Recipe: Savta Bracha’s Cheesecake

This recipe is translated from my mom’s recipe collection.

When I say cheesecake, you might imagine a New York Style Cheesecake with its cream cheese base and decadent crumb. This is nothing like that. There is no crumb. The rise in the cake comes from the whisked eggs, folded gently into the mix. This is a light, airy cake. The baking itself is also significant - a single peek in the oven could cause the cake to collapse. Then again, mine always drops. A few people who’ve tried it over the years compared it to Angel Food Cake, but I have never made that and don’t know what it is. Savta Bracha is my mom’s mom. Since moving to the States, I see her once a year for 2-3 days, if I’m lucky. It never feels like enough. I want to make this cake to fill my home with her presence. 

Next is the tricky part: the baking. 

In my mom’s transcription, it only says “bake on medium to low heat until browning.” Since my cake always drops, I researched other recipes that suggest to:

• Bake on 400 for 15 minutes and then lower to 300-320 for an hour.

  Then turn off oven until cool. 

• Another tip I saw online was to cook in the lower third of oven. 

All these suggestions are meant to keep the cake from dropping… Mine drops a lot, every time. It still tastes good, but not at all how I remember it should be. 

Somehow, Savta Bracha always gets a beautiful rise out of her cakes. 

Yes, I ask her. She never gives straight answers when it comes to her cooking - something my mom has inherited. (How do you do this? I don’t know, I just do it)

This recipe might be missing an ingredient. 

I recently talked with my cousin about our grandmother’s baking. She shared a collection of recipes she’d gathered from her (If there is anything else you want to learn from her, now is the time.. she added). Among her recipes, I find the cheesecake.

It is different.

I wasn’t even close. 

I wanted to make this cake to fill my home with her presence.

She’s so far away.