Cream Cheese

Cream Cheese -- Cheesecake's Best Friend

As any cheesecake lover knows, it's all in the cheese when it comes to delicious cheesecakes. But what exactly is good cheesecake cheese?

The standards set by the United States Department of Agriculture for cream cheese states that the cream cheese shall have a moisture of not more than 55 percent, milkfat not less than 33 percent total fat (as marketed), pH of the range between 4.4 to 4.9 and salt not more than 1.4 percent. Okay...

How does that help us determine if we have quality cream cheese? It doesn't. It's just the government's way of making sure that what we call cream cheese is cream cheese, else we would have anarchy in the cream cheese world with each company having there own requirements for cream cheese.

So how do we know if we are getting the best quality cream cheese possible? Staying with a national brand or buying from a specialty store is your best bet. Philadelphia Cream Cheese is probably the best known in the US. The key determining factor that I learned for other brands are the fewer the additives the better. Not artificial this or that is necessary. Let's keep it as real as possible.

That being said, you can feel fairly certain that you're getting the best quality by staying with a national brand or buying from specialty stores.   Of course, the taste of your cheesecake is the best indicator of all.

And we shouldn't forget that cream cheese is the newest member of cheeses to be used to make cheesecake. Before cream cheese , cheeses such as Neufchatel Cheese, cottage cheese, ricotta cheese, havarti, quark, twaróg cheese were and still are used to make cheesecakes.

The same care should also go into picking these cheeses as went into picking your cream cheese. Just keep in mind that depending on the type of cheese that you choose determines how your cheesecake is prepared. For instance with ricotta or cottage cheese, some recipes require you to drain the cheese in a colander and then force it through a sieve.

Regardless of whichever cheese you decide to use to bake your cheesecake with, why not bake one today. Your family and friends will adore you for it. Enjoy.

And if by chance you're a cheese fanatic in general you'll love this site.