This is very old family recipe from my mother-in-law. It requires a lengthy baking process (about 1.5 – 2 hours total) therefore please plan accordingly. The resulting cake needs to be fully cooled down and then refrigerated for at least 3 hours before consumption. I would suggest to make it the night before you are planning on serving it.

Ingredients:

• 2 lbs of Farmers Cheese (Tvorog)
• 8 eggs separated into yolks and whites.
• 4 whole vanilla beans
• 1 tablespoon of lime juice
• 3 tablespoons of sugar
• 1/2 cup of raisins
• 1/2 teaspoon of salt

Process:

In a stainless steel mixing bowl combine egg yolks, sugar, vanilla beans seeds and salt:

Using hand mixer beat the mixture until it turns off white:

In a bigger separate bowl mash the Farmers cheese with the fork. The mashing is important to break down bigger crumbs to ensure that cake will stay together when sliced. If you skip this process you might end up with crumbles. Next and the egg yolk mixture to it and pour over the rasins and mix together:

Once done, put into fridge to cool down. In a separate bowl add lime juice to egg whites and beat them with the hand mixer until you see peaks form (about 5 – 8 minutes):

Now pull out the mixture from the fridge and using a spoon fold, don’t mix the egg whites into the cheese mixture. Put back into the fridge to cool it down. Turn on your oven to 250F and let it come up to temperature. Prepare your baking dish (I use loaf pan lined up with parchment paper). If you don’t use parchment paper make sure you cover the pan bottom and side with butter. Once oven is ready pull the mixture from the fridge and pour it into the loaf pan:

Put it into the oven for 70 minutes and do not open the door. Once the 70 minutes are up, increase the temperature to 300F and leave it in the oven for another 30 minutes or so. The time maybe less for you if using the shallow baking pan. The goal for increased temperature is to get golden brown top. Here is how the ready cheesecake look likes:

Now completely cool it down on the counter top and then pull it out with parchment paper and put it on a plate and cool in the fridge for 3 hours. Here is the cake that is ready to slice:

It will shrink in size a little bit, and should be very moist. If you have sour cherry preserves, this cake pairs very well with them. Slice at least an inch thick and serve. Enjoy!