Lemon cheesecake

Mhmmmm cheesecake. I love cheesecake but it's not something I have often because it's so decadent. But any food consumed during Christmas has no calories (right??) so I took this cheesecake along on the day. There was tons of food already, so we only ate half of it, and the other half went home with me. I was super happy - because it meant I was able to plate up a piece to take photos. That's right, I didn't care about eating the leftovers, I just wanted to photograph it!

I have made baked cheesecakes tons of times before (see here or here), but have never made a gelatine based cheesecake. It's actually much easier to make than a baked one, although I really do like a baked cheesecake.



If you're like me, and don't like your desserts sickly sweet, this cheesecake is perfect. I think I added double the amount of rind specified (I grated the rind of two lemons and just decided to add it all in) so it was tangy, but not too much so. The biscuit base did seem quite soft, although perhaps that was due to sitting in the fridge for a day. Next time I make it, I'm going to try baking the biscuit base in the oven to firm it up more.

I do still prefer a baked cheesecake over unbaked, but this is a good version and I'll make it again. What about you - do you have a cheesecake preference? Do baked cheesecakes or unbaked cheesecakes have your heart?



Lemon cheesecake

From The Australian Women's Weekly Food We Love

Serves 8

250g packet plain sweet biscuits
125g butter, melted
250g cream cheese, softened
395g sweetened condensed milk
2 teaspoons finely grated lemon rind
1/3 cup lemon juice
1 teaspoon gelatine
1 tablespoon water

In a food processor, pulse the biscuits until they resemble fine breadcrumbs. Add the melted butter and process until combined. In a 20cm springform tin, press the biscuit mixture evenly over the base and side, and refridgerate for about 30 minutes or until the biscuit mixture is firm.

Beat the cream cheese with an electric mixer until it is smooth. Add the condensed milk, rind and lemon jice and beat until smooth.

In a small heatproof bowl, sprinkle the gelatine over the water, and stand the bowl in a small pot of simmering water. Whisk until the gelatine dissolves and let it cool for 5 minutes.

Stir the gelatine mixture into the cream cheese mixture. Pour it into the biscuit crumb crust, cover and refrigerate for about 3 hours or overnight until set.

Baked vanilla cheesecake (with bonus friands!)

Recently I discovered that two of my colleagues were having birthdays in the same weekend. I discretely questioned one of those colleagues, trying to figure out his cake preferences and discovered that he didn't really like cake! Shock horror! How can someone not like cake?! But after some further sly questioning, I found out that he liked cheesecake, and specifically, baked cheesecake.

I immediately thought of the recipe below from Australian Table, which has been my go to recipe for baked cheesecake for many years. Unfortunately, I mislaid it for a while and only rediscovered it recently when I did a clear out of most of my food magazines.

I'm very fond of this cheesecake. It's not too large and doesn't use a kilo of cream cheese unlike other recipes I have tried. And it's delicious, with just the right balance of sweetness and richness. The other bonus is the sour cream topping - it doesn't matter if the top of the cheesecake cracks or bubbles in the oven, because it all gets covered up!

The only change to the original recipe I make is to double the amount of biscuits and butter as I prefer a thicker base. Sometimes I top the cheesecake with fruit, but this time (as you can see) I drizzled it with dark chocolate.

The cheesecake was a hit at work and slices were very enthusiastically gobbled down! I was happy to see that the base and filling held up well, and slices were even able to be hand-held.



Along with the cheesecake, I also made mini coconut and berry friands. I have made and blogged about these before, but I love them so much I thought I'd rave about them again.

This time I used a mini patty pan to make tiny bite side friands. They were a pain in the arse to get out of the pan. I ended up breaking several, but Alastair happily "taste tested" those ones for me. They were little but fabulous!



Baked vanilla cheesecake

Serves 8

From Australian Table - December 2005

250g Nice biscuits, crushed
120g unsalted butter, melted
500g cream cheese
2 large eggs, plus 1 yolk
3/4 cup (180ml) cream
1/4 cup (55g) caster sugar, plus 1 tablespoon extra
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
1/2 cup (120g) sour cream
2 punnets raspberries (or other fruit of your choice)
icing sugar, to dust

Preheat oven to 190°C. Line and grease base and side of a springform (2cm) pan.

Combine biscuit crumbs and butter. Press firmly into base of prepared pan. Bake for 10 minutes.

Place cream cheese, eggs and egg yolk, cream, 1/4 cup caster sugar and vanilla into a food processor. Process until smooth. Pour over biscuit base. Bake for 25 minutes, until firm, but still slightly wobbly in centre. Cool.

Whisk together sour cream and extra sugar. Spread over cheesecake. Top with fruit and dust with icing sugar.

Easter 08 – a birthday, anniversary and cheesecake!

Easter this year was pretty special. I always love having four days off, but this year Easter coincided with Alastair's birthday (on Saturday) and our first year wedding anniversary (on Monday).

We celebrated Alastair's birthday at home with Birthday Lasagne. Every year, I ask him what he would like for dinner on his birthday. I offer to make him anything. And every year he asks for lasagne! I'm often rather critical of my cooking, but even I thought that his Birthday Lasagne this year was frickin' awesome! The meat sauce was flavoursome and rich, having simmered for a couple of hours, and there was oodles of cheese.

Apart from Birthday Lasagne, Alastair also had Birthday Pancakes and Birthday Cheesecake. He was rather spoilt.

The recipe for the cheesecake was from Jamie Oliver's "Cook with Jamie" (the recipe is at the end of this post). In the book, he calls it the Bloomin' Easy Vanilla Cheesecake. Was it easy? Well, it would've been much easier if I hadn't been trying to juggle making lasagne at the same time! I broke my food processor pulsing the crumbs for the base – the tabs locking the bowl in place snapped. Then the cream cheese wasn't quite soft enough when I started beating the filling, and I got cream cheese on my face, on the bench, on other appliances, basically everywhere!

The other thing to note about this cheesecake is that it's HUGE. It has almost a kilo of cream cheese in and although the book says it serves 8-10 people, I reckon 12 people is a more accurate number. If I had realised just how big it was going to be, I would've scaled it down. It's pretty rich and filling, so it's not the kind of dessert where you'll have seconds. We had a piece of it after our anniversary dinner the next day, and I thought it tasted better after sitting in the fridge for a day.



We also celebrated our anniversary in the weekend, again at home. We popped a bottle of champagne that had been a wedding present (thanks Scott!) and I prepared some garlic and chilli tiger prawns, steamed mussels, pan-fried salmon and tuna sashimi.



It was a wonderful way to celebrate our anniversary. And we had such a lovely weekend that it was hard to go back to work on Tuesday!


Bloomin' easy vanilla cheesecake

From Jamie Oliver's Cook with Jamie
Serves 8-10 (serves 12 in my opinion)

150g /5 & 1/2 oz unsalted butter, melted, plus extra for greasing
250g /9oz digestive biscuits, crushed
115g/4oz caster sugar
3 tablespoons cornflour
900g/2lb full fat cream cheese, at room temperature
2 large free-range eggs
115ml/4 fl oz double cream
1 vanilla pod, scored lengthways and seeds removed, or 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
zest of 1 lemon
zest of 1 orange

for the cherry compote
400g/14oz stoned cherries (I used a punnet of raspberries)
3 heaped tablespoons caster sugar
options: a swig of port or whisky
icing sugar, for dusting

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C/350 degrees F, and grease and line the bottom and sides of a 24cm/9 & 1/2 inch springform cake tin. Mix the biscuits and butter in a bowl, press into the base of hte prepared tin and cook for 10 minutes. Then remove from the oven and allow to cool.

Turn the oven up to 200 degrees C/400 degrees F. Combine the sugar and cornflour in a bowl. Add the cream cheese and beat, ideally with an electric whisk, until creamy. Add the eggs and beat well. Gradually add the cream, beating until smooth, then beat in the vanilla seeds or extract and lemon and orange zest.

Scrape the mixture on to the biscuit base, and gently shake it to level out the surface. Put the cheesecake in the centre of the oven and bake for 40 to 45 minjutes until the top is golden brown and the filling has set around the edges. (A piece of foil over the top will stop it browning too much.) Let it cool at room temperature and serve after 2 or 3 hours. Or, for a slightly firmer texture, put it in the fridge until it's nice and cold.

Before serving, put the cherries in a pan, sprinkle over the sugar and add a splash of water. Put on a low to medium heat and simmer gently for 10 minutes. If you've got some port or whisky handy, feel free to add some. When the compote has reduced down it may be a little dry, so add a splash of water to loosen it. Remove from the heat and let it cool down, then serve spooned over the cheesecake with a dusting of icing sugar.