Cheese Tart (Käsewähe)

Käsewähe is one of the Swiss’ staple foods, especially in the colder months of the year. I’m quite picky with the cheese tarts though, the ones from the supermarkets and bakeries are often too heavy and filling for me (both the pastry and the cheese). I like this recipe here as the cheese layer is a little thinner and the entire tart doesn’t feel that fatty, and the aded yoghurt makes it a little lighter too. Also, while I’m normally fine with shop-bought doughs for tarts, for the cheese tart I prefer a homemade one – the cheese is intense and I like it balanced out with a freshly made, crunchy and not too filling pastry base.

Recipe

Pie crust

Either use a shop bought Kuchenteig (pastry dough), ideally the 32cm flattened, round one, or prepare your own dough with the recipe here. For this cheese tart I made my own dough according to the mentioned recipe, but with 1/3 wholemeal flour and 2/3 white flour instead of white flour only.

Filling

• 250g grated cheese (I usually buy the Käsekuchenmischung from Coop or Migros, but you can also use other hard or half-hard grated Swiss cheese such as Appenzeller)
• 180g plain yoghurt
• 1 egg
• 1.5dl milk
• 1 tsp flour
• a little salt and a little freshly grated nutmeg

Method

Pre-heat oven at 220 degrees Celsius.

Put a baking parchment onto a round tart tin of 32cm diameter. Put rolled out dough onto the parchment. Using a fork, make holes into the dough (this helps for a beautifully crunchy crust).

In a bowl, mix all ingredients of the filling. Pour onto the dough.

Bake for 25-30 minutes, on the lowest rack of the oven (the right temperature and the lowest rack are very important for a crunchy pie crust).

Once the cheese is nicely browned, take the tart out of the oven and eat either hot or cold.

This pie can also be frozen. To eat, take a slice out of the freezer, defrost at room temperature for 1-2 hours and reheat at 150 degrees C for 10-12 minutes until thoroughly hot.

Variations

This cheese tart recipe is a great one for adding further ingredients. Just add as many of them as you want to the tart before you bake it (depending on the size of the ingredient either under or on top of the cheese filling). Ideas:

• chopped and fried bacon
• chopped and lightly fried onion
• halved cherry tomatoes
• steamed broccoli or any other steamed vegetables
• chopped ham
• chopped fruit if you like sweet and salty