Recipes past and present: Cheesecake

Yesterday my youngest had a go at making a cheese cake, it is a family favourite which he believed his Granny had always had the recipe to, however it came as a shock to him that it had been such a success at a meal many years ago that Grandma had organised that it had been passed along between the inlaws.

I then began to think of all the meals that we would have when I was a youngster  that I loved, Coq au vin, Apricot daquoise, and even the regular evening meal/snack of tomatoes and bacon on toast.

Those were some she made, we have of course have our new favourites that we make, again mine would be Venison Wellington, Croissant Bread and Butter pudding and a herby bread that is always a winner.

So I thought I would put some of those recipes up here:

Today - Cheese cake

This Cheese cake has the advantage that it is dead easy and can be frozen, hence its use at so many parties. You can make it in advance and keep it in the freezer until needed.

Ingredients
Metric/Imperial
1 Packet of Lemon flavoured packet jelly ( Hartleys)
150g/6oz Digestive Biscuits/ Hobnobs crushed (ummmmm)
25g/1oz Demerara sugar
75g/3oz Butter , melted
125ml/ 1/4 pint Double cream
300g/12oz Rich cream Cheese
Juice of two lemons
100g/4oz Caster Sugar

This is the high calorie version!!!! to reduce the calories a bit we always used EXTRA light cream cheese and it seemed to work. We also used to hit it with the lemon juice a bit more as we liked the cheese cake to have a zing.

Now yesterday when my youngest made the cheesecake I tried something new - Dissolve the broken up pieces of the concentrated jelly into 125ml of boiling water, sometimes they are stubborn just keep going, don't add extra boiling water.Then make this up to 1/2 pint with cold water and place it in the fridge until it BEGINS to set- this time however I added ice cubes to speed up the process. Yes it works but you do have to make sure everything else has been done already so it doesn't set and you have a lumpy cheese cake.

Your base now needs to be made, grease proof paper the bottom of a spring sided cake tin as it means you won't spoil the cheesecake when done. Mix together the biscuits ( place all the biscuits in a plastic sealed bag then use a rolling pin to bash all the biscuits until crumb like), the Demerara sugar and the melted butter and cover the base of the cake tin. Level it but do not push down too heavily as depending on the sugar it can set too firmly!!!

Whisk the cream until thick. Mash the cream cheese with a fork until softer and then add the thickened cooled jelly, lemon juice, cream and caster sugar. I always whisk together at this point and pour into the cake tin.

Tada - it is done. Leave it in the fridge to be eaten or freeze it when it is set.

However I usually sneak it into the freezer straight away, where I have cleared a level drawer and place it careful inside until firmly set but not frozen.  I then remove the cake tin and if for every day eating slice into wedges and bag it up. Otherwise freeze entire and then when needed let it thaw overnight in the fridge. I would pipe around the edge of the cheesecake with some whipped double cream and then use some fruit coulis to flood the top.