Cheesecake can be challenging to make, but I have all the tips and tricks you’ll need to get this perfect on the first try!

Ingredients

One of the most important ingredient in this recipe is, of course, cream cheese! Buy the kind that comes in blocks – not whipped cream cheese. And, make sure that it is at room temperature. If your cream cheese is too cold, it will not incorporate properly with the other ingredients.

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

Ingredients

This recipe requires baking basics and one special ingredient – dulce de leche. You can make it yourself, buy it online, or find it at an international grocery store.

Tip: Make sure you read my notes in the FAQ section below so you can pick the right dulce de leche for this cake.

Each method has slightly different ingredients and preparation, and I share the pros and cons of each one in this post.

When I tested all three methods – stovetop, Instant Pot, and slow cooker – I found that the results were quite different:

After a bit of trial and error, I found a recipe that pairs the light, silky texture of good buttercream frosting with the dark but delicate caramel notes of dulce de leche. If it’s sitting on top of a plain chocolate or vanilla cupcake, it will knock your taste buds off your tongue with powerful flavors of caramelized sugar. But if you use it to top your favorite spice cake or pumpkin spice muffin, you will be amazed at how the flavors just melt into the background, supporting but not overwhelming the other tastes.

Background

For those of you who are squinting and thinking, “Wait, what is dulce de leche, anyway,” I’ll clue you in on one of the tastiest, easiest-to-make sauces in the world.