Japanese Cheesecake (日式乳酪蛋糕)

The Japanese Cheesecake is light and cotton soft, people will love it even if they do not like cheese at all. Making it is a little bit tricky. The successful Japanese cheesecake should have a nice dome on top that is smooth and not cracked, with a velvet soft texture. It takes a lot of trials and errors. Here is the best reading about how to make Japanese Cheesecake successfully. For the recipe, I adapted from Diana's Desert since a block of cream cheese is 8 oz in America.

Ingredients

Cream cheese - 1 block, 8 oz
Milk - 1/2 cup
Butter - 1/4 cup
Egg - 6
Cake flour - 60 g
Corn starch - 20 g

Lemon juice - 1 TBSP

Granulated sugar - 140 g
Cream of tartar  - 1/4 tsp(optional)

Steps

1. Separate the eggs into egg whites and egg yolks.
2. Melt cream cheese, butter and milk over a double boiler. Cool the mixture, then fold in the flour, the cornflour, egg yolks, lemon juice and mix well. 

3. Whisk egg whites with cream of tartar, and sugar until soft peaks form.

4. Take 1/3 meringue and fold into the cheese mixture, then fold in another 1/3 of meringue. After incorporated, pour the batter back to the remaining 1/3 meringue and fold gently.
5. Well grease a 10" cake pan, and line the bottom with parchment paper. Pour the batter in cake pan. Or prepare two 6" cake pan, and split the batter. 

6. Bake the cheesecake is tricky. My current procedure is to split the cake into two 6" cake pan, each of sit in a water bath with a 9" cake pan. 
a. Preheat the oven to 390°F. Place a pan with hot water a the bottom most shelf. Bake for 15 minutes. 
b. Adjust oven temperature to 320°F, bake for 12 minutes.
c. Turn off oven, bake for 20 minute. 

d. Open the door of the oven slightly, wait for 10 mins.

e. Take out the cake, and set it top down on a parchment paper to cool down

7. Wrap the cake and put in refrigerator for 4+ hours before serve.