Slow Food: Overnight Matcha Cheesecake

A serendipitous aesthetic as a result of a reaction of matcha with steel.

With the sudden ‘lockdown’ or move to ‘sheltering at home’ in mid-March had me thinking about buying foods with a long shelf life. I apparenty went a little crazy with cream cheese. Once the folly wore off, I had to figure out something to do with it. What better than dessert?

I love matcha and every opportunity to play with it. Since I purchased a Costco-sized bag of matcha, I had plenty to experiment with. This experiment helped me learn why you always see bamboo whisks in beautiful photos of tea ceremonies. Apparently matcha reacts with stainless steel. I have a few springform pans and opted for the mid-sized one which is my only vintage, well worn springform pan, for the size. Being vintage, the pan has lots of scratches on the inner walls, with many thin scratch lines of the steel core exposed. The result was a beautiful marbling, but with a mildly metalic taste. So for the cake pictured here, we either avoided the edges of the cake or lightly scraped the outer edge to remove the metallic flavored bits.

Additionally, I wanted to try out low heat baking and slow cooling to wake up to a cake that could be chilled over the morning and eaten in the afternoon. It worked like a charm and made for a very tasty cheesecake!

CRUST:

1 box Pamela’s gluten-free cinnamon grahams, (less one cookie to test taste) crushed

5 Tbsp butter, melted & cooled

Butter for grading the pan

Fully combine crumbs & melted butter and press into the base of an 8” springform pan. Butter the sides of the pan with softened butter.

FILLING:

Preheat oven to 250°F

3 8oz blocks of cream cheese, room temp

1/2c sour cream

3 eggs

1/2c sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 Tbsp matcha powder

Pinch of salt

Beat (with wire beaters) all ingredients on high speed until aerated and doubled in volume.

Pour 2/3 of the filling into the prepared springform pan.

To the remaining 1/3 in the mixing bowl, add 1 more Tbsp of matcha powder and 1/4c sugar and beat on high heat until fluffy.

Add this to the center of the pan and spread outward. Smooth the surface.

Wrap the pan in heavy duty foil. Set pan in a roasting pan and in the oven. Fill the roasting pan with boiling water to halfway up the springform pan.

Bake at 250°F for 2 hours. Turn oven off and let cool slowly in the oven. (I did this overnight.) When completely cool, refrigerate for a minimum of 4-6 hours.

This yields a denser style cheesecake closer to a NY cheesecake than an airy one.