Cotton soft Japanese cheesecake

Two years ago I tried a recipe I found on Japanese cotton soft cheesecake and well, it was a disaster. It was like an eggier version of an omelet only sweet. Yes, that bad. I eluded the idea of making it, I was convinced that Asian desserts are just not my thing. No, seriously, I don't think I'm very good with them. There are a few I can proudly say I'm great at, but for the most part, well, I suck at them. I can conquer a good number of European and American desserts easy, but not Asian. I would say it's probably the measurement. Grams to ounces to the laziness of just buying a dang scale all equate to that.

Tonight though, while perusing around my kitchen trying to decide whether to make donuts or brioche, I discovered in my refrigerator what appeared to be a box of cream cheese slightly opened. It was probably my dad that was over for the weekend. I love him to death, but he ignored my spreadable cream cheese and went for the what's meant for pumpkin cheesecake cream cheese. I needed to use it, one, because I'd hate to procrastinate on that cheesecake plan, two, I can't stand looking at that box. I was all pumpkined out from Thanksgiving so I made cotton soft cheesecake. I'm not particularly a huge cheesecake fan anyway, unless it's blueberry, or mango, or blueberry mango.

I used a cake pan for this seeing as I'm still traumatized by the last experience, but I only filled it halfway. Last time I used a spring form pan which was not properly sealed. Duh, it's not a regular cake, I should have filled it all the way. I ended up using 2 pans but it's ok. I had a chance to brutalize the other one by using pastry cutters and stencils on it.

Now I'm not yet going to publish the recipe for this because I wasn't too happy. I looked at a few recipes and none of them were sweet enough. Nothing like the ones I've had from the Asian markets. It's good, but needs more sugar. I'm glad though I added vanilla this time around unlike last time. I was afraid to add more sugar though because I didn't want the batter to fall. Seeing as it's a bit of a forgiving mix, I'll sweeten it up a bit next time.

I love it though, it wasn't eggy like my first attempt. I'm going to give it another go sometime this week or next. I have matcha green tea coming and maybe I'll make a green tea version of it. 

For now, I'll enjoy this. I'm actually sort of glad I put my batter in 2 pans because I know no one else would share a Hello Kitty stenciled cheesecake with me in this house.