Jiggly Japanese Cheesecake Recipe

Jiggly Japanese cheesecake — by now the stuff of legends. A confection with a sweet fluffy crumb that defies gravity. A cottony “cheesecake” made with eggs and cream cheese that is a delight to both eat and hold. 

So What Is It?

For anyone only familiar with the classic New York-style cheesecake, this dessert will be a bit of a surprise. It’s kind of a loose interpretation of cheesecake in that it’s really a chiffon, or kind of a foam-style cake: fluffy, tall, and very, very jiggly.

Though this cheesecake originated in Japan, due to its happy jiggliness, it quickly traveled the globe. I’ve based my recipe off the BuzzFeed video where they attempted to make it five different times in order to get the ultimate DIY jiggly cheesecake.

And fair warning: this recipe is quite involved and NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART. 

But if you think you are up for the challenge, let’s get baking!

A fluffy cheesecake topped with powdered sugar.

Japanese Jiggly Cheesecake

A cottony, jiggly cheesecake from Japan.
4.23 from 88 votes
Prep Time 1 hour 30 minutes
Cook Time 2 hours
To cool completely before eating 4 hours 30 minutes
Total Time 8 hours
Course Dessert
Cuisine Japanese
Servings 8
Calories 437 kcal

Equipment

  • 8 1/2 inch springform pan
  • Conventional oven

Ingredients
 
 

  • 130 ml milk
  • 100 g butter
  • 200 g cream cheese
  • 13 egg whites
  • 6 egg yolks
  • 60 g flour
  • 60 g. corn starch
  • 260 g sugar
  • 1/4 tsp cream of tartar
  • 1 tsp vanilla

Instructions
 

  • Pre-heat oven to 320℉
  • In a medium saucepan, melt the cream cheese, butter, and whole milk over low heat. (Before adding, you can cut butter and cream cheese into small cubes to help speed the process.) Set aside when completely melted.
  • Separate your eggs. (You will get better results if eggs are at room temperature.) Set aside six of the yolks and all of the whites for the recipe.
  • Line your spring-form pan with parchment paper. Make sure to wrap the bottom with foil to prevent any leakage.

To Make the Meringue

  • Using a stand mixer, pour your thirteen egg whites into the bowl
  • To help with the stability of the foamy peaks, add a ¼ t. of cream of tartar to the egg whites.
  • Mix on high for two minutes.
  • Gradually add the sugar. (This process should take about five to seven minutes.)

To Make the Cream Cheese Layer

  • Take the melted cream cheese mixture, and add it to the egg yolks.
  • Whisk together until well incorporated.
  • Sift in the flour, followed by the corn starch.
  • Add one teaspoon of vanilla.

Finish

  • At this point you will want to start boiling some water for a bain-marie, or water bath which will keep the cheesecake from cracking.
  • Combine the meringue into the flour and egg mixture, flipping over and under, over and under using a wide spatula.
  • Place resulting batter into the spring-form pan. (Give it a couple of swift taps on the side to get it to settle.)
  • Now place the spring-form pan with cheesecake mixture inside a second, larger pan.
  • Add hot water to the bottom pan until it is half-full.
  • Bake for 25 minutes at 320 degrees.
  • Reduce temperature to 280℉ and cook for another 55 minutes. (I added an additional 30 minutes of baking time because mine wasn’t finished.)

Notes

Nutrition

Calories: 437kcalCarbohydrates: 48gProtein: 10gFat: 23gSaturated Fat: 13gTrans Fat: 1gCholesterol: 202mgSodium: 265mgPotassium: 178mgFiber: 1gSugar: 35gVitamin A: 869IUCalcium: 68mgIron: 1mg
Keyword cheesecake, cottony, dessert, Japanese, jiggly
Tried this recipe?Let us know how it was!

When your jiggly cheesecake comes out of the over, it should look like this:

A Japanese cheesecake fresh out of the oven wrapped in a band of parchment paper and foil.
Jiggly cheesecake right out of the oven

Just take it out of the larger pan, remove your foil, unlock the spring, remove the parchment wrapping, and you should have a beautiful, jiggly, cotton cheesecake.

At this point you’ll want to dust it with some powdered sugar to dress it up a little. 

A golden brown puffy Japanese cheesecake dusted with powdered sugar on a cake stand.
Jiggly cheesecake with the finishing touches

How do I Eat It?

Funny question, right?

If you just can’t wait, I’ve heard that some people eat this cheesecake warm, but allowing it to cool completely — at least four hours — should allow the flavors to “ripen.”

So What Does it Taste Like?

I tried it both ways: just out of the oven, and then again after it had cooled for six hours.

Just out of the oven it is warm and fluffy, the mouthfeel much like a custard with its pronounced eggy flavor. It’s sweet without being overly sweet, and it has a good cream cheese flavor as well. 

Having said all that, it’s not overly heavy — not at all like a New York-style cheesecake. Instead, it is much more like a chiffon, or an angel food cake: fluffy, light, airy, foamy. But much better than an angel food cake!

I think this jiggly cake would be amazing with ice cream and/or fresh fruit — blackberries, strawberries, blueberries, whatever’s in season.

Cooled completely the only drawback is that it doesn’t really jiggle. So if you want that aspect of it to be part of the show, then I’d suggest bringing it to the table warm.

But if it’s the taste you’re after, then I’d definitely let it cool. The pronounced egg flavor has definitely mellowed, leaving you to taste more of the butter and the sweetness. And the texture is phenomenal. It’s moist, yet it doesn’t feel or taste greasy at all. And has a really nice soft, spongy texture.

If you need an analogy, it tastes like Sara Lee pound cake. Same buttery richness — exact same flavor.

This cake is lighter and fluffier, and of course it doesn’t come frozen — you have to put in a lot of effort — but that’s what this jiggly cake tastes like to me — Sara Lee pound cake.

So last words?

Make sure you have an oven thermometer! If you don’t, go to the hardware store and buy an inexpensive one that you can put inside your oven. Use that to take the temperature of your oven. Don’t trust the dial or the digital numbers that are on your display because oftentimes they are incorrect.

If you bake this at the correct temperature, and use a skewer to make sure that it’s done, you will have more chances of success. 

You can watch me baking and tasting my jiggly cheesecake here:

Watch it jiggle….

Happy baking, lovelies!

49 thoughts on “Jiggly Japanese Cheesecake Recipe”

  1. Marianne McFarlin

    4 stars
    I love this! Made it twice now. But the written recipe doesn’t have cornstarch listed or an amount.

  2. One great use for the left over egg yolks from this recipe is to make Hollandaise sauce. Of course, it’s great on eggs (Benedict), but it is delicious on just about anything.

  3. Hmm…I’m not sure if almond milk would work to be honest, just a hunch, though. This recipe is famously fussy and swapping out milks might tip the scales.

  4. I am planning to give this recipe a try but I don’t have very many baking utensils for the metric measurements and the listed measurements are not exactly right on for example my 1/2 c is not .55 cup……..even my Kitchenaid scale/sifter does not have cup sizes…..it just gives measurements of lb/oz/g……not ml as ml is wet ingredients can be used in this unit. Looking at my glass measuring cups same issues…for example 130 ml is not listed just 24 ml increments.

    With all this mentioned I am pretty sure if measurements are not exact the likely of higher failure rate 🤷‍♀️

  5. A kitchen scale would definitely be the most accurate method of measure for making this cake, and I would highly recommend it because it will increase your likelihood of success. I purchased my first kitchen scale at the supermarket for less than $20 and I still use it for recipes that require weight measurements. I adjusted the volumetric conversions for the recipe to one decimal place to simplify things, but this also increases the approximation of the recipe. You could use a combination of tablespoons (15 ml) and teaspoons (5 ml) to arrive to the 130 ml of milk required for the recipe.

  6. I’ve never tried it myself, but I suppose you could. You would need to use a much smaller springform pan, maybe 4″?

  7. Johanna Kristin

    Hi
    My name is Jòhanna and I’m from Iceland.
    Now I’ve baked this cake 3 times and it is delicious! Thank you so much for this recipe 😁❤ but….. every time I take it out of the oven, it falls down and gets much thinner than it was.
    What am I doing wrong?
    Kindest regards
    Johanna

  8. Oh, I’m so glad you like it. Maybe try leaving the finished cake in the oven (after it’s been turned off) with the door ajar to allow it to cool down slower?

  9. Hello Emmy,
    Where did you buy the 8 1/2 inch springform pan and also for the meringue can you use a handheld mixer instead?

  10. I found the springform pan at the thrift store :), these days though, I’m sure you can find it online. You could use a hand mixer, but it’s going to take a long time.

  11. If I have an 8 in springform and a 9 in springform but not a 8.5 in springform, which one would you recommend?

  12. Hello, I’ve Just tried this recipe and the bottom half of the cheesecake came out custard like, with the top half being light and airy. What might have I missed?
    Thank you for this recipe by the way!

  13. I had an idea to add chocolate to this recipe to make a chocolate jiggly cheesecake. Where could you add the melted chocolate? would you remove some liquid? add more flour? i know this is messing with the entire recipe, but i think it would be delicious and i just have a TON of chocolate at home!

  14. Hi Emmy! If I wanted to use cake flour, do you know how much I should use? I know that AP flour and cornstarch can be mixed together to make your own cake flour, so should I use a total of 120g cake flour?

    Thank you so much, I can’t wait to try this!

  15. 5 stars
    Thank you so much! I made this for my Mom’s birthday today and my family loved it. They said they wanted this for New Years and their birthdays! I suggest that you try to tent the parchment pretty high up the sides like Emmy has, because mine where cut to fit perfect and it made it a little lopsided with a big crack. Still, great recipe!

  16. 5 stars
    When I had set the butter, milk and cream cheese on the stove to melt and seperated my eggs i coudn’t find the whisk attachent for my standmixer.. then i got my boyfriend to whisk the eggwhites by hand 🤣🙈
    In the end I successfully made the japanese cotton cheese cake 😁

  17. Emmymade,
    My wife is gluten intolerant. Can you use gluten free flour of Sweeten Rice Flour instead of the regular flour called out in the recipe?
    Thanks,
    Keith

  18. Wonderful!! Bit of a faff to make but delicious and we have had it several times. Every time I open the fridge I get a bit – irrestistable.

  19. I’m so sad. My cake started pouring out the parchment paper and into the bath water. I feel discouraged to try again. So many eggs wasted. I don’t know what went wrong. :'(

  20. Hello! Does the thermometer you use NEED to be the kind that just sits in the oven, or can it also be the kind that you stick inside the cake?

  21. I just did my first attempt. And it didn’t rise at all. It’s flat like when I put it in. I followed the directions exactly. No clue what happened! 🙁

  22. 5 stars
    I just came to this blog for the first time, and I am very interested in the information presented, I will come back another time, thank you

  23. 5 stars
    I just happened across this site. I wasn’t aware you had a printable site for the recipes. Thank you! I love this site and all your videos! Your enthusiasm is catchy!

  24. 5 stars
    Hello Emmy, I have made the Jiggly Japanese Cheesecake using your recipe, but I added cinnamon spice to it, and the result turned out to suit my local taste. Thank you for sharing, as a culinary trader and wedding caterer, this will become our favorite menu. Jiggly Japanese Cheesecake, the name is also beautiful.

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