Saw this recipe whilst visiting a very disappointing sweets show. The entire "exhibition" was in a room the size of my bedroom... The only highlight of it was the recipe books. Especially one by Keiko Ishida, Okashi Treats: Sweet Treats Made With Love. It had many interesting deserts made with an Asian twist, from the more common green tea, red bean, black sesame, to the less used tofu.
I had many doubts prior to making this cake. Being used to eat tofu with chilli or soy sauce, the thought of bean curd + cheesecake was somewhat mind bending. However, I had to give it a shot.
Everything on Keiko's recipe was common and easy to find. The kinako (roasted soy bean powder) took a little bit of effort as most suburban Asian grocery did not stock it. Lucky it was found later in the city and I didn't substitute the kinako with soy bean powder (non-roasted), as the taste is not as rich and nutty.
Recipe was easy to follow, with gelatine sheets replaced with 20g powdered gelatine brought to boil with 100ml of hot water, then rested for five minutes before added to the cheesecake to avoid clumping.
Result was fabulous. Well set in both 20cm and 8cm sizes. Not too stiff and not too soft. Base did inflate a bit through baking (1.5 times thicker), but both thin and thick soya base tasted great.
I thought it might be difficult to accept as it was so different from traditional cheesecakes so I didn't tell anyone what the secret ingredient was until they tried. To my surprise, it was quite well received with the common reaction to the taste as "huh", "interesting", "hmmmm", then "this is actually really good".
The secret ingredient? Less than 50% could guess it. The ones who did guess right were non-Asians and none of the Asians could guess it right.
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