Ingredients for Gourmet Cheesecake

Video Transcript

"Hi. I'm Sara Darley with Sara-Bear's Cheesecakes on behalf of Expert Village. In this segment we are going to talk about the ingredients that you need to make the filling of a plain cheesecake. The first thing you need is cream cheese. You use three blocks, 8 ounce blocks. You can buy them in larger packages if you're going to make many cheesecakes. You can buy a larger quantity or a bigger package and just cut down to the size that you need. But they sell them in 8 ounce packages. So the regular size, 8 ounce package is what you'll need, three of them in each cheesecake. So if we're going to make more than that remember to get more than three. The next thing you'll need is three eggs. And this is going to be the last thing that you add into your cheesecake when mixing it. But remember to have them out and ready or else you might forget about them. Then you'll also need the vanilla. Just a tablespoon of that, but it goes a long way. Before you use the eggs this is the only liquid that's in it so it helps to moisten the cheesecake and mix the ingredients together. And then, of course, you'll need sugar. Three quarters of a cup just to mix it in and make it sweeter 'cause regular cream cheese isn't very sweet. So you want to start by softening your cream cheese. How to do that is to just put it in the microwave the same way you did the butter before. Put it on half power just for about a minute or two just to get it softer. If you don't want to do that and you know that you're going to be making cheesecakes, you can set them out overnight on the counter in their packaging. And that will soften them up to room temperature which is enough for them to be mixed together. So then you want to put the cream cheese into your mixing bowl. Sometimes they're hard to get out of the bowl once you've softened them. Sometimes if your creamed cheese gets a little extra soft on the edges it might be easier to get a spatula to get it out of the bowl so that you make sure that you get all of it. When putting it into the mixer. The next thing you want to put in is the sugar. And with three quarters of a cup, just regular granulated sugar. Again if you want change and use brown sugar, I would do half and half just because brown sugar is a lot more dense than regular white granulated sugar. And then you want to do a tablespoon of vanilla. Sometimes people just guess and put in a squirt of vanilla which is fine but you want to make sure that you get at least a tablespoon for the flavor and the fact that it the only liquid that you put in the end before you put the eggs in."