Jessica Badalana

That speaks to the custard element of it too, because you've got your cheese, you have your egg yolks.

And so I think gentleness is sort of the order of the day as far as like you get that nice sort of even cooking heat.

It's gentler than just, you know, throwing the oven, hoping for the best.

Okay.

But by then the water bath is like room temperature.

And then you would chill it.

Yes.

Okay, so this is a regional variation, right?

So it's a graham cracker crust, dense cream cheese custard, and then a layer of very lightly sweetened sour cream across the top.

I mean, so it was... That sounds delicious to me, and I think it could sort of...

You know how in the French tradition, it's like cheese followed by dessert, cheese as dessert.

I could see that being a very elegant sort of conclusion.

And in some ways, that makes more sense to me than traditional cheesecake, I guess.

So, you know, this episode where you have all of these cheesecakes to judge, like what were the judges sort of looking for?

Like what's a perfect cheesecake?

How do you know when your cheesecake is properly baked?

What are you looking for jiggle-wise or not jiggle-wise?

So the three inches from the sides of the pan should look like that.

And unlike other cake, where sometimes you say it'll pull away from the sides or dip a toothpick in and test.

You can't do that here.