Excellent Cheesecake - recipe

I made this cheesecake for Thanksgiving. I used only a half of each ingredient (baking time was shorter: 25 min.) that was why it came out a bit flat, as I did not have a smaller cake tin. But the cheesecake was quite tasty, which was confirmed by the fact that it disappeared quite quickly. It is different from most of the cheesecakes - it has no crust base.

Yield: 1.8 kg

Ingredients:
Cream cheese: 1kg (or 4 packages of 8 oz cream cheese)
Eggs: 8
Powdered sugar: 2 cups
Unsalted Butter - softened: 25 dag (or two sticks)
Cream of Wheat: (kasza manna) 2 TBS
Potato flour (or cornstarch):  1 TBS
Baking powder: 2 tsp
Lemon extract: 1/3 tsp
Raisins: 10 dag (2/3 cup) - soak them in hot (but not boiling) water for a while - then drain well on a sieve or strainer

Procedure:

• Heat oven to 340 F/170 C.
• Prepare a round baking tin ( mine is 10.5"x3"): grease it lightly and sprinkle with plain bread crumbs, including its sides.
• Mix the cheese, butter and part of the sugar. 
• Separate the egg yolks from the whites.  
• Mix the rest of the sugar with the egg yolks (till the mixture changes its color and becomes whitish. Mix the cream of wheat, potato flour/cornstarch and baking powder in a separate dish. 
• Add the dry ingredients to the cheese/sugar mixture and blend it all well. 
• Add the lemon extract + the drained raisins - mix it all again (not too long) . 
• Beat the egg whites (in a big bowl) with a whisker till they turn into a stiff foam. 
• Add the egg white foam to the rest of the ingredients - mix everything delicately with a spoon (do not use a  blender now!).
• Pour it all into your cake tin.
• Bake the cheesecake for about 50 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. The cheesecake should be light brown then (not too dark). Do not over-bake.

Most often this kind of cheesecake tends to 'sit' after taking it out of the oven - it will get flatter - do not worry about it, it's normal. That is why the sides of the tin should be greased and covered with  bread crumbs (see the beginning of the procedure) to let the cake 'sit' evenly.

 Enjoy!

'Excellent Cheesecake'