Best Japanese style cheesecake recipe for Americans (to make in American style ovens)

My lovely American girl friends told me how much they love Japanese style cheesecakes. They love the fluffy creamy soft spongy cheesy taste with a hint of sweetness. At the same time, they love enjoying a huge piece of Japanese cheesecake with only a fractional of calories of American cheesecakes. We girls can indulge the cheesecake with less gilt.

But Japanese cheesecake is so hard to find, even in Asian bakeries. They told me they could not find good recipe to make it. Though I am not a fan of Japanese style cheesecake, but I know there are many good Chinese recipes for it. Thus, I spent past weeks tested recipes and found the best recipe which I made the cake successfully on the second test!

I tried it out with my sweet American girlfriend, Jaye. We made a successful and beautiful cake! Jaye said she can understand the recipe video with English subtitles and should be able to make it herself at home!

Here is the terrific recipe video: Japanese style cheesecake by Amanda Tastes

Since Amanda speaks Mandarin, please turn on the English subtitle in “Settings” so you can follow up instruction with her.

Amanda does not post ingredients in English in the video, so I put it here:

For a cake in a 6 inch diameter round cake mold:

• Cream cheese 125g
• 3 eggs
• Cake flour 20g (or 16g flour with 4g corn starch)
• Corn starch: 10g
• Whole milk: 80ml
• Unsalted butter: 25g
• Sugar: 60g

Please note: Amanda makes Asian size cake (it is only 6 inch big! Really?) For an American like me, the cake is too tiny after working hard to make it! In the end, I doubled ingredients and made a 10 inch cake 😀

I am not going to post everything Amanda said here since she gave a very detailed explanation on everything we should know about making a successful Japanese style cheesecake. However, I am going to write tips that she did not mention but important for people using American style ovens like me.

First, before you beat up egg white, please ensure the container and the beater you are going to use do no have any oil or water in it. Not even a single drop or a tiny tiny bit of water or oil. Please wipe the container and tool extremely clean and inspect them carefully before you start to beat the egg white. This step is extremely critical. The egg white will not rise if there is any water or oil in it. I learned it in a hard way few years ago and I want to avoid you to experience what I had 😦

Second, please do not use convectional oven. If you have an oven which heats up from the top (the heating wire is on the top), please use that oven instead. I used convection oven when I tried this recipe, unfortunately, the cake rose up too fast, then cracked, and shrink when it cooled down. So it looks wrinkly in the end. After cutting it out, I found the bottom layer was not fluffy but more like a hard putting in texture (even though one of my girlfriend said she likes it, I still consider it was a failure).

I remember back in Taiwan when I made this cheesecake, I did not have a luxury American style oven in kitchen. My mom bought me a small oven which heats up from the top. It worked so well that I never considered Japanese cheesecake was hard to make. Luckily my American girlfriend found one of my ovens has the heating pad on the top! We tried using that oven instead, it worked like miracle!

I did not even have a cake mode, and didn’t want to spend money on it. I used a 10 inch pot to make the round one. I was surprised it went well! So if you do not have a cake mold like me and want to save money, just use your pot 😀

Honestly we spent 3 hours total (1 hour of baking time so we watched TV). It is very labor intensive. Please ensure you have enough time and follow every step carefully since every tiny tiny mistake will make your entire effort go wrong. (I guess that is the reason why it is so hard to find in bakery and so expensive even when you find it). Personally I don’t think it is hard to make if you are carefully following every instructions.

Hope my tips help! Thank you for reading it! Good luck!