Originally posted by: LikeLinus
Originally posted by: werk
WRONG. That happens when you put FLOUR in cheesecake.Originally posted by: Chompman
Originally posted by: 0roo0roo
good cheese cake is heavy and solid.
bad stuff is the whipped thin cr@p u get at buffets. sorta like a drug dealer using filler so he has more to sell..cept in this case its air
That is what happens when you add custard and make them pies like werk likes.
I guess he only likes cheap tasting foods instead of the good stuff. 🙁
Do you even know what a custard is? I'll give you a hint, it's not something you add to make cheesecake.
You are truly clueless.
Well while we're talking about uneducated and clueless...
On the face of it, the idea of a cake made without flour seems almost absurd. A cake is flour, lots and lots of it; flour would seem to be the very essence of cake, and one made without it about as senseless as, say, ice cream made without dairy products. But while the experience of "tofutti" or "rice dream" does not provide us much ground for optimism, as it turns out it is entirely possible to make a delicious cake that contains no flour whatsoever.
This happens to be a special boon for Jewish bakers, for whom the use of flour is forbidden at Passover time. The ban on flour arises from the injunction in the Book of Exodus (12:15) against eating any leavened products during the seven days of Passover. Jewish law names five grains ? wheat, barley, rye, oats and spelt ? for their capacity to ferment, which leads to leavening. (Matzos are made from wheat flour, of course, but they are carefully watched to guard against fermentation.) As fermentation is forbidden, so too are fermenting agents, which means that yeast is likewise taboo. Historically, flour plus yeast (or baking powder, most brands of which are not kosher for Passover because they contain corn starch) has been the favored path to produce cakes with an appealingly light texture. With these longtime comrades temporarily barred from the premises, the Passover cake-baker must rely instead on other methods. There are two main avenues of approach to the problem, which we might term circumvention and replication.
Circumvention, exemplified by the flourless chocolate cake, dispenses with the whole notion of lightness, replacing it instead with a densely pure dessert experience. This is the ne plus ultra for those who like their chocolate cake scarcely more adulterated than the bars used to make it. For the true chocolate lover, eating a well-made flourless chocolate cake ? all those thickly oozing, sweetly melting forkfuls, which not only taste sensational but also trigger the release of endorphins, the body's own opiates ? is nothing short of a rapturous experience. In recognition of this effect the cakes themselves are often dubbed with names like "Chocolate Bliss" and others of a decidedly more sensual nature.
A very different sort of Passover cake, the sponge cake, seeks not to bypass the lightness of flour but rather to replicate it; for success in this endeavor, it relies on a remarkable quality of egg whites. Unlike egg yolks, which contain lots of fat, egg whites consist almost entirely of water and protein. When the white is beaten, its proteins link together loosely around air bubbles. During baking these bubbles expand and then set, creating an interlocked network of tiny air pockets encased by hardened egg protein (a structure that gives us the name "sponge" cake). The air bubbles impart to the cake a decidedly light and airy texture, and so by this method the cake-maker has replicated the effect of leavening without resorting to either yeast or baking powder.
This is why traditional Passover sponge cakes routinely call for eight or more eggs, which are divided into yolks and whites, to be beaten separately. (Even a tiny amount of stray yolk will prevent egg whites from mounting.) The whites are best when beaten only to the stage known among bakers as "soft" peaks, which means that the little white stalagmites that form when the beater is turned upside down will sag slightly at their points. Egg whites that are beaten further, to what are known as "stiff" peaks, are good for making meringue cookies, but disastrous for sponge cakes, for over-beating causes the whites to dry out; in the oven, the walls of egg white around the air pockets will lose their elasticity and collapse, resulting in a sadly misshapen cake, one far too reminiscent of affliction for any respectable Passover celebration.
The purest form of sponge cake relies entirely on eggs to create the structure of the batter; the whites are beaten separately and are then gently folded into a mixture of beaten egg yolks, sugar, a bit of salt and flavorings such as vanilla, orange juice or grated lemon zest. In most sponge cakes, however, the egg whites are often supplemented with a bit of flour to add greater structure; on Passover, this flour is replaced by matzo cake meal. As cake flour is a more finely ground version of all-purpose flour, so too is matzo cake meal a more finely ground version of matzo meal. (If you can't find matzo cake meal, you can grind regular matzo meal in a food processor or coffee grinder.) However, even this is not as light and delicate as flour, so the matzo is generally rounded out with potato starch, which has a wonderfully soft texture and is kosher for Passover.
The history of cake... I really want some of that dense, flourless Chocolate Bliss right now. ...mmm, chocolate...
