Gretel always said that the difference between Topfentorte and what the rest of the world calls cheesecake comes down to one ingredient: Topfen. Fresh Austrian quark, soft and white, tangier than cream cheese and lighter by half. When I was small, watching her and my grandmother Eva bake in Kent, the Topfentorte was the cake that appeared most often. Not because it was special-occasion food, but because it was the kind of thing you made on a Tuesday when you had good quark and a few eggs and you wanted something beautiful without spending your whole afternoon on it.

The filling is barely sweet. That surprises people who've grown up on American cheesecake, which buries everything under sugar and cream cheese until all you taste is rich. Topfentorte wants you to taste the quark: its sourness, its freshness, the way it plays against lemon zest and Vanillezucker. The eggs get separated, the whites whipped stiff and folded in at the end, and this is the whole secret to the texture. Not dense. Not heavy. Something between a soufflé and a custard, set on a thin, buttery Mürbteig base that snaps clean when you press your fork through it.

I bake this at my restaurant in Salzburg year-round, but I love it most in late spring and summer when the quark from the local dairy is at its freshest. A thin slice, a cup of good coffee. No garnish, no sauce, maybe a little powdered sugar on top because the white against the golden surface looks right. This is good Austrian home cooking that also belongs in a Konditorei, and that's a rare thing.