Ingredients:
600g cream cheese (Philadelphia type)
200g sugar
4 eggs
300ml full-fat liquid cream (35% fat)
20g flour
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Preheat the oven to 210°C.
Beat the cream cheese with the sugar until the mixture is smooth.
Add the eggs one by one, mixing well between each addition.
Add the liquid cream, flour and vanilla, then mix until you obtain a smooth dough.
Pour the mixture into a mold lined with baking paper.
Bake for 40 to 45 minutes until the top is golden brown and burnt. Leave to cool before serving.
History of Basque Burnt Cheesecake:
La Viña opened its doors in 1959, founded by Eladio Rivera, his brother Antonio, and their wives, Carmen Jiménez and Conchi Hernáez. Eladio’s son Santi started working in the bar from a young age. A passionate, self-taught cook, he was spurred on by advice from his chef friends and the occasional cooking course.
“On my days off, I would come to work. Everything would be empty, and I could work and do tests in the kitchen,” Santi says. “Pintxos, dishes for the restaurant… among these tests, I tested the cheesecake and would make it every now and then, until people started asking for it more and more.”
Cheesecake wasn’t a traditional Basque dish, but this was the late 1980s and Santi was filled with ideas from courses he’d attended further afield, in places such as Paris. Cream cheese and other ‘modern’ food items were just reaching Spain for the first time as it opened up to the global economy, and Santi loved to experiment.
The cheesecake was served for years, but it was only when the trend for pintxo tours took off in the 2000s, that foreigners en masse began to discover La Viña’s cheesecake, which lines the shelves of the bar, still in springform tins, with singed parchment paper poking out the top. Instagram and Tripadvisor have boosted the profile further, and Santi has even shared the recipe online — there are no trade secrets here.
“Basque chefs drafted the statutes of Basque Cuisine, and one of them was that cuisine should be transmitted to the general public for all to enjoy,” he says. “I live by that statute. There always a 15% that can’t be taught — not because you don’t want to, but because it’s in the hands of the person making the dessert.”
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