Baked Banana Cheesecake—Prototype 7:
 
It seemed like about 8 years since I last made a banana cheesecake. So many updates have taken place since then among some of my other flavors. Time to update the banana one as well!
 
3-Cheese Blend (1CT-1NC-1YG):
Prepare ahead of time 16 ounces of yogurt cheese, derived from one 32-ounce container of nonfat yogurt. If the resulting yogurt cheese falls below 16 ounces, add back enough of the whey (that was strained out from the yogurt) to make up the difference. To this yogurt cheese combine 16 ounces of whipped, lowfat cottage cheese and 16 ounces (two 8-ounce packages) of softened Neufchatel cheese ("light cream cheese").

Grease a 9 1/2" (or 9") springform pan, but do not wrap foil around it yet (see below).

Crust:
4 oz. melted, white chocolate
8 oz. (1 cup) 3-cheese blend (see above)
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
2 oz. All-Bran, ground up

Place the resulting mixture in the greased pan and pre-bake without tub at 300 degrees for 30 minutes, then cool enough to comfortably touch at least the pan's upper sidewall.

Batter:
1 1/4 cups granulated sugar
40 oz. (5 cups) 3-cheese blend (see above)
2 teaspoons vanilla
12 ounces banana puree (tip: about 18 ounces of whole bananas, i.e., with the outer peels included—hopefully two large bananas—should yield a sufficient amount of the inner fruit)
2 1/4 teaspoons xanthan gum
6 eggs

Expect close to 8 1/2 cups of the resulting batter, but do not add this to the pan all at once. Rather, this needs to be done in four installments. Wrap the pan in foil (or—as an alternative—use a cheesecake pan bath wrap) just before adding the first batter installment (to minimize the foil's disturbance and therefore its leakage risk, do not put it on any earlier).

For each of the first three installments, gently scoop about 2 1/2 cups of batter into the pan, fully covering the surface (here's a tip—scoop small amounts of batter around the edge of the pan, letting this batter flow towards the middle on its own), and then bake this pan with its contents for 30 minutes, at 325 degrees. However, at the end of the third installment's 30 minutes, add on another 30 minutes of baking time, but only at 300 degrees (that's a 60 minute "baking installment"—the first 30 minutes at 325 degrees and the next 30 at 300). For these three installments here, bake with the pan in a tub filled with at least 1/4 to 1/2 inch of boiling water, but (to reduce spillage risks) do not fill the tub all the way at this point, because the whole tub-and-pan assembly is going to need to be removed from the oven (in order to comfortably add contents to the pan) between installments.

After these first three installments are done, there should be about 1 cup of batter left, with 120 minutes of baking time reached at this point (30 minutes for each of the first two installments, and 60 for the third one). Now comes the fourth installment—carefully add the last of this batter on top of the pan's earlier installments, fully coating the entire surface. Next, return the entire pan-and-tub assembly to the oven, with the temperature remaining at 300 degrees. At this point, fill up the tub generously with boiling water. Resume baking for another 90 minutes (based upon usage of a 9 1/2" pan).

Afterward, shut the oven off, and leave its door slightly ajar, with the cheesecake still inside—and in the tub—for an hour. Next, remove the cheesecake from the oven and tub. Continue to cool it down at room temperature for another two hours. After doing so, remove the cheesecake from pan and refrigerate.

Banana Cheesecake—Prototype 7

I served this one for a late February 2025 "potluck" lunch at Living Hope Church in Beverly. The cheesecake was nicely appreciated, and not much more than 1/4 of it was left over (which I took back home afterwards).

However, I felt that I needed to make some baking adjustments for the future. The crust was excessively soft and hopelessly slimy, even despite the 30 minutes of the crust's pre-baking time (maybe the high-moisture content of the banana batter immediately above the crust seeped too much into it during the baking?). Furthermore, the top batter installment was, at least in my opinion, too firm, and this presented a challenge to my slicing the cheesecake (the lower batter installments, on the other hand, had an encouraging texture).

Another thing that I took note of was that the bananas ought to be strongly ripe for better results. They tasted barely ripe when I made this cheesecake, although it still ended up having a reasonably good banana taste. But I gave thought to next time buying bananas perhaps about 5 days in advance—if they are fully yellow at that point (maybe 7 days if slightly green?).
 

Back to my bushy homepage