Hidden Berry Cream Cheese Torte

So as I wrote yesterday, my oven died in the middle of making the apple fritter muffins. Luckily, I had already made this cheese torte so I would have something to post today! I’ve tried to be so consistent with my Tuesdays with Dorie postings, and I didn’t want to miss a week. The new oven is coming, but I won’t be baking for at least the next week. Thankfully I can bake the pie for Thanksgiving at my parent’s house.

This week for Tuesdays with Dorie, we got a rewind. That means I could pick any recipe. I was pretty excited to consider all of my choices and I decided on picking the Hidden Berry Cream Cheese Torte. I hadn’t realized it until now, but this was the second recipe ever chosen for Tuesdays with Dorie. It looked so good and I wanted to seasonalize it and use cranberry chutney for the jam. It was a really good choice!

This torte contains cottage cheese, which I hate so much that I can’t even look at it, but you process it so much that it was ok. Once baked, it seems just like cheesecake, so unless you tell someone about the cottage cheese they’ll never know. The cranberry chutney is slightly tart, which I thought paired will with the innate tanginess of the cream cheese filling. This was a really great recipe! As it was a rewind week, all the bakers are posting different things this week. Make sure you check out the Tuesdays with Dorie site and check out all of the recipes from this week.

Hidden Berry Cream Cheese Torte

1-3/4 cup flour
½ cup sugar
¼ teaspoon salt
12 tablespoons butter, cut in small pieces and chilled
2 egg yolks
1 teaspoon vanilla

1/3 cup thick berry or cherry jam
9 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
1 cup cottage cheese, room temperature
¾ cup sugar
¼ teaspoon salt
Pinch of cinnamon
Pinch of nutmeg
2 eggs
Powdered sugar

Butter a 9” springform pan, dust the inside with flour and tap out the excess. Place on a baking sheet lined with a silicone baking mat.

Make the crust: put the flour, sugar, and salt in a food processor and pulse just to blend. Toss in the pieces of butter and pulse until the mixture resembles coarse meal. Stir the egg yolks and vanilla together with a fork, and, still pulsing the machine, add them and continue to pulse until the dough comes together in clumps Don’t allow the dough to form a ball. Press the dough into the prepared pan. The dough should come about 1-1/2 inches up the sides of the springform. Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.

Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Fit a piece of buttered foil against the crust, covering it completely. Fill the crust lightly with rice, dried beans, or pie weights. Bake for 20 minutes, then carefully remove the foil and bake for another 5 minutes or so—you don’t want the crust to get too brown. Transfer to a rack to cool while you make the filling. Lower the temperature to 350 degrees.

Stir the jam and spread it over the bottom of the crust. It’s ok to do this while the crust is still warm.

Put the cream cheese and cottage cheese into the good processor and process, scraping down the sides of the bowl a few times, for 2 minutes, until you’ve got a smooth, satiny mix. Add the sugar, salt, and spices and process for another 30 seconds. With the machine running, add the eggs and process, scraping the bowl as needed, for a final minute. Pour the filling over the jam.

Bake the cake for 60 to 70 minutes, or until the filling is uniformly puffed and no longer jiggly. Gently transfer the springform pan to a cooling rack and allow the torte to cool to room temperature, during which time the filling will collapse into a thin, elegant layer.

Run a blunt knife between the crust and the sides of the pan, then open and remove the sides of the springform. If the sides of the crust extend above the filling and you don’t like this look, very gently saw off the excess crust using a serrated knife. Chill the torte before serving and, if you’d like, dust the top with powdered sugar.

Recipe from Baking from My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, pages 240-241