Sometimes when you have accidents, you just have to pivot. That, or dump your mistakes into a parchment-lined springform pan, throw them into a burning hot oven, and throw a hail, Mary. This recipe was that. Originally, these were going to be cheese tarts, stuffed with a gjetost(caramelized cheese) and azuki filling, but I overfolded my shortcrust pastry, so the shells puffed way too much in the oven, and actually got completely malformed. And all of that happened while I was prepping my azuki and gjetost cheese fillings, so by the time my fillings were ready to go, to my horror and frustration, I was met for 8 toppled over, uneven, and straight up unusable tart shells. Since I did not want to waste my delicious filling, I changed gears and just baked it as-is, since it had all of the right makings of a Basque cheesecake. After pouring my two batters into some baking-lined baking tins, and studding them each with red bean paste, into the oven they went, with very low expectations on my end on what would happen. I was truthfully just too tired and frustrated to care how these would turn out – I wanted to make gorgeous, molten-centered cheese tarts, but since I had used up all of my dough on that failed attempt, and at that point, was just too over the idea of making more dough, the fillings wound up becoming a basque cheesecake, whether it wanted to or not. And the best part? The end result was surprisingly good! The cheesecakes were soft and silky, with gjetost and red bean flavor coming through and playing off of the caramelized tops of the cheesecakes quite nicely. One of my favorite red bean desserts was red bean ice cream with miso caramel and doughnuts, so I wanted to do a loose play off of that using the caramel notes of gjetost and burning the tops of the cheese tarts, which in this case, still applies with a basque cheesecake, which is basically a pastry-less cheese tart if I really stop to think about it. Which is why I am posting this recipe as a reminder that mistakes can be a great thing! I didn’t need that shortcrust pastry, those would have been wasted calories!

Makes 2 4-inch basque cheesecakes
4oz cream cheese
1oz heavy cream
1oz granulated sugar
.2oz grated gjetost cheese
a pinch of salt
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg
4oz sweetened red bean paste, in two parts

In a bowl, start by whipping the cream cheese until it reaches a soft, spreadable texture. To that, add in the heavy cream, sugar, grated gjetost, salt, vanilla, and egg, whisking everything together until combined to form your batter. Split the batter into two parts and whisk into half of it one part of your red bean paste. Line two 4-inch round cake tins with parchment. Pour into each tin a mixture of both the plain and the red bean batters, swirling them. Then add to each tin small bits of the remaining red bean paste, allowing them to sink through the batter. Bake the cheesecakes at 475 degrees F for 20 minutes. Allow the cheesecakes to fully cool before attempting to remove from the tins and serve.