A cheesecake with a centre as soft, creamy and light as a cloud. No pastry or crumb base, but a deeply caramelized top
The origin of Basque Cheesecake
In the late 1980s in a small pintxos bar called La Vina, tucked away in the back streets of San Sebastian’s old town, a young self-taught chef, Santi, used to spend his days off perfecting new dishes for the bar’s menu. One of his creations was a simple cheesecake, but what made his new dessert unique was its ‘missing’ ingredients and ‘incorrect’ technique.
Typically a baked cheesecake requires a delicate touch. This was not the case for Santi. His cake was blasted in a hot oven meaning the parts of the cake in contact with the tin browned into a natural crust, while the top singed to a deep caramel. The stroke of genius being an interior that remained jiggly and loose.
Space was at a premium in La Vina’s tiny kitchen so embellishments such as fruit, biscuit crumb or coulis were out of the question so slices of oozing cake were tossed across the bar with nothing more than a spoon.
And so was born the very first burnt basque cheesecake.
From San Sebastian to the world!
The cheesecake was served on and off for years, but it was only when the trend for pintxo tours took off in the 2000s, that foreigners en masse began to discover La Viña’s cheesecake. Since then this humble dessert has managed to captivate chefs and diners across the world, from New York to London, from Melbourne to Jakarta, from Moscow to Tokyo, and now Totnes!
Adding the Kiko touch
Kiko’s Basque cheesecake is a beautiful ode to Santi’s creation. The result of hundreds of hours of baking in the test kitchen, a tireless search for the finest local, organic ingredients, an obsessive dedication to perfection and perhaps most importantly, a simple love of food and the pure joy of making something delicious for another human being to enjoy.