Why would a recipe be sensitive to the brand of cream cheese I bought? I have a chocolate chip cheesecake recipe I have made several times before without problem. My mother's recipe says to use a particular brand of cream cheese. I thought this was nonsense. Anyways, when I went to the store, they didn't have Philadelphia brand, so I bought whatever they had, something organic such and such brand. 

The results looked disastrous. Supposed to cook for an hour, but took 1hr 40 minutes. Didn't have the same look at all. And I was about ready to throw it out. But in the end tasted excellent! If this was food network, I would have gotten tons of points off for look and texture though, because it is supposed to have the chocolate chips evenly distributed brought it, and they seemed to have fall to the bottom while baking.

my question:

Why would brand of cream cheese affect the recipe so much? It seems unreasonable. I also don't think it's the oven because I baked a pie last week and it turned out great.
Philadelphia Brand ingredients: Pasteurized Milk and Cream, Whey Protein Concentrate, Salt, Carob Bean Gum, Xanthan Gum, Cheese Culture. 

Organic Valley Cream Cheese (don't know which brand you used) ingredients:  Organic Pasteurized Milk and Organic Cream, Cheese Culture, Salt, Organic Locust Bean Gum. 

Nancys Organic Cream Cheese ingredients: Organic cream, Organic nonfat dry milk, L. acidophilus, B. bifidum and 4 strains of Lactic cultures, salt.  &lt;-- no gum in this one

The fat specs for all 3 brands are about the same.

I'd say it's any combination of:


the gums used
did the manufacturer use milk and cream processed through ultra high temperature (UHT) pasteurization
what is the moisture content (hard to determine from a label)
maybe human error by the Baker??