What do all guidebooks recommend doing in Lviv? Walk along the narrow cobbled streets, visit the Market Square, visit the cathedrals (Roman and Greek Catholic), look at the city from the site of the High Castle. And between these tourist excursions you should definitely pay a visit to one of the conceptual “caviar”, where you can drink several “filigree” (small cups) of aromatic coffee in the bite with the famous Lviv cheesecake. This dessert glorified the city among the culinary specialists of Ukraine. And for tourists, he became the same symbol of Lviv as the Town Hall - a symbol of urban freedoms. In this article you will find recipes for this iconic dessert. In Lviv, the hostess is considered good if she knows how to bake a delicious cheesecake. Therefore, there are many dessert recipes. The best in reviews is considered to be the one described in her book by the Lviv woman Darius Zvek. But we will begin in this article with the simplest.
Cheesecake in a hurry
What does this dish look like? Despite the name, this dessert has nothing to do with the little cheese pancakes that we prepare for breakfast. Most of all, it looks like an American cheesecake. But only in appearance! It tastes much better. And preparing is very simple. The guarantee of success is, which is logical, high-quality cottage cheese. It should be not only fresh, but also bold. If you bought a slightly wet product, culinary experts in their reviews recommend letting it drain in a sieve. And then wipe through it to break the smallest lumps and get a smooth, pasty cottage cheese. Before making the Lviv cheesecake, you need to soften the butter in advance. A pound of cottage cheese will need one hundred grams. Knead both ingredients with a spatula. Separate the yolks from five eggs. We’ll hide the squirrels in the refrigerator. Beat the yolks with 150 g of sugar into a thick foam. Wash the lemon. On the smallest grater, cut off the yellow part of its crust, adding zest to the egg mass. Pour a tablespoon of semolina into the curd. Soak one hundred grams of raisins, wash and dry. Combine the curd and yolk mass. Add raisins and vanilla on the tip of the knife. Beat the chilled proteins with a pinch of salt in a stable foam. Gently add to the cheese dough. It should turn out the consistency of liquid sour cream.
Baking
Preheat the oven to 170 degrees. It is necessary to take a form with high sides. After all, the Lviv cheesecake, as we have said, looks like a cheesecake. This form must be greased with butter. To leave it as thin as possible, it should be held in the freezer. Add a little flour to the butter. In this form and spread the cheese mass. Attention: as baking, the dough will increase in volume. Therefore, the mass should not reach the edges of the sides. We put the form in a preheated oven. Cook for about an hour. Then we turn off the fire and, without opening the oven door, wait another thirty minutes. Cool completely in shape. Only then carefully get it. And for a few more hours we put the cake in the refrigerator.
Special glaze
We have already mastered the simplest recipe for the Lviv cheesecake. The resulting cake is very tasty and cooked in the evening will be a great addition to morning coffee. But that is not all. In the cafe of the city of Lviv this cheesecake is served covered with chocolate icing. How to cook it? The reviews say that nowhere is easier. For glaze, you need to mix an equal amount (say, two tablespoons) of sugar and cocoa powder. Fifty grams of butter is softened in a warm room, but not on fire. Add to the sweet cocoa along with three tablespoons of fat sour cream. Knead the mass and put it on a very small fire. We will cook, stirring constantly, until the glaze is about to begin to boil. Like good coffee, this mass cannot be brought to one hundred degrees. Remove from the stove and stir, cool slightly. Pour on the cottage cheese pulled out of the refrigerator. We wait until the icing hardens (if necessary, equalize with a knife), and serve.
Lviv syrnik: the best recipe
Back in Soviet times, a city in Western Ukraine became famous among culinary experts thanks to the book “Sweet Cookies” by Daria Zvek. But the best recipe for the Lviv cheesecake is contained in another work of the author - "To the festive table." Culinary experts say in their reviews that with a blender and mixer, the cooking process does not take you much time. First you need to boil 3-4 potatoes. In a blender, knead them with 800 grams of fat home-made cottage cheese to a smooth mass. If there is no such machine - twice or even three times we pass the ingredients through a meat grinder. We start adding 6 yolks one at a time, constantly rubbing them. We introduce 200 g of sugar and 150 g of soft butter into the mass. Beat up. Add 100 g of raisins and a tablespoon of grated orange peel. Beat the squirrels to persistent peaks. Gently knead with curd mass. Cover the form with parchment paper, pour out the dough. Bake at 180 degrees for about 35-40 minutes. We do the same as in the previous recipe. Pull the cake out of the mold already completely cold.
Daria Zvek Sweet
We already know how to cook Lviv cheese cake from cottage cheese according to the best recipe. There is only one small detail left - the coating of the cheesecake with glaze. She is doing so. Pour 125 milliliters of water and a teaspoon of 9 percent vinegar into a saucepan, pour 300 grams of granulated sugar. Cook the syrup. We break 50 g of black and white chocolate into separate bowls, adding a teaspoon of butter to them. Pour half of the prepared syrup to them. In the reviews, it is recommended to first prepare the fondant of dark chocolate, since it quickly hardens. Pour this cheesecake with icing. Let's wait until it freezes. Now pour hot chocolate with white syrup. With this fondant we will draw different patterns and patterns on a black background. Garnish the cake with cocktail cherries. Before serving, you need to withstand the cake for about eight hours. During this time, the structure of the test will change.
Cheesecake with Chocolate Dough
As we have already mentioned, there are many recipes for the cult Lviv dessert. In some cafes it is served as a cheesecake, in others it is served as a cheese pie. Not to mention the additives to the curd filling. We suggest you make a Lviv cheesecake with cherries and chocolate dough. Soften a packet of margarine (250 g), knead with a hundred grams of sugar and two yolks. Sift 300 g of flour into another bowl. Mix it with a teaspoon of cookie powder. We divide the oil mass into two-thirds and one-third. For the most part, we mix 20 g of cocoa and, accordingly, 200 g of flour. The remaining one hundred grams of granular mass is mixed with a smaller amount. Thus, we got two tests - chocolate and white. We immediately divide the brown in half. Wrap three parts in cling film and put in a freezer for two hours.
Curd and filling
We figured out the dough, now let's see how to cook Lviv cheesecake with cherries. With the curd mass, the recipe allows you to not stand on ceremony. Pour into a blender bowl: 600 g of homemade cheese, 150 g of sugar, a tablespoon of starch, 100 g of soft butter, 5 yolks, 3 protein, 50 ml of milk, a bag of baking powder for dough and a few drops of vanilla essence. And grind everything to a creamy state. Culinary experts in their reviews advise to grind the yolks with sugar, and whisk the whites first. Now we cook cherry jelly. A store briquette is also suitable. In fresh cherries (200 g), remove the seeds. If they are canned, decant the berries from the liquid. Beat 4 proteins with one hundred grams of sugar. In the reviews it is mentioned that if the berries are sweet, you can reduce the amount of sugar to 50 g. When the proteins beat to a stable foam, mix them in jelly. Add cherries.
Bakery products
How to combine the dough and curd mass, as prescribed by the recipe for the Lviv cheesecake? In the reviews, the culinary specialists mention that this is not an easy task. You need to act very quickly. First, turn on the oven 200 degrees, and cover the form with high walls with parchment. We take out white dough from the freezer and quickly and quickly rub it on a coarse grater directly on baking paper. We spread the curd mass. Now do the same with half the chocolate dough. We try so that the “shavings” cover the syrniki with an even layer. Now spread the cherry mass. And cover it with the rest of the brown dough, rubbed with large chips. We send the form to the oven. Reduce the heat to 190 degrees and bake for 45 minutes. Allow the cottage cheese to cool completely in shape. Such pies can be made not only with cherries, but also with blueberries, poppy seeds, apples and cinnamon.
Lviv syrnik: recipe in a slow cooker
Making a cake with a kitchen assistant is not much different from baking in the oven. And the result exceeds all expectations. Many chefs complain that their cheesecake turned out to be rather dry. In a slow cooker, this will not happen, since a lowered lid retains moisture inside the curd mass. The dessert turns out to be tender, and if you add a little milk to the cottage cheese, in which the vanilla pod was soaked, it will be divinely fragrant. Let's cook Lviv cheesecake in a slow cooker according to the simplest recipe (with lemon zest and raisins). First, make the curd mass. Lubricate the crock-pot with butter and sprinkle with flour or semolina. Pour in the cheese mass. Reviews mention that you should not cook a lot of dough. The bowl should only be half full. Lower the multicooker lid. We set the unit in the "Baking" mode. For an hour we don’t even lift the lids. After this time, turn off the multicooker, but we do not pull out the cheesecake. Let's wait for its complete cooling. Pour the icing cake.
Cheesecake with poppy seeds
Many tourists who visited Lviv liked this kind of dessert. Below is sweet poppy seeds, and above is cottage cheese covered with chocolate fondant. The filling can be made, as in a classic Lviv syrniki (lemon zest and raisins), but this is not necessary. Replace these ingredients with other dried fruits to your taste. Reviews often refer to prunes cut into small pieces, candied fruit and even store marmalade. Before you cook the curd mass according to the classic recipe, steamed one hundred grams of poppy seeds. Let’s trace it and grind it in a mortar. Now prepare the cheese mass (so far without zest and raisins). Add a few tablespoons to the poppy seeds. Carefully knead. In a mold covered with baking paper, spread the poppy seeds, cover with cheese. We put in a preheated oven. Bake an hour at 180 degrees.
Secrets of a successful cheesecake
The key to success is high-quality, fresh and fatty cottage cheese. Reviews recommend going to him not to the store, but to the market. Choose cottage cheese that has a creamy tint, moist but not liquid. Many Lviv culinary specialists do not trust the blender, believing that it will not break all the lumps of cheese. It is better to grind the cottage cheese through a sieve or scroll 2-3 times through a meat grinder. Reviews recommend that all ingredients for the Lviv cheesecake be brought to the same temperature. Only proteins should be chilled. After adding them to the dough, you need to interfere for a short time, otherwise the cheesecake will fall and cool when it cools. It is better to bake a pie at a lower temperature and longer so that the top of the product does not crack.