Last night was Erev Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year’s Eve), so there was a need to bake something suitable for a Jewish occasion, so what could be better than cheesecake? What I think of as “Jewish cheesecake”, which is broadly similar to what Americans call “New York Cheesecake”, actually hails from Poland, where it’s not particularly Jewish and is called Sernik. 

Dozens of countries have versions of curd cheese: paneer in India, Quark in Germany, túró in Hungary, labneh in the Middle East and many more. The Polish version is called twaróg: just about all the Sernik recipes I’ve found use this. It’s readily available in England; otherwise use any other curd cheese: farmer’s cheese, ricotta, etc.

There are many different variations of Sernik, regional or otherwise, which use different toppings and/or pastry bases; some even dispense with the pastry altogether. I’ve chosen the version from Kraków, Sernik krakowski, largely because it looks pretty and I’ve actually been to Kraków. The pastry is a fairly standard shortcrust, except that it includes baking powder, thus ending up somewhere between a pastry and a cake. The Kraków-specific bit is to top the cheesecake with a lattice made of the same pastry. I’ve included raisins (definitely part of the cheesecakes of my childhood) and separated my eggs, making a meringue with the whites: this makes the finished product lighter.

The pastry

• 280g plain flour (OO if you have it)
• 5g baking powder
• 2g salt
• 140g butter (start from cold)
• 2 large eggs
• 100g sugar
• 50g soured cream

1. In the bowl of a food processor, mix flour, baking powder and salt
2. Cut the butter into cubes, add into the food processor and process for 20 seconds or so until you get to the consistency of fine breadcrumbs
3. Add the eggs, sugar and soured cream, process for a few seconds until thoroughly blended
4. Form the dough into a ball, put into a covered bowl and refrigerate for 30 minutes
5. Preheat your oven to 180℃ fan
6. Grease a cake tin around 28cm diameter
7. Take about ⅔ of the pastry and roll out on a generously floured surface
8. Line the base and sides of the tin, pressing the pastry firmly into the corners. Prick the base with a fork. Add any offcuts to the rest of your pastry and set aside
9. Line with baking paper and fill with baking beads. Bake for 15 minutes
10. When you’ve taken out the pastry, reduce the oven temperature to 150℃

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

The cheese filling

• 2 eggs
• 100g butter, soft
• 500g twaróg or other curd cheese
• 25 g flour
• 100g sugar
• vanilla extract to taste
•  125 g raisins

1. Separate the eggs.
2. Beat the butter until smooth.
3. Add the twaróg and mix thoroughly
4. Add the egg yolks, flour, and vanilla and mix
5. Beat the egg whites until soft, add the sugar and mix until stiff
6. Fold the two mixtures and the raisins together

• 

• 

• 

Final assembly

1. Roll out the remaining pastry and cut into 1cm wide strips
2. If you haven’t already, remove the baking beads and paper from your blind-baked pastry case.
3. Fill the pastry case with the cheese filling
4. Form a lattice over the top of your cheesecake with the strips of pastry (if you don’t know how to do this, YouTube is your friend)
5. Bake for around 50 minutes until the pastry lattice is nicely brown
6. Leave to cool

• 

• 

• 

• Food