Every time I travel to Belarus – I am always struck by how wonderful the food is and of course the dairy products are utterly delicious with all the choices of cottage cheeses, sour cream varieties (smirtana), curd cheese (twarog) and regular cheeses. I have sampled unbelievable syrniki pancakes and cream cheese pancakes with dollops of sour cream on everything….simply divine! Sigh!
So here for Shavuot – we bring you an authentic Belarusian cheesecake recipe!
This is how the recipe was written – so you will need to gauge the correct size of your baking dish..all part of the fun.
Bon appétit!
Debra Brunner, CEO
Ingredients
Baking powder – 1 tsp.
Corn starch – 1 tsp.
Caster sugar – 3 tbsp.
Cottage cheese – 500g
2 eggs
Butter – 15g (for buttering the baking dish)
For the top: Berries/fruits, sour cream and icing sugar
Instructions
1) Take cottage cheese (you can take any fat content). Put it in a bowl. And try to smash all the lumps with a blender.
2) Add all the other ingredients: eggs, sugar, baking powder and starch into the bowl.
3) Mix the ingredients with a blender.
4) Pour the mixture into a buttered baking dish (it should not be large in diameter) and put it in the oven pre- heated to 180-200 °C for at least 35 minutes.
5) Turn off the oven but the cheesecake should be left in the oven so that there is no sudden change in temperature. 15-20 minutes will be enough time while the oven is cooling.
6) Remove the cheesecake from the oven and once the cheesecake has cooled completely, you can garnish the top with sour cream, berries/fruits and icing sugar.
Recipe thanks to Nadezhda Mayorova and you can find more recipes from her here.