KO EN Spanish Dessert⏱ 60 minEdit history

Basque Burnt Cheesecake

Name: Basque Burnt Cheesecake
Prep time: 15 min
Cook time: 45 min
Total time: 1 h
Yield: 8 servings
Cuisine: Spanish
Ingredients: 500 g Cream cheese; 1 cup Sugar; 4 Eggs; 1 cup Heavy cream; 2 tbsp Flour; 1 tsp Vanilla extract; 1 pinch Salt

A crustless cheesecake baked hot until the top scorches dark — the San Sebastian original. Caramelized and almost burnt outside, molten-creamy within, it's the easiest cheesecake there is: blend it in one bowl, pour, and bake.

Steps

Heat the oven to 220C. Crumple and dampen parchment, then line a 18-20cm round pan so it rises well above the rim.
⏲ 10 min
Beat the room-temperature cream cheese with the sugar until completely smooth.
⏲ 3 min
Beat in the eggs one at a time, then add the cream, vanilla, and salt.
⏲ 3 min
Sift in the flour and mix until lump-free. The batter should be smooth and pourable.
⏲ 1 min
Pour into the pan and bake at 220C for 40-45 minutes, until the top is deep burnished brown and the center still wobbles.
⏲ 45 min
Cool completely in the pan; chill it if you like. A creamy, soft center is exactly right.
⏲ 60 min
Lift out by the parchment and slice — softer at room temperature, firmer chilled.

Tips & Variations

Variations

Chocolate basque: Melt in dark chocolate.
Matcha or hojicha: Add the powder for color and flavor.
Mini basque: Bake in a muffin tin for 20-25 minutes.
Extra creamy: Shorten the bake for a runnier center.

Tips

Use room-temperature cream cheese and eggs so it blends smooth, not lumpy.
Crumpled parchment gives the signature rustic folds and high walls.
Bake hot (220C) so the top scorches dark while the inside stays creamy.
Pull it while the center still wobbles — it sets to a perfect custard as it cools.
The two tablespoons of flour look like a thickener and are really a heat shield. Cooking eggs gives the mechanism: starch granules swollen at 60-75°C get between the egg proteins and lift the setting temperature by tens of degrees, which is why the flour-bearing custard of clafoutis goes into a bare 180°C oven with no water bath and does not curdle. This is that trick at 220°C, with 500g of cream cheese and a cup of cream adding fat to the same job. Leave the flour out and a custard that hot curdles.
It breaks three of the rules on the cheesecake page, deliberately. That one calls a water bath "the key to crack-free baking" and says to mix gently so it does not crack or sink. Here there is no water bath, the cracks around the rim are the look, and the sink is the shape — the middle rises in the heat and drops as it cools, and the crater it leaves is the dish.
Whole eggs, and it still will not stand up. Crème caramel uses whole eggs and comes free of its mould; four eggs here and it still has to be lifted out by the parchment, because that much fat is diluting the protein network. Fat is the whole difference.
Having no crust is what lets the oven go this high. A pastry base would be charred long before the middle set. The parchment folded well above the rim does the base's structural job instead, which is why it has to be crumpled and pressed rather than cut to fit.
The scorched top is not overbaking. What your oven is doing files this among the recipes taken deliberately to the edge of burnt, where "darker than the recipe" is not a failure signal — and it suits a fan oven for once, since drying the surface is the point. Two reactions run at the same time up there: caramelising sugar, and the Maillard reaction between that sugar and the dairy protein (browning).