West Ukrainian Cheese Cake
August 13th, 2011 in Desserts by Julia Volhina
Total cooking time: 1h 30min
This cake is similar to the cheese cakes so popular in west part of the globe. However this one is made from quark cheese (fresh farmers cheese), not from the cream cheese.
It is very popular dessert treat in West Ukraine. It is often being made with raisins, however I don’t like raisins, so I am doing it without any filling. Just add them if you like.
During the baking this cake will rise in the oven, and then it will fall down a bit while colling down. That i s ok, just important not to open oven while baking or cooling.
To make up for a bit uneven shape, you can cut uneven sides off before serving it.
Ingredients:
- 1.5lb of fresh farmers cheese (quark)
- 4 eggs
- 3.5oz of butter
- 3/4 cup of sugar
- 2 tablespoons of semolina flour + a bit for dusting the baking pan
- Juice of half of small lemon
- 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla sugar
How to prepare, step-by-step:
-
Prepare ingredients:
West Ukrainian Cheese Cake (Syrnyk) Recipe: Step 1 -
Turn on oven on 375F to warm it up. Melt butter in a bowl (I used microwave):
West Ukrainian Cheese Cake (Syrnyk) Recipe: Step 2 -
Grease baking pan with some of the butter:
West Ukrainian Cheese Cake (Syrnyk) Recipe: Step 3 -
Dust baking pan with semolina flour:
West Ukrainian Cheese Cake (Syrnyk) Recipe: Step 4 -
Separate egg whites from egg yolks, put whites into the mixer bowl:
West Ukrainian Cheese Cake (Syrnyk) Recipe: Step 5 -
And yolks into the separate bowl:
West Ukrainian Cheese Cake (Syrnyk) Recipe: Step 6 -
Add half of the sugar to the bowl with yolks and mix it with yolks using spoon:
West Ukrainian Cheese Cake (Syrnyk) Recipe: Step 7 -
Start beating egg whites with white attachment, once doubled in volume add rest of the sugar, portion by portion, then continue to beat until foam is thick and stable:
West Ukrainian Cheese Cake (Syrnyk) Recipe: Step 8 -
While whites are beating blend farmers cheese until homogeneous (I use deep bowl and hand blender, but you can use food processor for this and several next steps):
West Ukrainian Cheese Cake (Syrnyk) Recipe: Step 9 -
Add egg yolks and sugar mix:
West Ukrainian Cheese Cake (Syrnyk) Recipe: Step 10 -
And melted butter:
West Ukrainian Cheese Cake (Syrnyk) Recipe: Step 11 -
Mix good:
West Ukrainian Cheese Cake (Syrnyk) Recipe: Step 12 -
Squeeze juice of one lemon in:
West Ukrainian Cheese Cake (Syrnyk) Recipe: Step 13 -
Add vanilla sugar:
West Ukrainian Cheese Cake (Syrnyk) Recipe: Step 14 -
And 2 table spoons of semolina flour and mix:
West Ukrainian Cheese Cake (Syrnyk) Recipe: Step 15 -
Beaten egg whites should look like this by now:
West Ukrainian Cheese Cake (Syrnyk) Recipe: Step 16 -
Carefully mix beaten whites into the cheese batter with vertical slicing movements, portion by portion:
West Ukrainian Cheese Cake (Syrnyk) Recipe: Step 17 -
Work through the rest of the beaten whites and you will get tender fluffy cheese batter like this:
West Ukrainian Cheese Cake (Syrnyk) Recipe: Step 18 -
Carefully move batter to the baking pan:
West Ukrainian Cheese Cake (Syrnyk) Recipe: Step 19 -
And even it up with a spatula:
West Ukrainian Cheese Cake (Syrnyk) Recipe: Step 20 -
Then put to the oven warmed up to 375F for 15 mins, then turn temperature to 350F and continue baking for 45 mins more:
West Ukrainian Cheese Cake (Syrnyk) Recipe: Step 21 -
Then turn the heat off and let cake cool down till room temperature inside the oven, don’t open the oven; once cooled remove cake from the baking pan and put to the fridge (over night sounds good);
West Ukrainian Cheese Cake (Syrnyk) Recipe: Step 22 -
Next morning cake is ready, slice it up:
West Ukrainian Cheese Cake (Syrnyk) Recipe: Step 23 -
And serve for breakfast or dessert with coffee and tea:
West Ukrainian Cheese Cake (Syrnyk) Recipe: Step 24
Hi,
Can you please write how many cups or butter sticks is in 3.5 oz butter?
Thanks
Sorry for delay with reply: one US stick of butter is 4oz, so 3.5oz would be 7/8 of a stick or about that.
Thank you very much for your help.
Thank you very much for the recipe. It turned out really good. Very delicious cheesecake. My husband approved!:)))))
Thanks!
Can this be frozen? I have Chernobyl children arriving in a couple of weeks and so would like to prepare some dishes they will be familiar with before they come and just get them put of the freezer when I need the. Is that possible with this recipe?
I never tried, but I have feeling it should be possible.
What size is the pan?
Mine is 5″ x 9″ x 3″, but other configuration will work too
Thank you for sharing that recipe. I love Ukrainian desserts. Can you give me a rough idea of how many cups 1.5lb make?
The volume would depend on consistency of the cheese, I am afraid. But you can see how much cheese I used for that exact cake on first picture in the recipe (“Prepare ingredients” step).
A ok yes i know what that is..Thanks
OH my this looks super yummy… Cannot wait to try it.. Just made some tvorog and now i need to find what to do with it… quick question? what is semolina flour? will regular baking flour work for this?
Semolina flour is durum wheat flour, in russian it is called “manka” or “mannaya krupa”; I would suggest you to try find it rather than replacing with regular baking flour. Potato starch may work as substitute, but semolina is better.
In step 10, when you say “add egg yolk and sugar mix” and also the addition of the other ingredients in subsequent steps, are they being added to the egg whites? And afterwards, it’s that egg white mix with the rest of the ingredients which you add to the cheese batter? Sorry if the query sounds silly but I really want to try this and don’t want to mess it up. 😛
At step 7 you mix egg yolks with half of all sugar the recipe calls, then at step 8 you mix remaining half of the sugar with egg whites.
The recipe says to mix beaten egg whites at the very end, so the fluffiness of it isn’t destroyed by mixing it too much. So generally yes, you prepare cheese batter and fold in egg whites (beaten with half of the sugar) at the very end.
I did experiment couple of times and mixed eggs together with sugar into cheese batter w/o separating egg whites from egg yolks, and I must say the result was not bad as well with a bit less of cleaning required.
Thanks! I’ll try this with whites and yolks separated like given in the recipe and see if I can make it as good as it looks in your pictures.
It will grow up during baking and then fall down during the cooling down, it is ok, just cut sides off.