Welcome back to Dede’s Mediterranean kitchen. Today, I’m going to be making a wonderful, luscious desert, Mediterranean Cheesecake. It’s a great fusion of Mediterranean and American part of my Mediterranean Americana series. Get my recipe at www.DedeMed.com. Don’t forget to join my social, so if you have questions, I can answer them.
This dessert is a great, great blend of a lot of Mediterranean flavors with traditional American cheese cake. I’m going to tell you what you’re going to need. It’s really easy to put together and I hope you take a minute to try this.
We are going to need, of course cream cheese, little bit of sour cream, some orange, peeled orange zest. We have some toasted coconut for our topping. We have some pistachio, garlic pistachio for topping. We have some sweetened condensed milk, vanilla. We have orange bosom water, rose water, an egg, some sugars, some melted butter. And we have for the crust, we’re going to use shredded filo dough as a little Mediterranean twist. And I’m going to show you now how to put this all together.
So you’re going to need a hand mixer or blender for this. I’m going to have first put in the cream cheese, the sour cream and half a can of the condensed milk. You want to add your egg last because the egg adds a lot of air to the cheese cake and you do not want an airy cheese cake. Because what will happen is the cheesecake will expand a lot and then it will come back down and it won’t leave you a nice, you know even level to the cheese cake.
So we’re going to add our sour cream. We’re going to add half a can of the condensed milk. Just like that. Turn your blender on and let it go until everything is nice and creamy. And let it blend for about 30 seconds. I’m going to just blend it a little with my spatula. I want to add now a teaspoon of vanilla.
Another part of our Mediterranean twist is the rose water and orange bosom water. They add such an element of flavor to the dish and it’s so the distinct. People would know, you know that this is truly a Mediterranean flavored dish. Here’s some rose water, some orange bosom water. If you smell it I mean, it’s, it’s absolutely amazing. I cannot explain. If you don’t have an access to rose water or orange bosom water, you can get them on my website, www.DedeMed.com. Don’t forget.
Add some orange zest about a teaspoon of orange zest that also adds another element of flavor. And we’re going to blend this up for another 30 seconds before we add our egg. Ok, we’re going to add two tablespoons of sugar. You don’t want it to be too sweet because you are going to add a little bit of simple syrup, Mediterranean simple syrup, on top of the cheese cake when it’s done. To give this another blend, make sure you do scrape down the sides so that everything is evenly blended. And you can see when you blend this, it gets very creamy and that’s what you want. You want a nice creamy consistency. So I scrape down the sides and I’m going to add my egg and then blend it for 10 to 15 seconds just until the egg is blended in and then you can finish the blending with the spatula. Again, you don’t want to add any airiness to the cheese cake. Just like that, turn it on for another 15 seconds.
I’ve finished blending the egg. And so see, it’s a nice creamy mixture, just slightly mix it. Do not add any air to it. Don’t fold it. Just mix it. Just like that and you can see the little orange zest in there. And we’ll put this aside for our garnish.
Now for the crust, we’re going to put together just like you do a traditional crust you, you know you usually have your graham crackers and the butter and the sugar. Instead of the graham crackers, we’re going to use shredded filo dough. Now sometimes the pieces are a little bit longer, so you want to make sure that you shred them with your hands. Just make sure everything is nice and evenly separated. There’s no extra long pieces in there. Shred it up before we add our butter and the sugar to the mixture. I’ll show you what this looks like. See, it’s like fine, hair, filo hair. Ok, just going to shred it up, and then we’re going to add the butter to it and the sugar. Let’s get, you need about two to three tablespoons of the butter. Also depends on how thick, I will put three tablespoons. It depends on how thick you like your crust, also some people like a thicker crust. And I’m going to put our butter on top. I like to use sweet cream butter. It’s great for cooking, especially in making pastries. Then you want to mix this up. Make sure the butter’s evenly on all of the filo dough. You just smell the butter. It’s smells really, really good. Everything smells good. Food always smells so wonderful.
Then make sure it’s nicely mixed. Just like that , you can see they’re all nice and glossy now. They have a little bit of sweetness to them. And then we’re going to get our muffin pan. I like making these in muffin pans because you can make little individual servings for everybody. If you like though, you can use a traditional cheesecake pan to make this, and just use this for the crust.
So I’m going to take a little bit, a little bit more than a tablespoon full and just pack it in to the bottom. I just want to pack it in, and a little too much. It’s ok, they don’t look perfect right now. The cream cheese’s filling will make it look nice and pretty. I’m going to do about seven of these, seven or eight. Let’s do eight. Ok, if you have any of these leftover, you can always freeze the crust and then take it out when you want to make some more. Make sure they’re nice and even. Just like that. You’ll get nice and golden brown as the crust. Now we’re going to fill them, make sure you preheat your oven to about 350 to 400 degrees. We’re going to cook these cheesecakes for about half an hour.
See that, all those crust are? Now we’re going to pour in some of the cheese cake mixture. We are going to pop it into the oven for 30 minutes. Keep your eye on it. A lot of different ovens cook differently. Check in on them after about 20 minutes and see how they’re developing. Let it go for another ten minutes. We’re going to take them out and let them cool completely for our garnish.
We’re back, and our cheese cakes have cooled completely. What I did was I went around the edge of all the little cheesecakes with a knife. Just gently went around to make sure that they will come out easily. I usually use a spoon or fork and you can just lift it out. It’s really easy. It’s not hard at all as long as they are pulled, you’ll be fine. But I do want to show you the bottom of the cheese cakes. You can see it’s beautiful shredded filo dough. And you want to make sure that you refrigerate these, because cheese cakes is served best when it’s cold.
So after you take them out, you can refrigerate them for about an hour or two and then decorate them or you can decorate them and then refrigerate them. Either way, whatever way you like to do it, I’m going to get the simple syrup and I want to pour some of it on top of the cheese cake so that I can like add garnish sticks to it. And this simple syrup also serves as an extra sweetening agent because we didn’t put too much sweet into the cheese cake.
I have some toasted coconut. All you have to do is buy some shredded coconut at the store. Close them in the oven for about five minutes. Keep your eye on them so they don’t burn. I love toasted coconuts and I love the pistachios. You can even do a combination of the two if you like. Just like that. Pistachios are very traditional as a garnish for desserts. Just like that. I going to make a combo on and put some coconut on top there too. Just a little bit more simple syrup on top, just like that. It gives it a nice gloss as well. And there you go. We’re done.
This is our Mediterranean cheesecake. They are absolutely fabulous. It’s a great, great flavor that you’ve never tasted before in cheesecake. It’s very refreshing. Try it. I really want you to try it. Email me. Let me know what you think and join me again for Dede’s Mediterranean Kitchen.
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