Passionfruit Cheesecake

I've got a bad habit of buying things in a spur of moment, and why I baked this cake this weekend was because the sour cream i bought 3 weeks ago is expiring on Sunday. These days, sour cream and cream cheese are very costly, and hence i can't bear to waste it.

The last i did a baked cheesecake was at least 5 years ago, using Chef Wan's receipe book. This time round, i didn't follow the exact recipe, i modified quite a fair bit.

When i mixed the egg white to the mixture, i immediately realised my first mistake. I should have mixed the egg white GRADUALLY into cheese mixture, and not pour everything in at one go. As a result, i can't do a proper mix of the egg white into the mixture. Just have to pray that the cake will turn out fine.

After the cake is baked, the surface of the cake is fairly burnt, perhaps i should have put it to bake at the bottom of the oven instead of the middle rack. Anyway, this is still acceptable to me and the surface of the cake didn't crack which seems to be common problem.

My second mistake - it was either my impatience or eagerness to try the cheesecake, and thus i didn't waited for the cake to be chilled for the minimum 4 hours in the fridge. The result - the cake is still soft inside and the cake is rather 'uglily' cut, you can see the picture below.

I tasted the cake whilst cutting it, and thought the texture is still very soft. In my heart, i was thinking 'is this going to be another failure?' Whatever it is, i put back the cut cheesecake into the fridge and tried it about 2 hours later, luckily it didn't taste that bad and since the cake has 'hardened', the texture turns out to be nice and creamy.

Ingredients:

250gm disgestive biscuits
100gm butter, melted
500gm cream cheese
500gm sour cream
360gm sugar
2 tbsp lemon juice
zest of 1 lemon
1 1/2 passionfruit
3 tbsp custard powder
3 tbsp water
a pinch of salt
6 eggs, separated
1 tsp vanilla essence

1. Crush biscuit and add in melted sugar. Press into cake tin.
2. Bake in oven for 15 mins at 170 degree. Let cool.
3. Mix cream cheese, sugar, salt, vanilla essence, lemon juice till smooth.
4. Add in egg yolk, lemon zest and sour cream to (1).
5. In a separate bowl, beat egg white till stiff. Gradually add into cream cream mixture.
6. Pour mixture into cake tin.
7. Bake for 1 hour at 170 degree, in water bath.
8. Let the cake cool down in oven, with door ajar, for at least an hour.
9. Refrigerate for at least 4 hours before serving.