My Grandmother's Cheese Kuchen
crust:
1 box of zwiebak, aprox 20 some pieces (crushed by pounding with a rolling pin, or similar implement, in a plastic bag)
2/3 cup of granulated sugar
1 stick of melted butter
a dash of cinnamon or cake spice
filling:
1 1/2 lb cottage cheese
3 gills cream (a gill=1/2 cup, so 3 gills=1 1/2 cups)*
4 egg yolks, save whites
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 tbls flour
1 tbls vanilla
(I add about a tsp of grated orange peel to the filling ingredients)
fold in the beaten egg whites
Mix the crust ingredients together. Then press the mixture into the bottom of a greased large spring form pan. Bring the crust up along the sides of the pan as well. (Save some of the crust mixture to sprinkle on the top of the cake). Combine the filling ingredients and pour over the crust. Sprinkle the top with the remaining crust mixture and add lumps of butter for browning. Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour and then turn off the heat and leave the cake in the oven for 1 hour longer. The cake usually drips so you may want to put foil underneath the pan to spare yourself cleaning the oven. Cool completely before removing the spring form.
*My Mother, who helped to deciepher this recipe of my paternal Grandmother's, says that the cream = whipping cream. Sister in law, Deborah says it works to use nonfat condensed milk in place of the cream, my brother couldn't tell!
