It's Best To Add The Eggs Last When Making Cheesecake

While there are many tips and tricks one can employ for making cheesecake, the exact moment you add your eggs is critical to the cake's eventual success. An iconic dessert consisting of a thick filling of cream cheese, sugar, and eggs layered over a thin crust, usually made of pulverized graham crackers, cheesecake is one of the most decadent desserts you can make at home. From classic New York style to whiskey caramel, cheesecake has no shortage of unique fillings. And by adding the eggs to the mixture last, you ensure that your cheesecake will turn out the way it's supposed to.

The thing about adding eggs is that, as in other cakes, they help the cheesecake rise. However, if you add them in right at the start of mixing the filling, you run the risk of injecting too much air into the mix. You can mix the cream cheese and sugar together without having any effect on the texture of the filling. 

By adding the eggs last, you ensure that you don't overwhip the filling. And unlike with more traditional, flour-based cakes, where folding in stiffly-beaten egg whites is essential for giving the batter its lift, too much air in a cheesecake actually creates the opposite effect.

If too much air is injected into the cheesecake batter the cake will actually over-rise and cave in during baking. This happens for a few reasons. If your ingredients are too cold, or if you mix in the eggs too early, you're actively mixing your cake for a long period of time. The longer you mix, the more air gets in. This creates an unstable environment for the cake once it gets to the oven. 

The cake will overexpand, causing the center to crack and then cave in. The air bubbles that were formed when the cake was mixed burst when they are exposed to the heat of the oven during baking. The resulting cracks in the top of the cheesecake don't affect the flavor at all, but they don't make for a particularly good-looking presentation. Neither, for that matter, does a collapsed cake.

So, while it may not initially seem like the order in which you mix the ingredients matters, adding the eggs last is one of the best forms of insurance you have against a collapsed or cracked cheesecake. And if the other steps of the process are followed, you should end up with a wonderful, shimmering, and smooth cheesecake.