• Six tips to make a perfect homemade cheesecake and as easy as it is exquisite
  • Old-fashioned cheesecake, in less than half an hour

Nothing like remembering, if you are old enough (something good must have, thank goodness), to flee from the temptation to think that something can be forever and ever. In gastronomy, those of us who accumulate years have already experienced a lot of fevers: that of the seafood cocktail, that of the crepes, that of the cheese and pâté boards, that of the queimada, that of the meat to the stone, that of the sirloin with blue cheese (poor sirloin), that of the chupachús de rulo de cabra ...

Well, the last decade has absolutely kidnapped the cheesecake. And not only because the demand for this dessert whose origin there are those who want to go back to Greece has made it a bestseller. Also because there is a kind of planetary pique between kitchens to see who achieves the perfect cheesecake.

What is plaster, exactly? We asked Jon Garcia, aka JonCake, an aeronautical engineer turned tartaquesero engineer whose establishment in Barcelona's Born is a real temple for cheesecake worshippers. He has just published in Planeta Gastro 'JonCake. The most gourmet cheesecakes', where addicts to this dessert will find a topic of conversation for a while. For Garcia, the perfect cheesecake has to be "toasted, creamy but not liquid, tasty (especially cheese-flavored), and with a crunchy base." Jon's word, we praise you, saint.

In his book, Jon Garcia helps us to better situate the cake and its genealogy. The cake, he explains, has its origin "in the New York cheesecake, with a biscuit base, or if we go back a little further, in the German quark cheesecake, also with a biscuit base". As for the Basque cheesecake, which today is known around the world as Basque burnt cheesecake, it is a fluid or creamy cheesecake. "In La Viña de San Sebastián they prepare it without a biscuit base, considering that in this way it is lighter and softer. However, the Zuberoa cheesecake does incorporate biscuit, in this case in the form of sablée dough, which gives it a crunchy touch and, perhaps, more buttery flavor, "says the expert.

Basque cheesecake, winner

With biscuit or without biscuit, the Basque is the cheesecake that today governs the interest of the most exquisite palates and that of the participants in the race for being the number one. What does this madness come to? And how long will we have to read that this or that cheesecake is the best in Madrid or Marbella or Tatooine? "I could not say where so much passion comes from, although it is true that it is a very instagrammable and easy to make dessert (you can find La Viña cake even in Turkey)," explains Jon García; "Although I think the boom will be short-lived." Will he die of success or of his multiple failures? Because according to JonCake, "you see real aberrations: inedible cakes, excess sugar, jams and pre-purchased syrups ...".

As for the race for the best cheesecake, Jon García interprets that "there are many restaurants with good, very good and fantastic cheesecakes (probably in Madrid it is even more on everyone's lips, in Barcelona there is not so much euphoria), although I do not think there is that "the best cheesecake". Many have told us that ours seems the best; others, that it is good but that there are better, and there are also those who did not like it. Who decides what's best? In the end, what matters is that the customer wants to repeat, come back and recommend it."

In the temples of cheesecake

Although the truth is that, in the end, juries of competitions, specialized press and public place crowns (we love to crown, listen). And they do it, for example, on the cakes of Kava Marbella, Tatel in Madrid, La Viña in San Sebastian, JonCake himself in Barcelona ... In addition, manifestly or tacitly, new contenders periodically join this fight. One of the last to arrive has been Fanatic, a Madrid workshop that boasts of making a cheesecake "creamy, without stories, as it should be".

Fanatic was born, explain its managers, "from the passion of two brothers for confectionery", two brothers determined to make "the best cheesecake in Madrid". Theirs, they boast, "is a cake with a perfect balance of cheese mixture, point of sweetness, mellowness and a golden Maria biscuit base that makes all audiences like". Pure alchemy, which they synthesize in three proposals -the Dulzona, the Shy and Kinder- and that Jon García makes encyclopedic in his book with his own and others' proposals; from his homage to the Pedroche cheesecake to the French tourteau fromager, the white chocolate and pistachios, the chocolate and smoked chili peppers... With this deployment we can have cheesecake for a while.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

Learn more