Oma's Cheese Cake When unable to get Quark

Ingredients:

CRUST
For 9 or 10-inch pie or cake pan:
1½ cups flour
2 eggs                                                                                                                                                       butter (about 1 stick,1/4 lb.)
Pinch of baking powder
3/4 cup   sugar                                                                                                                                                                 zest of half a lemon 
3 C. flour, more if needed

FILLING:
1 cup Cottage Cheese (old fashioned kind)
mixed or put through strainer to make a smooth paste.
1 cup sugar
5 egg yolks
5 stiffly-beaten whites
1 teaspoon flour with cheese
1 / 2 pint cream
 juice of 1 lemon

In a non reactive large bowl add your eggs and softened butter

grate the lemon into the batter

Add the dry ingredients for the crust and mix, till it forms a dough. Do not over mix.

Press the crust into the pie pan, or in this case a 9 inch spring form pan.

Here is your basic cottage cheese

Rinse the cottage cheese and shake as much moisture out of it as you can.

Mush the curds, either in a food processor or put through a sieve of some sort to make creamy. This gives a smooth but still some texture of cottage cheese. Otherwise we would just use cream cheese.

On with the filling. In the upper left bowl we have mixed the egg yolks, cream, flour and lemon juice, sugar and cheese. In the upper right bowl there is the stiff beaten egg whites. In the lower pan is the crust.

Fold the egg whites into the egg mixture till smooth

Pour the filling into the crust.

I place the spring form pan on cookie sheet covered with foil. If there is any overflow it will catch it, and it also keeps the direct heat from the oven element from burning the crust. Depending on your oven bake it in a 350 to 375 degree oven for approximately an hour. You can also turn down the oven 50 degrees half way through the baking, if it looks as if it is getting too brown. You can also sprinkle cinnamon and chopped almonds on top if you like.

Here is the completed cheesecake. It is nice and brown on top. I let it cool for 30 minutes before removing the spring form pan.

Here is the cheese cake out of the pan.

The crust rises a little because of the egg, and holds the delicate filling of the Käsekuchen better.