Basque-esque Cheesecake Tart
And a peek inside my recipe development process
It all started with some sour cherries. Sour cherries that I painstakingly pitted last summer and carefully froze. I had nothing in particular that I wanted to do with them, it’s just the kind of thing I like to squirrel away, ostensibly to brighten a winter day when there isn’t much exciting fruit to play with. I had left them in my freezer in NYC (close to the Union Square Greenmarket where I bought them), and when I saw them the other day, I thought, “Wow, I’d better use these, it’s almost sour cherry season again!” Naturally, my first thought was to make a galette, which is one of my top go-to fruit desserts, but I wondered if there wasn’t something I could add to give it a little more pizzazz. I thought, “Hmmm, what about a cream cheese filling?” That’s always good with fruit, especially cherries. Especially sour cherries.
Let’s pause this tale for a moment to talk about sour cherries. Everyone knows and has access to sweet cherries. I love them for snacking, especially the big, almost black ones that are hard and have that snap to them. They aren’t my favorite for baking though, and aren’t really best suited for that. If you buy a can of cherry pie filling, it’s made with sour, aka tart, cherries. Sour cherries are not so good for eating fresh, because of their lack of sweetness, but the juiciness and pure cherry flavor is what makes them the best choice for the classic cherry pie (and myriad other fruit desserts). It’s understandable that most of the sour cherries grown are made into canned pie filling. Their season is extremely short and they don’t travel well, but canned filling is rather gloopy, and probably too sweet. I’ve never actually tasted it. OK, sometimes I’m a food snob.
That leaves us sour cherry lovers to nab them when we see them, or hunt them down in the freezer section of a grocery or health food store (they do exist! Look for the words “Tart Cherries”). A quick online search shows me plenty of brands and sources, including Costco. So this is a “try your luck” kind of item. Fresh sour cherries came onto my radar when I was first working for Martha Stewart back in the early 90s. We spent a lot of days working on her mini-farm on Turkey Hill Road in Westport, CT. She had her own cherry trees, of course, and was saying the cherries needed to be picked and frozen. I don’t recall doing that task — I’m sure I had my hands full doing something else — but from that moment on, I knew these were a fruit to be savored.
Let’s get back to the evolution of this recipe, which incidentally can also be made with blueberries if you don’t have sour cherries handy. I wondered if I could use a Basque cheesecake batter (which is actually just cheesecake batter — it’s the way you bake it, i.e., at a high temperature and for a shorter time, that makes a Basque cheesecake a Basque cheesecake). I am rather enamored of the almost burnt — let’s call it burnished — top you get from baking at 475 degrees.
As soon as I made a batch of the filling, I realized it would be way too runny to contain in an unstructured galette, so I shifted gears to a more traditional tart with an edge to contain the filling. I first made individual-sized tarts, and they were great! My husband, Steve, and I couldn’t stop nibbling at them, and resorted to freezing what was left for another day so we would stop.
The high cooking temperature resulted in the look I was after — dark brown and studded occasionally with orbs of fruit. However, I was wanting the center to stay creamy like a Basque cheesecake, and at the depth of the individual tarts (less than an inch) it got cooked through quickly. They are still DELICIOUS though, and best warm or at room temperature, unlike the dessert it emulates, which needs to be chilled in order to set up and be sliceable. So these mini tarts are better for instant gratification.
So next I wondered if a larger tart would remain a bit creamier in the center. It stands to reason that it takes longer for the heat to reach the center of a 9-ish-inch tart than a 4-inch, right? Fortunately, yes, it did remain a bit creamier in the center. It also may be more doable for you. As much as I love individual desserts, I know from experience that many of you probably have a 9-inch tart pan with a removable bottom, but you may not have 4 individual tart molds of the same size (though if you do, read my notes below the recipe!).
I wondered how the dough would do at such a high baking temperature, and I am happy to report that it worked really, really well! You don’t have to blind-bake this shell because the temp is high enough to ensure the dough gets properly cooked. So properly cooked that it takes on the alluring crunch and shattering crispness of a croissant. There is also something clafoutis-like about this mashup of a dessert, with the fruit just studding the creamy filling, rather than dominating it.
I hope you’ll give this very delicious tart a try. It’s perfect for traveling, as it’s quite sturdy, and just perfect for a Mother’s Day brunch, a dinner party, or just to have around!
