Orange cheesecake Austrian style

(cheese cake without the marmalade topping)

Austrian? I really don’t know but that’s how I think about this one.  At one time I had a lovely topfen kuchen(at least that’s what I think it was called?) in Vienna and went looking for a similar one ever since. The one I had was encased in a filo dough and the filling had a loose and at the same time creamy mouthfeel. A quest.

I was very pleasantly surprised by this recipe from Michel Roux, nice nice nice! That one day in September (another birthday party) I baked two….  guests had a choice of this cheese cake an apple/peach coffee cake, brownies and chocolate cake. This one and the apple peach coffee cake were polished off completely, people were getting seconds (and thirds!).

Orange Cheese cake
(Michel Roux: Pastry sweet and savoury)

Dough:
125 gr ap flour
100 gr chilled butter, diced
50 gr confectioners sugar
pinch of salt
1 egg yolk

22cm/24 cm round tart pan, 4 cm high, sprayed or lightly buttered
parchment paper and beans for blind baking
Oven temp: 170C for baking the shell / 140C for baking the cake

In a food processer: combine and mix all ingredients and stop just when the dough starts to ball up. Take it out and knead 3 or 4 times quickly with your hands to make a rather smooth dough ball. Wrap in plastic and chill in the fridge for at least 1 hours.

When you are ready to bake take the dough out of the fridge and proceed to roll it out on a lightly floured work surface. You’ll need a circle that fits your 22cm tart pan. (Dough needs to go on the bottom and up on the rim). When shaped place it back into the fridge to thoroughly chill again (at least 20 minutes).

Poke the crust with a fork and line with parchment paper. Pour the raw beans on the paper, bake blind for 30 minutes. Then carefully remove the beans and the paper (optional: you can also brush with a little egg white now to provide an anti-soggy layer) and put the crust back in the oven (“naked”) for another 5 minutes. Get it out and leave to cool on your counter.
Lower the oven temperature and in the meantime prepare your filling:

Filling:
4 oranges (juice and zest) (I ended up using around 1/2 cup of juice)
350 gr fromage frais*
350 gr quark**
150 gr sour cream
175 gr fine granulated sugar
4 eggs

Topping:
6 tbs orange marmalade

Sieve the juice of the 4 oranges. Using a spatula mix fromage frais, quark, sour cream and sugar thoroughly. Whisk the eggs frothy and fold them into the cheese mixture. Add orange juice and zest and stir smooth.

Pour the filling on your base and bake for 1.1/2 hour in a preheated oven: 140C/290F. When it’s properly baked a toothpick should come out clean. Leave the cake in the form to cool for 20 minutes then remove the outer ring and let cool completely. Chill until use.

For the topping: lightly warm the marmalade to a spreading consistency and use the back of a spoon to distribute evenly over the surface of the cake. Wait a couple of minutes to let the jam firm up again and serve.

(a little sugar on the bottom prior to prebaking the crust, another idea is to brush the pre-baked crust with egg white)

* fromage frais? I bought a tub that said fromage frais..but to be honest I think that was just quark, I couldn’t distinguish between this and a regular quark. Consistency of the one I bought was like very thick yoghurt, this one had 3.2 %fat. Next time I find myself in France I’ll check and see what fromage frais is like there. You might Google it and find confusion like I did.

**quark? I used a full fat one, 10% fat. Consistency again of very thick yoghurt, like Greek yoghurt for instance.

{I was afraid that although the recipe mentioned fromage frais I should have bought cream cheese so to make sure the filling wouldn’t go runny on me I added 1 TBS of each custard powder and cornstarch. Just making sure…. but I think it wasn’t really necessary)