Cheesecake is one of the most popular desserts in Poland, and it’s easy to see why. The melt in your mouth goodness is just the thing with a cup of coffee or tea. This Polish Cheesecake recipe comes from Martha W., a reader who lives in the UK. Martha also comes from a military family.
Her father’s time in the US Army gave her a taste of life overseas. Today, she is married to a British man of Polish and Lithuanian descent, and she has kindly shared the sernik recipe that comes from her husband’s Polish family. I should also say the photographs are Martha’s. I’m grateful she has given me permission to share them and the recipe with you.
The most common questions on my own sernik recipe have to do with the cheese. “Where do I find twaróg?’ “What if I can’t find twaróg?” You’ll see that this family when they settled in the UK had the same issue. The familiar farmer’s cheese wasn’t available, so they found a practical solution and adapted the recipe to make it with cream cheese.
It does have the traditional shortcrust pastry, complete with latticework on top.
This happens all the time when families relocate. You make do with what you find in your new location. I didn’t bring chocolate chips to Poland in my suitcase.
If I wanted to make chocolate chip cookies, I chopped up some of the delicious chocolate bars that were readily available at our Polish supermarket. I found equal parts of milk and dark chocolate approximated the taste of semi-sweet chocolate chips very nicely.
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I ran Martha’s recipe in a recent newsletter and within a few hours, I had multiple requests from folks who wanted to save the recipe on Pinterest, but weren’t able to do so from my email. So here it is friends; Martha’s cheesecake online and pin-able!
Thanks again, Martha for sharing. We both hope you’ll enjoy it!
Smacznego!
Lois
Polish Cheesecake
- Prep Time: 20 minutes + 30 minutes chill
- Cook Time: 25 minutes
- Total Time: 1 hour 15 min
- Yield: 10-12 servings 1x
- Category: Dessert
- Method: Baking
- Cuisine: Polish
Description
A Polish recipe adapted for readily available ingredients
Ingredients
for the crust:
- 5 oz all-purpose flour
- 1 oz icing (confectioners) sugar
- Pinch salt
- 3 oz butter
- 2 egg yolks
for the filling:
- 1/2 pound cream cheese, softened
- 1 1/2 oz butter, softened
- 3 oz caster sugar
- 1 oz plain flour
- 2 eggs, separated + 1 white (save a white from the pastry)
- 2 tbsp milk
Instructions
- Make the pastry by combining the flour, sugar, salt, butter, egg yolks, and adding a little water if necessary. Chill for at least 30 mins.
- Preheat oven to 375F.
- Line a 7 x 11 – inch pan with your pastry (reserving scraps to roll out thinly for the top in step 6, as in the photo).
- Beat butter and sugar to a soft cream. Add flour and milk. Beat yolks and add to mixture and then beat in cream cheese.
- In a separate bowl whisk 3 egg whites until stiff and fold them in.
- Put filling into pastry-lined pan and put crisscross strips across. It can be rustic looking.
- Bake for 25 mins. The top will start to brown and filling will rise up a bit but will settle back down on cooling.
- Cool completely. You can refrigerate before serving. Store in the fridge if you have leftovers! You can dust the top with icing sugar before serving and it’s great served with strawberries and raspberries.
Keywords: Polish cheesecake
Kathryn Rowland
Has anyone heard of a cheese cake made with a graham cracker crust, and the filling was made with dry cottage and regular cottage cheese. This was baked in the oven and was very heavy. My Mom and Aunt made this when I was a kid in Toledo, Ohio?? Nothing like this in the Polish cookbooks I have.
Thanks
Candy Moran
I make one with a graham cracker crust but the filing is cream cheese and then it is topped with sour cream mixture. In my grandmother recipe book she has it labeled Polish cheese cake. It’s the only one our family has ever made.
Catherine Caschera
Yes, my mother made cheesecake this way. Very dense. I remember helping her by putting the cheeses through the hand mill.
James
well after the fact, but that’s Angel Cheesecake Pie. My Uke grandma made it from dry cottage cheese sourced from Stanley’s (Toledo), and used nuts/cocoanut for the crust. The Boomers in my family call this “real cheesecake”. Cooks dot com has the legit recipe for it …
Christine
You can purchase Twarog cheese in Polish shops in the UK.
Martha
Yes now you can. When I first made this recipe back in the 79s you could not get hold of it so I still use cream cheese to this day.
Martha
Typo – meant 70s!!
Sue
Thank you for sharing, this is a lovely cheesecake. I will say that I wish people would comment on the recipe rather than talking about it’s not like the recipe they know. In my countries people have their own variations of how their family made something and people make variations according to produce etc that is available to them or to their palette, to their dietary needs and to their allergies. So when someone shares their version of a recipe people don’t need to comment that it’s different to what they know – they either like it or they don’t.
I for one love seeing variations on recipes that I make as sometimes I adapt those changes,
THANK YOU for mentioning in your introduction and using the example of not having chocolate chips and using chocolate bars – this is what it’s all about.
★★★★★
polishhousewife
We are on the same page, Sue! Recipes, like language, change with time and location.
Martha
I agree. I just had an Italian Pastiera Napoletana pie for Easter and the recipes for this vary enormously. Very glad you like this version of Polish cheesecake.
Yasya
Delicious!
★★★★★
Tania
Lots of Polish/Ukrainian delicatessens, sold farmers cheese in the 1970s and the years before.