Baked Plain Cheesecake—Prototype 9:
 
In light of some recent concerns about my yogurt cheesecakes being perhaps a little too tart (especially with Prototype 14 of my chocolate cheesecakes), I felt that I would try a compromise. This would bring back the cottage cheese in part. I also brought back the flour. But this time, I used all-purpose, instead of white whole wheat.
 
50/50 Cheese Blend:

Start with 32 ounces of nonfat yogurt, and strain it for at least 24 hours, thus producing yogurt cheese. The goal here is to attain 16 ounces of this cheese. If less than 16 ounces of it remains, add back enough of the whey strained out to make up the difference. If, however, more than 16 ounces remains, exclude the extra remaining cheese. Combine the 16-ounce yogurt cheese result with 16 ounces of whipped, lowfat cottage cheese.

Only 28 ounces of this blend is required for what follows, so save the extra 4 ounces for another purpose (alternatively, you could combine 14 ounces of yogurt cheese with 14 ounces of cottage cheese, depending on what you have available).

Crust:
1.5 oz. melted, white chocolate
8 oz. 50/50 cheese blend
1/4 cup granulated sugar
3 tablespoons brown sugar
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
2.2 oz. Bran Buds, ground up

Pour this crust mixture into pan and pre-bake without tub at 300 degrees for 10 minutes, then cool enough to comfortably touch at least the pan's upper sidewall.

Batter:
2 tablespoons melted or softened butter
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
20 oz. 50/50 cheese blend
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 eggs

Bake in tub at 300 degrees for 60 minutes (if using a 9 1/2" pan), cool (outside of oven and tub) for an hour, remove from pan and refrigerate.
 
The Market Basket yogurt strained out well enough for me to add back some whey in order to get to the 16-ounce weight.

This cheesecake got served at Living Hope Church. There were so many other desserts as well at a Sunday lunch (during Labor Day weekend of 2012) that also included Christian Renewal Church, a congregation using the same facility as Living Hope. My cheesecake ended up being about 2/3 used up, and I took the rest back home.

There was a hopefully reduced "ho-hum" tinge in this prototype, probably due to the change in flour. But I also felt the taste was now too sweet and sort of lacking in tartness. But it looked like I had still come a long way in my plain prototypes. I still needed to perform some additional tweaking.
 

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