Baked Cheesecake

Does your baked cheesecake keep cracking? Then you need to watch this recipe! Following on from the No-bake Cheesecake, here’s a baked cheesecake recipe that is almost as easy…

Ingredients

12 Digestive biscuits, ginger biscuits or Graham crackers
500g mascarpone cheese
200g crème fraiche or thick cream
175g caster sugar
2 tbsp plain flour
75g butter
3 eggs
Vanilla essence
Blueberries, or raspberries, or strawberries, or…
100 g of fruit jam
Icing sugar

Method

1	Preheat the oven to 150 ºC.
2	Place the biscuits in a polythene bag and crush them to bits with something heavy.
3	To make the cheesecake base mixture, melt the butter and mix it well with the crushed biscuits.
4	Grease a 20 cm (8”) cake tin with butter. Pour the base mixture into the tin and press it flat and even.
5	Bake the base at 150 ºC for 5 minutes.
6	Using a whisk, mix together the mascarpone cheese and the crème fraiche in a bow.l
7	Add in the sugar, sieve in the flour, and add a few drops of vanilla essence. Beat very lightly, trying to avoid incorporating too much air. Air is bad.
8	Lightly beat the eggs in a separate bowl and add them to the mixture. Mix gently.
9	Pour the mixture onto the cheesebake base and shake gently to bring air bubbles to the surface.
10	Check that the Cheesecake Hobgoblin has not sneaked into your oven and bake the cheesecake mixture at 150 ºC for 50 minutes.
11	After about 50 minutes the cheesecake should have a slight wobble in the middle. At this point, turn off the oven and allow the cheesecake to cool slowly in the oven. Come back tomorrow.
12	The next day, chill the cheesecake for a couple of hours in the ‘fridge. Remove the cake from the cake tin and set it on a plate.
13	Melt the jam and spread a layer on the top of the cake. Decorate with fruit, and drizzle on some melted jam.
14	Dust with icing sugar and serve.

Titli’s Tips

To avoid cracks appearing in your cheesecake, try to minimise the amount of air you incorporate during mixing. Add a small baking tray with 2cm of water into the oven during baking, and allow the cake to cool slowly in the oven.