I am so excited to bring you my first post in a brand new series, called “Cake Fails”. My recipe for jiggly cheesecake has been quite the battle the last few weeks and I thought of just scrapping it each time but then I thought, “I could turn this into a learning experience for myself as well as you guys”. So without further a due here are my blunders in whipping it up.
The photo on the left is what a jiggly cheesecake should look like, next to that is my 1st attempt, followed by my second attempt. I unfortunately don’t have a picture of my third attempt. so on the end is my 4th attempt.
Why Am I Posting This
I never wanted to be one of those bloggers that just posts perfect little recipes and never shows a mistake. If I did, I would be going against everything that Clumsy Cakes stands for. When I started this blog my main goals were to share my love of baking and being creative, teaching people how to bake and showing people that it doesn’t have to look perfect to be perfect. And that’s why I decided to post this. Mistakes are one of our best teachers. Sometimes just knowing what to do right isn’t enough. A lot of the time it’s helpful to see what you are not supposed to do, and why.
What I Did Wrong In Whipping It Up
I have attempted this recipe 4 times now. I have had many things go wrong and made many mistakes over this time. Here are the problems that I had in whipping it up.
Eggs
-My first attempt was very short lived. This recipe uses a whole dozen eggs plus, separated. If you aren’t careful and any amount of egg yolks get in the whites there is no fixing it, you have to just start over. The egg whites will not whip up right. I went threw a whole dozen eggs. Game Over. Respect the eggs! Cradle them like a new born baby!
Attempt #2 went a little better in that I actually got a cake out of it. But I over beat the egg whites. This is a very crucial part. Below are pictures and descriptions of egg whites at every stage of whipping.
Soft Peaks
– You will reach the soft peak stage at about 5 minutes of whipping. It will be white, thick and glossy but when you take the beater out of the eggs, there will be a peak but it will fall back onto the beater like this:
Stiff Peak
You will get stiff peaks at about 10 minutes of beating. I will be white, thick and glossy and when you take the beaters out of the bowl you will see peaks that stick straight up like this. When it it ready you should be able to hold the bowl over your head and nothing comes out.
Over Beaten Egg Whites
You will notice your egg whites are getting over beaten when they are no longer glossy and don’t really makes a peak. They will kind of resemble Styrofoam, like this:
I accidentally got to the over beaten stage when I was trying to get to the stiff peak stage. This is so easy to do. Just taking your eyes off of it for 1 minute can lead to disaster, Which I did. I was prepping another part of the recipe while the eggs were whipping.
Take 2 – I did nothing else but watch my eggs like a hawk and still they got over beaten. Also I got some egg whites pulled on the bottom that were unbeaten. I think this is due to using a stand mixer instead of a hand mixer. The stand mixer whisk for whatever reason doesn’t reach to the very bottom of the bowl. Also I am going to use cream of tarter in my next attempt. This stabilizes the egg whites and helps them not get over beaten.
Now why is this important?
If you over whip your whites, for one they won’t fold in right and you will not get a smooth mixture so you will not get that silky smooth top that jiggly cheesecake has. Also, if the eggs are over beaten, you won’t get the height and the jiggle that a jiggly cheesecake is known for. Mine didn’t jiggle at all.
Why do my egg whites keep separating
I had a problem in all my attempts so far where all of the egg whites wouldn’t beat up. I would think they were then in the bottom I found about 2 eggs worth of unbeaten egg white. I at first thought that my stand mixer whisk was not reaching to the bottom of the bowl. So I tried a hand mixer and had the same result.
I looked it up and found so much great information that I have linked below. One being that even if you do everything right, eggs deflate quickly but sugar can stabilize them. For attempts 1-3, I was dividing the sugar between the whites and the yolks. For the 4th attempt, I put the full 2/3 of a cup of sugar in the whites. I should clarify. When I say “put” I gently sprinkled it in to the whites while they were beating. Putting the sugar in all at once will deflate you whites. I also put in some cream of tarter to prevent over whipping. My hypothesis is that this was not enough sugar because I still got that pool of egg white at the bottom of the bowl. So I will try a full cup next time. I also was beating the egg whites up at the beginning of the recipe, letting them sit while I did the rest of the recipe and folding them in last. In light of the new information that I learned, that might be too long to sit and they are coming un whipped. So for my 5th attempt I will do everything for the recipe first and then whip the egg whites and fold them in. No time given for deflating.
The Taste
A few things went wrong with the taste that I am going to change for the final product. Cheesecake is just a baked custard. So it’s primarily made up of eggs. For my typical cheesecakes they are chilled before you eat them so they don’t taste like eggs, but because this is served warm it tastes extremely eggy. To counteract this, I added a Tbsp of Lemon juice in my second attempt but that wasn’t enough Then I did 1 1/2 TBSP for the third attempt. Still not enough. This last time I did 2. Perfect.
The other problem with the taste that I found was that this did not taste like cheesecake at all. The original recipe only had a half a block of cream. So I tried 1 1/2 on the next attempt. That was a little too much. Then I tried just one. Perfect.
Bake Time
One of the major problems I had every time I tried this was the cook time. I baked it at 320 degrees for 25 minutes and then turned it down to 280 degrees and cooked it for an additional 55 minutes the first time and an additional 65 minutes the second time. The third had an additional 75 minutes after the 25 minutes and the the fourth had 85 minutes. All underdone. But this time it was so close. Maybe another 10-20 minutes.
I think next time I will increase the temperature. I will leave it at 320 degrees for the first 25 minutes and then decrease the temperature to 300 for the rest of the time. Between 55 to 65 minutes
I will be working on this recipe to get it perfect and it will hopefully be out in the coming weeks. This jiggly cheesecake has won 4 battles so far (5 if count the first one) but it will not win the war. I hope you enjoyed this post and I hope it helps you to see my mistakes. I also hope this helps you not to be afraid to make mistakes. Mistakes are how we learn. The worst that can happen is it’s a total fail but you learn from it and you know how to do it next time. I think it is so fun to learn how things work in baking and why. Laugh at yourself, have fun and I will see you next time.
Egg Research – cooking.stackexchange.com/…/why-do-my-egg-whites-seporate-after-whipping
If you have any questions or comments please don’t hesitate to leave a comment down below, message me on instagram, facebook or leave me an email.
I love that you show the mistakes that can happen with baking. I’ve been baking for a long time but make mistakes all the time. My husband and I tell our kids that mistakes have to be made sometimes in order to learn to improve or learn other ways to make something.
This is excellent!
exactly! It’s also helpful to learn that mistakes will happen and not to be totally blind sided if it does. Just work the problem. It is frustrating though but no success ever came without failure.
Ah yes, the process of learning the art of eggs! Plenty of fails have happened over here too!
oh yes. and its always when you think “no big deal. I’m just gonna separate some eggs” when you screw up. When you are on guard it all goes fine. Never let you hard down with eggs.
I think mistakes are important because that is how we learn and grow. Thanks for sharing!
you’re so welsome
Enjoyed reading about common mistakes and how to avoid them. I used to overbeat my egg whites.
I run into that problem a lot
What a brave soul sharing your baking fail. I look forward to seeing your progression to success!
thank you so much. I have a feeling next time is gonna be the one!
I love this! I’m so glad you showed the different stages of the beaten eggs! I’ve always wondering if I over beat them lol ????
It is sometimes so hard to tell. I’m so glad it helped.
Love the idea of sharing cake fails so other cooks can learn what to look out for! Eggs are often my problem too!
thank you so much. I was really worried about the response to this so I’m so glad you like it.
My full respect for you for this post as for most readers it looks easy to make a recipe but for us its not the first time we get it right. There are trial and error methods which we need to adapt to.
Thanks for sharing this post
you’re so welcome! I think it’s so important to show that mistakes are ok and you don’t have to give up if you don’t get it right the first time. Just make some adjustments and try again.
Thanks for sharing all you great tips & mistakes!
We all learn from our mistakes, next go round you’ve got this and I can’t wait to see the results!
thank you so much! i hope so!
I so enjoy this level of detail when trying a baked recipe for the first time.Thanks for taking so much trouble and care.
you are so welcome! I think that’s important to get as much information as you can when something is really intricate!
We all learn from our mistakes, thank you for sharing where one could go wrong.
We absolutely do! It’s just as helpful to know what not to do as it is to know what you should do.
It great to learn from our mistakes than cry over them. I really appreciate that you made it a post so others will learn from it too.
thank you! I really want this blog to be as much of a help to you all as it can. so if this helps i’m happy to do it.