to ensure it is flat and uni­form across. I rec­om­mend using a spring­form pan, the ring of which removes from the base; this is because you can’t exact­ly flip the cheese­cake pan upside down when try­ing to remove it, the way you would a reg­u­lar baked cake. Bake the crust at 325° for about 10 min­utes, or until set; and then put the crust aside to cool.

Before cre­at­ing your cheese­cake bat­ter, ensure that the cream cheese, goat cheese, and eggs are room tem­per­a­ture, which helps pre­vent your cheese­cake from crack­ing. In the bowl of a stand mix­er, on medi­um speed, beat togeth­er the cream cheese and sug­ar until smooth, using the pad­dle attach­ment. Reduce the speed to low and add in the goat cheese, stir­ring until just com­bined. Care­ful­ly incor­po­rate the vanil­la extract and lemon juice.

Keep­ing the mix­er on low speed, add the eggs one at a time, each after the oth­er and stir­ring in between until just incor­po­rat­ed. Be very care­ful not to over­mix here — over­beat­ing the egg whites in par­tic­u­lar has the poten­tial to incor­po­rate extra air into the bat­ter, increas­ing the chances that your cheese­cake will crack after baking.

Remem­ber our gra­ham crack­er crust? We’ll be return­ing to it now, in prepa­ra­tion of the water bath in which we will bake the cheese­cake lat­er. Wrap the pan in heavy-duty alu­minum foil to pro­tect against leak­age — recall that we are bak­ing the cheese­cake in a spring­form pan, which due to its abil­i­ty to sep­a­rate from its base, is not air­tight. The water bath will require the cheese­cake to sit in about 1 inch of boil­ing water, so we want to make sure that none gets into the pan.

Care­ful­ly pour the cheese­cake bat­ter into your gra­ham crack­er base with a spat­u­la or spoon. Use your spat­u­la or spoon to even out dis­tri­b­u­tion of the bat­ter, and also to smooth the top of the cheese­cake (although per­son­al­ly, I can nev­er get the sur­face as smooth as I’d like).

Next, pre­pare your water bath. To do so, you sim­ply place the cheese­cake pan onto a roast­ing pan, and fill it with boil­ing water, so that it is about 1 inch in depth across. The water bath helps pre­vent the cheese­cake from crack­ing by cre­at­ing a moist atmos­phere that ulti­mate­ly allows for a more even bake. Bake for about 1 hour at 325°, or until just set — there should still be a slight wob­ble to the cheese­cake, which will con­tin­ue to cook as it cools.

Let the cheese­cake sit in the oven with the door ajar for about an hour before remov­ing; a sud­den removal of the cheese­cake from the hot oven may increase the chances that your cheese­cake will crack. After the hour is up, remove the cheese­cake from the oven and cool at room tem­per­a­ture for anoth­er hour, then place in the fridge to chill. Ide­al­ly, I would leave the cheese­cake to cool overnight, but it should also be fine after about 5 hours or so in the fridge.

And that’s how you make this par­tic­u­lar goat cheese cheese­cake! You can serve it with any num­ber of top­pings or pair­ings —I think that its rich­ness pairs quite nice­ly with some­thing not too overt­ly sweet, like peach pre­serves. But as I will be the first to admit that my taste palate is in no way sophis­ti­cat­ed, by all means, explore oth­er top­pings — choco­late ganache, dulce de leche, whipped cream, what have you — I think it will go nice­ly enough with almost anything.