Unwanted rise in Japanese Cheesecake
When baking a Japanese cheesecake, I will occasionally get an incredible rise in the cheesecake - doubling or tripling in volume. During cooling, this falls back down to almost the original volume. However, other attempts will result in a much more sedate rise - with almost no collapse during cooling.
I'm using the recipe (and advice) as described by littleTeochew, available on the wayback machine.
I'm tempted to suspect the placement of the cheesecake adjacent to the waterbath rather than in it, but I have had both occur when the cheeseecake is adjacent to the water-bath.
Does anyone know why this occurs and how to prevent the over-rising?
Best Answer
Building upon what @Joe already mentioned.
The cheesecake rises because as the temperature of the air trapped inside the mix goes up it tends to move upwards. This creates an effective spring force pushing the mix up. The hotter the oven, the stronger is the force since the bigger is the temperature gradient between the air inside of the mix and the top of the oven.
This phenomenon is sometimes called oven spring, especially among bread bakers (which by the way go crazy trying to maximize it!). As your mix cooks, it loses elasticity and become rigid. In the case of the cheesecake, this is mainly due to the coagulation of the egg proteins. Thus the oven spring effect takes place mainly in the initial cooking stage.
Different from bread bakers, you want to minimize this effect. The key for that is to have the eggs cooked with the least temperature gradient between the center of the mix and the top of the oven. Egg coagulates at around 70 degrees, so you don't really need high temperatures to make the cheesecake set.
One simple but laborious approach would be to start cooking the cheesecake at lower temperatures and only after it has set you to increase it to get browning on the top. One way of checking this is to shake it and see if the top moves or not, or to drill it with a toothpick. The water bath also helps to reduce the speed in which heat penetrates the mix since it effectively 'shields' the cake with a layer which has higher heat capacity.
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Why did my cheesecake rise too much?
Too much air in a cheesecake can cause cracks a few ways. One \u2013 big air bubbles can rise to the surface and create cracks or little craters. Two \u2013 adding air causes things to rise and too much rise in a cheesecake isn't a good thing. It can rise too much or too quickly and then fall and crack.Why is my cheesecake growing?
When you overmix the batter, more air is incorporated into the cheesecake batter. This causes the cheesecake to rise and fall, leaving cracks on the surface of it. This can be prevented by having all your ingredients at room temperature so you can mix less to get the ingredients incorporated.Why did my Japanese cheesecake not rise?
If you cake has not risen at all in the oven, then your initial temperature is too low, or your egg whites were over or under beaten (you want glossy beautiful stiff peaks), or you have over-mixed your final batter. If you don't get a brown top, again the temperature may have been too low.Why is my Japanese cheesecake dense?
If you find your Japanese cheesecake to be dense rather than fluffy, there are a few possible causes: The meringue may be over whipped. Too much air was knocked out of the meringue when folding into the base batter. The cheesecake wasn't baked long enough.Fluffy Japanese Cheesecake
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