Room Temp Eggs & Cracking Cheesecake Tops

My contessa research for this week has led me to find some pretty good answers and tips.

1.       What is the big deal about bringing eggs to room temperature when baking?  I am SO glad I did some investigative journalism on this one.  According to JoyofBaking.com (and come one, who doesn’t trust the Joy of Baking name), eggs whip to their maximum volume when they are at room temperature.  This is super important for anything that needs volume….cookies, cakes, etc. (especially in Denver, where you need all the help you can get to make recipes that lack high-altitude adjustments come out not looking like pancakes) I also read the same thing in other places like my “How to Cook Everything” cookbook by Mark Bittman (SUCH a good reference book for, of course, everything!) and an oh-so-cute blog called Over the Hill and On a Roll.  I am officially a believer, and will be bringing my eggs up to room temp every time. 

2.       How do I get my cheesecake not to crack (whether it be at this mile-high altitude or not)?  I was less concerned about this one because, lets face it, the cheesecake can crack as long as long as I top it with fruit.  But I still wanted to get to the bottom of this.  I went to my “Pie in the Sky” book by Susan Purdy because my gut feeling was that this recipe that Ina said would crack did because of the intricacies of being up so high.  She says that the tops of cheesecakes tend to crack when steam escapes as the cake cools.  Because everything cools faster at altitude (as compared to sea level), cheesecakes cracks are more common….no wonder mine was no different!  Suze says to cover the cake with a plan cardboard cake disk right when it comes out of the oven….this should slow down the rapid escape of steam and hopefully prevent the cracks.  I looked up a “cardboard cake disk” and I can pretty much use a clean piece of cardboard free of any wax, labels, etc. cut into a round disk. 

I am SO excited to use these tips, combined with the slight changes I would make to the original recipe.  And I can do it all in a spring form pan thanks to a coworker who brought one to work for me in exchange for another cheesecake.   That is definitely in the future, but first, frozen key lime pie!