Mexican Cheese Pie (Pay De Queso) Recipe

Cheesecake is notoriously fussy. A perfect New York cheesecake requires skillful technique in order to master, and French-style cheesecake is so specific that it's hard to even recreate outside of its origin country. There are plenty of shortcuts for making decent cheesecakes, but none quite taste like cheesecake that's been made perfectly from scratch. Mexican cheese pie, or pay de queso, is a version that offers the best of both worlds: all of the decadence of a scratch-made cheesecake with half the fuss. Part of this is because of its size — the other is in its ingredients.

Mexican pay de queso is, as the name implies, a pie instead of a cake. This means that it is about half the size of a tall, springform-pan style cheesecake, and as such cooks faster and more evenly without requiring a water bath. It's also uniquely milky, with less richness and tang than cream-cheese-heavy New York-style cheesecake. The biggest difference is the crust, which is made up of mildly sweet crushed shortbread cookies called Marias. While my recipe is sweeter than versions made with tangy queso fresco, my pay de queso is the perfect introduction to the soft, milky sweetness of the pie, with a nearly foolproof method that almost anyone can execute.

If you spend any time searching for ingredients, it should be spent searching for Maria cookies. Though the cookies are a fairly straightforward shortbread cookie, they are wafer-thin and mildly sweet, giving them a distinct texture and flavor for the pay de queso crust. You can find Maria cookies at any grocery market that stocks Gamesa and Goya, two popular brands for the cookie.

After you find the Maria cookies, the remaining ingredients are easy to find in almost any store. You'll just need salt, butter, cream cheese, evaporated milk, sweetened condensed milk, eggs, and vanilla to make the rest of the recipe.

Preheat the oven to 350 F.

Add the cookies to a food processor and pulse to a very fine crumb.

Add the butter and salt and pulse to moisten.

Transfer the mixture to a 9-inch pie pan and press firmly with a measuring cup or flat-bottomed glass to form a crust.

Chill the crust in the refrigerator while preparing the filling.

To prepare the filling, add the evaporated milk, sweetened condensed milk, eggs, vanilla, and softened cream cheese to a blender.

Blend until just smooth, about 1 minute; do not overblend.

Transfer the mixture to the chilled pie crust.

Bake until just set, about 45-50 minutes. The edges should be set and firm, and the center should be jiggly, but not wet or liquidy.

Turn the oven off, open the door, and let the pie cool for 15 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool completely, then chill until set, 6 to 8 hours.

Serve chilled.

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Determining when pay de queso is done is similar to checking for doneness in a quiche. Like quiche, the texture should be jiggly but set — in other words, the filling should still move when shaken slightly, but only back and forth, like jello or pudding. If the filling looks like liquid, it isn't ready and needs a little more time. Another way to determine the filling's doneness is by looking at the edges, just next to the crust. The edges will rise slightly and set first, usually right around the same time that the center is just set.

If you aren't sure, underbake the pie slightly. I recommend doing this because the pie cooks in both its own residual heat and the oven's residual temperature as it cools down. By leaving the pie in the oven as it cools, the pie is brought to room temperature slowly, which gently finishes cooking the pie and prevents it from cracking from overbaking or rapidly cooling. If the filling no longer looks liquidy but you can't quite tell if it's ready, turn the oven off, keep the door closed for a few minutes longer, then open the door and allow the pie to cool.

Queso fresco is actually a common addition in pay de queso, though it isn't a required ingredient in the dessert. While similar in taste and texture to feta cheese, queso fresco is unique in that it is more tangy and less salty, making it a perfect addition to a dessert like pay de queso. Of course, being that it is a savory cheese, it adds a distinct flavor to the pie that is both a little tangy and a little salty, which complements the mildly sweet cookie crumb crust.

There are a few ways to add queso fresco to the recipe as written. Instead of changing any of the ingredients, you can simply add 2 ounces of queso fresco, which will add a very subtle, pleasantly salty flavor. For a more pronounced queso fresco flavor, add 4 ounces of queso fresco and subtract 2 ounces of cream cheese. This would mean equal amounts of cream cheese and queso fresco, which balances the flavors equally, as well.

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