My Vanilla German Cheesecake is – hands down – the best! It’s light and fresh and so vanilla-tasting, you’ll think you are in heaven. Other than the famous New York Cheesecake, my version doesn’t have the salty taste and it is a lot less heavy, actually, It has a lot less fat and calories and is even healthy.
You might wonder “Why is that?” and the secret is that I don’t use cream cheese nor heavy whipping cream for my Vanilla Cheesecake. Instead, I am using Quark and more eggs.
Watch the video about how to easily make Quark!
One could argue that the 7 eggs in my recipe are not really good for the cholesterol but first of all, it has been proven that eggs don’t really do harm to your cholesterol as previously thought. Second, since this cake has at least 8 slices, this would come down to less than one egg per person – I think that’s reasonable.
How to bake German Cheesecake
My secret German Cheesecake ingredients
Quark is not my only secret. The other secret is the vanilla taste. If you add a lot of vanilla extract, chances are that your dish is going to be a little bitter or tastes artificial. So there are two things I am doing to avoid that but still have a very, very good vanilla taste in my cheesecake:
- I use vanilla sugar instead of vanilla extract. Learn how to easily make Vanilla Sugar here!
- I add a package of instant vanilla pudding – the one for cooking!
Not using the salty cream cheese also contributes to the fact that I can use less sugar, so the vanilla taste is not covered by the sweetness of the sugar.
I have used a package of German Vanilla Pudding in here but I’ve also made German Cheesecake with the Jello-O version, it works just as good.
Want even fewer calories?
It is February and I still have some pounds from the Thanksgiving goose and the Christmas duck on my hips. I am working out as often as possible but there are only so few hours in a day … there is no way around it: I have to cut some carbs! That’s why I recently started baking the cheesecake without the crust – and it works perfectly. So if you are trying to avoid too man carbs but don’t want to quit on the good things in life, just skip the recipe part with the dough for the crust. Instead, grease your baking pan and pour the cheesecake dough in, directly. Bake as if it had a crust and enjoy with less guilt.
Do I have to use Quark?
Well, I highly recommend it. Besides the fact that the Quark has a lot less fat, it is incredibly healthy and has 14 g of protein for 100g of Quark. Greek yogurt has only 7g of protein/100g. But you will find people claiming that you could just use greek yogurt instead of the quark. Well, you could BUT: it will taste different and it will be very moist with fluid coming out of the cake. It will also mold faster. I can’t stress it enough: Quark is not yogurt, it is a fresh cheese where casein and whey are separated. But what you can do is, use half the amount needed in Quark and the other half needed you can use as Greek Yogurt – it’s a compromise that has worked for me, at times when I didn’t have enough Quark for a whole recipe.
One more thing …
I am actually a little embarrassed because I forgot to take a picture of the finished cake! This cake was a gift for a friend and I had a very stressful day, so at the end, I just headed out and delivered the cake without thinking of a photo. To solve the problem I had to buy a stock photo, but it really looks a lot like my cake. As soon as I bake another cheesecake I will make it up and take my own photo!
Very Vanilla German Cheesecake - Vanille Käsekuchen
Equipment
Ingredients
For the crust
- 150 g flour
- 40 g sugar
- 2 tsp vanilla sugar
- 100 g Butter softened
For the cheesecake topping
- 250 g Butter softened
- 200 g sugar
- 2 tsp vanilla sugar
- 7 egg yolk
- 7 egg whites
- 1000 g Quark
- 1 pck instant vanilla pudding (for cooking)
- some lemon cest optional
Instructions
The Crust
- Mix flour, sugar, vanilla sugar and the soft butter in a bowl to create an even dough. Knead it on the table for a little bit.
- Ad the dough in a round, high baking pan and distribute it evenly to the bottom. You don't need to cover the sides but if you want to do it, that's ok, too.
Cheesecake filling
- Mix the soft butter with the sugar and vanilla sugar. Use a mixer for that.
- Add 7 egg yolks - one after another.
- If you want to use some lemon cest, add it now.
- Stir everything very well.
- Add the Quark (fist 1/3, then mix, add another 1/3 and mix and add the last 1/3 and mix).
- When the Quark is evenly mixt into the filling, add the instant vanilla pudding and mix well.
- In a different bowl, mix the egg whites until they are very stiff.
- Add the egg whites to the filling and carefully stir them into it. Don't mix, just stir until it has become one fluffy mass.
- Add the filling to the baking pan.
- Take a large piece of aluminum foil and fold it in length. Wrap it around the baking pan - this lets the cake bake more evenly. Keep the aluminum foil for the next time!
- Bake for about 70 - 80 minutes - check your oven inbetween - at 350F.
- After turning off the heat, leave the cake in the oven for another 35 minutes, oven door slightly open.
- Take the cake out and let it cool at room temperature. The cheescake tastes warm but it is best if it has been in the fridge for 1-2 hours or over night.
I have tried so many recipes, all of them where a total success.
Hi Barbara,
I hope you are doing well.
I am going to make this cheesecake as a birthday cake for a family member – this is one of her favourite cake and I am sure she will love it! (She’s German too)
Just a very quick question – how big the baking tin did you use for this recipe?
Many thanks
Vivienne
Hi Vivienne,
doing fine here, I hope the same for you!
How nice of you to bake that cake for your friend, I am sure she will appreciate it.
The tin is 26 cm or 10 1/4 inches. It could be a little smaller than my pan to have a higher cake.
Best, Barbara
Thank you for the quick response Barbara! Much appreciated.
Have a lovely day!:-)
Hi Barbara,
Thank you for this delicious recipe! Your version is even lighter than the ones I had in Germany. :)
Thank you for this recipe. My mother was German and she died when I was a teenager. I’ve been trying for years to find a recipe that closely resembled my memories (over 30 years ago) of how she made it. Unfortunately, she always made it from memory and had never written it down. Your recipe seems to be twice the size— hers had 500g quark and 3 eggs, always had lemon zest, and she used standard custard powder, but I never really remembered the rest of the ingredients, nor the quantities of them. I’ve bookmarked this and aim to make it soon… after I’ve made the quark, that is! Thanks so much!
where do you buy your quark?
I make the quark myself. There are two recipes on how to make Quark on this blog. Some groceries like Central Market have Quark, too. I’ve heard from some Germans, that they are using greek yogurt instead of Quark, so I guess it can work with that but I would try to get a brand that has a very dry greek yogurt, like “Face” and a higher content of fat. I hope this helps.
So, der Kuchen ist im Ofen. Ich hatte leider nur 280 g Quark. Ich habe ihn zum ersten Mal gemacht. Aber ich hatte Griechischen Yogurt und habe den genommen. Hoffentlich wird es was.
Und? Wie ging es mot dem Greek Yoghurt?
Serious question: How can you call it “healthy” considering it is made from a ton of sugar, butter, eggs, and cheese? How is that fundamentally different from a regular cheesecake? In fact, the NY cheesecake has no whipping cream even though you said it does, and no butter in the mix either. And also half the eggs. So your variety has a lot more total and saturated fat.
No cheesecake is healthy, and perhaps this variety less ‘healthier’ than a NY one!
I love cheesecake, and I would eat any baked variety to death, but let’s not call it what it is not! ?
You have a point there. Of course, a cake is barely healthy in the sense of “good nutrition”. There might also be different recipes for NY Cheesecake and the one I looked up is this one https://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/original-new-york-cheesecake-51200640. My point is, that 4 packages of cream cheese (and the name is no coincident, cream cheese is made from cream, not milk) plus heavy whipping cream is for sure a lot less healthy than my version with Quark. Quark is packed with protein, which is actually good for our body. It also contains a lot of calcium. So, though it is still not healthy food and also contains some whipping cream, there are still ingredients in it, from which our body can benefits. I basically swapped the fat for protein. Compared to NY Cheesecake, I think it is as healthy as it can get for such a cake, don’t you agree? But it’s still not a good match to salad or vegetables and can’t be switched for those.
I follow a keto diet, so things like butter, cream cheese and eggs are all keto. I sub out the sugar for swerve. some recipes calls for granulated but I have used confectioner sugar swerve. the only thing I can’t eat is the crust.
I need to make a crust using pecans and butter. then I could eat everything.
You might want to switch out the quark for cream cheese if you are following keto. The Quark has mostly protein while cream cheese has a lot more fat.
I had so much hope but the cheesecake was too fluid inside. Disappointed! I followed the recipe.
Hello Conny, I am so sorry you got disappointed. I double checked the recipe, all measures are according to my recipe book and to how I bake my cake. It’s always hard to tell what went wrong. It might be that your Quark was too wet and needed to drain longer or maybe your baking pan was bigger and the cake would have needed to bake longer. The cake is usually very soft just after baking until it is cold, did you cool the cake in the fridge after baking?
So happy to find you. The cheesecake is so good
Thank you, Mellissa, I am glad you like it! :-)