It was that time of year again, and I had no ready recipe to make. I’ve scaled back over the years to only making one or two things any given Jelly July, but even then, I’ve covered a lot of ground, especially since I don’t refrain from making gelatin desserts the rest of the year. It’s hard to keep things fresh and exciting, you know?
I decided a good way to stumble across something I might want to attempt is to simply look through a cookbook that wasn’t explicitly gelatin themed, and hadn’t already been featured in a previous post. Luckily, the first one I picked up quickly yielded up something I didn’t remember making before (for Jelly July at least) – a no bake cheesecake.
Is a cheesecake a pie?
It is, right? I actually can readily cite technical culinary definitions for a lot of gelatin desserts, from the basic aspic or sponge, to the more complex Bavarian cream or parfait pie. But without looking into it, this doctorate-holding linguist knows that cake is going to be an absolute mess to unilaterally define. For instance, my bread machine’s recipe book has a Cake section, under which you can find Banana Bread, which is Not Wrong! (I now claim banana bread as my favorite cake.)
By that rule, my favorite pie is probably New York-style cheesecake, but that’s the sort of cheesecake some people would argue is not a pie. But not because you bake it. I think the inclusion of eggs is a key part of the debate? (I still think we’re firmly in pie territory.)
A very cursory search on the history of cheesecake implies that ‘no bake’ cheesecakes, with the ol’ graham cracker crumb crust, are American, which I didn’t bother to fact check further. I mean, cream cheese certainly is. That’s not to say these are only made and sold in America – it’s very common to find slices of レアチーズケーキ (lit. ‘rare cheesecake’) in Japanese convenience stores. I would hope we can come together and at least agree that these kinds of cheesecakes are pies.
The weird wacky world of no bake
If you’ve made a no bake cheesecake yourself, I’m willing to bet a small amount of money that you didn’t use gelatin to help it set. When I went to poke around for an official Philadelphia Cream Cheese recipe, I came across a tub of…no bake cheesecake filling?
“Simply scoop the ready to eat filling into a graham cracker crust for a quick and easy no bake cheesecake without turning on your oven.”
I’m all for convenience foods, but this seems like a middle ground between “making a no bake cheesecake from scratch” and “just buying a no bake cheesecake from the supermarket” that…did anyone want this? Let me know in the non-existent comments.
Anyways, I then remembered I have an official Philadelphia Cream Cheese cookbook, cuz of course I do, and surveyed the cheesecake section. Only 3 out of 27 cheesecake recipes (many of which not in the Cheesecake Heaven section, what the heck!) were no bake (~11 percent, for anyone wondering), and even more bizarrely, none of them used that term. A lot of the baked cheesecakes were deemed “3-Step”, which they seem to have trademarked, but only one no bake was similarly called “2-Step”, which did not have a little 🄬 afterwards.
Even weirder, all three used different methods to set. One did in fact use unflavored gelatin, the Heavenly Orange Cheesecake flavored with orange juice. The lone “2-step” just set in the fridge. And another fruit smoothie themed one was frozen solid, which…I guess makes sense?
I do think the 2-step recipe is more or less the basic no bake formula – whip cream cheese and sugar, fold in whipped cream or some facsimile, and gently plop onto a graham cracker crust. Easy peasy.
So why use gelatin?
Well! The basic formula also has no Added Liquid, which is the bane of getting anything to gel. With the fruit smoothie cheesecake, you now have notoriously soggy plant material slopping up your firm cheese cheese. And the orange juice one…has orange juice in it. If you’re using more of a graham cracker straight-up pie crust, you can get away with a sloppy set – that’s how pudding pies work, after all. But if you want to use a springform, well.
I realize at this point an unfamiliar reader may be thinking “so Kelp made that Heavenly Orange Cheesecake with the required gelatin”, and…no. Sorry. This post doesn’t have the best organization. Luckily I’m not being scored.
A Completely Different Brand Cookbook!
The first cookbook I picked up (remember that whole anecdote, at the very beginning?) was the extremely yellow cover of Classic Desserts: Eagle Brand Sweetened Condensed Milk.
There’s even a cheesecake on the cover! Not the one I made though.
It’s always nice to make something from these brand cookbooks when I can still buy The Featured Product In Question. There are twelve cheesecakes listed in the index, including something called a Cheeseless “Cheesecake”, which just looks like a baked custard. (We won’t get into whether this is also a pie. But the answer is yes.) Two of these do have “no-bake” in the title, although the one I made does not, for a 25% ratio. All three use unflavored gelatin too.
This cookbook is kinda weird tho. Every single recipe requires the same product, sweetened condensed milk. Which isn’t the weird part, that’s the point. The weird part is every single ingredient list has the same disclaimer in parenthesis, (NOT evaporated milk). That is sure an editorial decision. I had to double check to see if any recipe DOES use evaporated milk, and nope.
Yes, this is an understandable point of confusion, but. We have kind of a saying, a maxim? if you will in one of my circles: “People don’t read”. In other words, the same sort of person who needs to be constantly reminded to use sweetened condensed milk, NOT evaporated milk, cannot be helped by a…constant written reminder.
There’s another strange bit – in what I’m guessing is a mindless adherence to using Brand Name Ingredients, the recipe calls for ¼ cup ReaLemon🄬 Lemon Juice from Concentrate…and also 1 tablespoon grated lemon rind. Which is like, a big ass lemon’s worth. A lemon which you could…get a quarter cup of juice out of.
Photographic proof
Cheeseless Cheesecake, Meet Meatless Mincemeat
Is this Christmas-y? I thought so
I chose the recipe I did not just because it had gelatin (hard requirement) but also because it had mincemeat. I vaguely remembered what mincemeat was, and this being a brand cookbook, even managed to track down the exact brand of mincemeat it wanted (None Such). However. The recipe wanted you to use half a Big Jar, which meant you’d have…half a Big Jar left. (In hindsight, I also should have halved this recipe, which makes a fairly tall 9” cheesecake, but after doing so much microwave math, I wanted a break.) So instead, I ordered a jar from a different brand that was half the size and dumped the whole thing in.
I did get the Correct Brand of Sweetened Condensed Milk (NOT evaporated milk)
I’m not sure this was the play to make. The finished product tasted…okay? But the …treacle, I guess is the word I want, was kind of overpowering. Basically, it made an already heavy dessert heavier, and like, cloyingly sweet, I think is the phrase. I mean, we already had the non-optional sweetened condensed milk in there. The ratio of ‘meat’ to ‘filling’ was fine though, so perhaps if you make this, the play is to somehow drain off some of the sweet sludge it’s in?
It also didn’t really cleanly come away from the springform, but eh
Bonus: the first (and last) slice I ate was such a sugar bomb it triggered a migraine. One of my resident taste testers who is now on a pretty restricted diet politely had a small chunk and had nothing really to say. My other taste tester tried a piece and said it wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good either. It was a lot, basically. It’s telling that for my own slice, I did top it with sour cream as suggested, and it didn’t help cut the sweetness at all.
It was firmly set, at least?
I am still including the recipe here, for anyone curious, but I do think what I’ve learned from this is pie filling type stuff is likely best used as a topping for cheesecake rather than incorporated into the base. Not only does it lend you more control, it also is just more aesthetically pleasing. Maybe they didn’t go that route here due to mincemeat’s brown goopy vibe? In the end, we’ve learned the most important lesson: MAYBE evaporated milk?
Recipe
Creamy Fruit ‘n’ Nut Cheesecake
Crust:
⅓ cup butter, melted
1¼ cups graham cracker crumbs
¼ cup sugar
Filling:
2 8-ounce packages of cream cheese, softened
1 14-ounce can sweetened condensed milk
1 envelope unflavored gelatin (~1 tbsp)
¼ cup lemon juice
1 tbsp grated lemon rind
1⅓ cups mincemeat
½ cup chopped nuts
1 cup whipping cream
- Optional: Line bottom and sides of 9-inch springform pan with parchment or wax paper.
Make crust by combining crumbs, sugar, and melted butter, and press into bottom of pan. - In a large bowl, beat cream cheese until fluffy, and then add sweetened condensed milk and beat until smooth.
- Pour lemon juice into a baby saucepan and sprinkle in gelatin to bloom for 1 minute. Heat mixture over very low heat and whisk gelatin until dissolved.
- Strain to remove any residual gelatin lumps and add to cheese, along mincemeat, nuts, and rind. Thoroughly combine.
- Whip cream (soft peaks? didn’t say) and fold into mixture. Pour into pan and chill for 3 hours or until set. Top with sour cream and more nuts if you want.
kelp 