No-Bake Oreo Cheesecake

August 18, 2016November 4, 2022273 Views 0 Comments

There’re only 4 ingredients in my no-bake cheesecake filling: yogurt, cream cheese, icing sugar, and gelatine.

There’s no cream in the recipe. Why not?

Because cream cheese plus cream is too heavy for the hot, humid weather in Singapore.

Instead of cream, I use natural yogurt. It’s creamy but it has less than 10% of the fat in cream.

Natural yogurt is quite sour. A fair bit of sugar is needed to balance the sourness. I use icing sugar because it melts easily.

Cheesecake filling made without whipped cream needs some gelatine. There should be just enough to set the liquid ingredients. Too much gelatine makes the filling lose its creaminess and turn into pudding.

The ingredients’ consistency also affects how well the filling sets. My recipe uses set yogurt. Thin, pourable yogurt would make the filling too soft.

Cream cheese turns watery when it’s mixed too much. The change is irreversible.

Watery cream cheese would make the filling less firm. Overmixing can happen in seconds if you use a food processor. But it’s unlikely if you mix manually.

There’re two types of cream cheese: block and spreadable. Block is firmer. Spreadable is softer. This recipe works with block cream cheese. It’s mixed till smooth without losing its firm consistency.

There’re broken Oreo pieces in my cheesecake. I scatter the cookies between 3 layers of cream cheese mixture.

The cream cheese mixture should be thick enough to stop the cookies from sinking. But it may not be if the weather is hot, or if the cream cheese is overmixed.

What to do if the mixture is too thin? Chill it before assembling the cheesecake. After it cools down in the fridge, it thickens up nicely.

What’s the right consistency? If the cream cheese mixture is level – like water – after it’s poured, it’s too thin. If it isn’t level, but it is after you shake it, that’s just right.

There’re air bubbles in the cream cheese mixture. They rise to the surface and leave pockmarks on the cake when the consistency is too thin. That’s another reason for getting the cream cheese mixture thick.

Cheesecake crust is made with cookie crumbs and butter. Some people melt their butter before whizzing it with cookies in a food processor. That’s not necessary at all. Food processors can pulverise solid butter in seconds. Melt the butter only if you’re crushing and mixing by hand.

Using a food processor speeds things up. Doing everything manually, as I show in my video, takes longer but it’s hardly hard labour. I don’t break a sweat making cheesecake by hand.

How to Substitute Gelatine Leaves with Gelatine Powder

All gelatines have a Bloom number to indicate their gel strength, clarity and taste. Gelatines with a low number give a softer set, they’re murky, and they taste awful. Those with a high number give a firmer set. And they’re almost transparent, and almost tasteless.

The amount of gelatine powder for replacing 3 gelatine leaves varies with the powder’s Bloom number:

Bloom 125-155: 9.9 g (3 tsp)
Bloom 160-180: 7.5 g (21/3 tsp)
Bloom 190-225: 6.0 g (13/4 tsp)
Bloom 235-265: 5.1 g (11/2 tsp)

To bloom gelatine powder, put it in a bowl and sprinkle with just enough room temperature water to wet it thoroughly. The powder to water ratio is 1:3 by weight, or 1:2 by volume. Once wet, the gelatine powder may be melted in a hot water bath, as for gelatine leaves in the recipe below.