Here’s a recipe straight out of the repertoire of Hilde, my “German mom”. It’s Käsekuchen, which translates directly as “cheesecake” in English. However, it’s lighter and arguably yummier than American versions made with cream cheese.
This particular recipe appears in the cookbook of authentic German recipes I published last year. The title is A Travel for Taste: Germany (if you look to the right of this blog, you’ll see a picture of the cover in the sidebar. You can get your very own copy of it on Amazon – even a Kindle version! Please buy one – it contains all the translations of ingredients and amounts from German and metric into things you can easily find or make in the US.

Prep Time | 40 minutes |
Cook Time | 60-70 minutes |
Servings |
cheesecake |
- Butter for greasing the pan
- Breadcrumbs for coating greased pan
- 1 egg
- 1/2 cup butter 113 g
- 2/3 cup sugar 130 g
- 1 3/4 cups flour 250 g
- 2 cups Quark (440 g)
- 2 eggs
- 1 egg white
- 3/4 cup sugar (150 g)
- 1/4 cup butter
- 4 teaspoons vanilla sugar (2 packets or 16 g)
- Dash salt
- 1 tablespoon flour (7 g)
- 1 tablespoon cornstarch (7 g)
- 2 cups buttermilk (473 ml)
- Splash rum
Ingredients
Crust
Filling
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- Preheat oven to 350 F (180 C). Grease a 10-inch (25 cm) springform pan with butter and coat with breadcrumbs.
- Slightly beat the egg. Cut it into ½ cup (113 g) butter and 2/3 cup (130g) sugar in a bowl.
- Put the flour in a separate bowl and pour the wet mixture over it. Combine well with your hands. Dough should be rather dry and form a ball.
- Press dough evenly into pan on bottom and around sides to ¼ inch (0.5 cm) thick.
- Beat all filling ingredients together until smooth.
- Pour filling into prepared crust. It’s fine if the batter rises above the crust on the sides of the pan.
- Bake 60 to 70 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean when inserted into the middle.
- Let cool and release from pan. Serve warm or chilled.

Jana-Lena Grotemeyer
How would this work with a 4 inch spring pan??
Karren Doll Tolliver
Jana-Lena, thanks for your question. For a 4-inch diameter springform pan, it would work the same way. I’ve never used a smaller pan, but you would have to divide the crust and filling into correct proportions. It would probably be about 1/4 of the recipe for each 4-inch pan. As long as the crust comes up the side of the pan and the filling is below that before it is baked, you should be fine.