For my third attempt (the reason we had to go back and pick more berries in the first palce, because I refused to give up on this recipe), I made a simple glaze with crème fraîche, sugar, and almond extract, that gets poured onto the almost-done cheesecake and then baked for a final 5 minutes, allowing the glaze to set up and slice cleanly, just as I had envisioned.
It would have been perfect, except I had baked the cheesecake in a regular cake pan instead of a springform. Which is a technique that, granted, produces perfect, crack-free cheesecakes, but also requires you invert the cake to get it out of the darn thing.
Inversion + glaze = potential mess.
Taylor was bracing himself for a third round of failures and a very cranky wife. Luckily the cake came out surprisingly clean with a bit of coaxing, only minor blemishes on top (easily camouflaged by some plump fresh berries).
Needless to say I’d recommend using a high quality cake pan with a removable bottom to keep its pristine layers in tact. I prefer this kind of pan over a springform pan, which are often thin and don’t bake as evenly (and may cause the top to crack).
The crème fraîche, both in the cheesecake itself and the glaze on top, contributes to its perfectly silky texture and subtle sour sweetness. Crème fraîche being a French cultured cream, I’d call this cheesecake very cultured, indeed.
You can use sour cream if you like, but the crème fraîche has a more milder, refined flavor that perfectly balances the richness of the cream cheese, and it’s worth the cost if you can find it (or, hey, make it yourself!).
You can top the cake with more fresh berries or even drizzle some extra roasted blueberry goodness on top for an extra dose of blueberry flavor.
And then go back for another slice.
Update August 2020: After making this cheesecake a number of times I’ve realized that not all brands of crème fraîche behave the same way—sometimes, when mixed with the sugar, it gets so thin and fluid that the glaze seems to disappear off the top of the cheesecake. The original was made with Trader Joe’s brand, which seems to be thicker and more stable than other brands I’ve tried. Sour cream, on the other hand, contains additional stabilizers so it is much more reliable in general.
I’ve adjusted the original recipe slightly to account for this variance, including reducing the sugar in the glaze and advising that, if using crème fraîche, the glaze topping should be chilled rather than at room temp (but all ingredients for the filling, crème fraîche included, should still be at room temperature).
