A summer-sunny-day in the garden, together with a slice of a fluffy cheesecake and I am happy. At the moment we are here at the edge of fall and the trees begin to change their appearance – the days of summer are numbered.

Speaking about appearance, I once was in New York and had the opportunity to enjoy a New York Cheesecake. For me, concerning the look, she is the Grande Dame of the cheesecakes, in my humble opinion. Next to her, my German Quark Cheesecake looks like the wild little sister. Sometimes a cracked surface, sometimes collapsed, sometimes too brown – but once you had a slice of it you will never wanna miss it (I hope I don´t talk too big).

But here we go for your, hopefully not last, German Quark Cheesecake:

Ingredients:

For the short pastry:

150 gr. flour (all-purpose)

1 egg

70 gr. butter (hard and cold – right from the fridge)

70 gr. sugar

1 sachet vanilla sugar (2 tsp.)

For the filling:

750 gr. quark (40% fat)

3 eggs (separated egg white and egg yolk)

1 sachet vanilla instant pudding powder (approx. 35 gr.)

120 gr. sugar

1 sachet vanilla sugar (2 tsp.)

1 pinch of salt

Small amount of butter (and if you like bread crumbs) for the spring form pan

Spring form pan (10” diameter)

Pre-heated oven at 180°C/360°F air circulation

Directions:

The short pastry:

For the short pastry give all ingredients (flour, egg, butter, sugar, vanilla sugar) into a bowl. Knead together with your hands until the batter releases as a whole easy from the bowl. Maybe add a bit of extra flour and incorporate until it releases. Wrap into foil and put it in the fridge.

Grease the pan with butter and put it in the fridge, too. If you like, cover the pan with the bread crumbs, this is optional.

The filling:

For the filling, put the quark, the vanilla pudding powder, the sugar, the sachet vanilla sugar and the egg yolks into a bowl. In another bowl put the egg whites and the pinch of salt. With an electric mixer beat the egg whites with the pinch of salt until firm. Then beat the quark mixture until you have a homogenous mixture.

Give half of the beaten egg white into the quark mixture and incorporate softly with a spatula, then add the rest. The batter should keep the fluffy consistence given by the beaten egg whites. Be sure, you don´t have lumps of the beaten egg whites in the filling.

Take out the short pastry and roll out with a rolling pin and a little bit of flour until the pastry is big enough so you can cover the whole spring form pan – raise to the edge.

After covering the pan with the short pastry, fill in the mixture and put it into the pre-heated oven for 45 minutes at 180°C/360°F air circulation. As always, baking time depends on your oven. I always control the temperature with a separate Thermometer.

If you don´t like the cheesecake too brown, you can put a tinfoil over it after approx. 30 minutes.

For the cool down turn off the oven and open its door and let the cake inside for another 30 minutes. That prevents that the cake collapses too fast. It will lose some height anyway, but not that much. Although it loses some height, it is still fluffy.

After it cooled down completely enjoy it. I hope you all have fun baking this cheesecake.

Pans up.

Yours Robby(licious)