The Best Ever Chilled Cheesecake (+ variations)

I'm on a diet.

No?

Yes. I said it. And this time, it's for real, and I can't mess with it because I just put it out there for the entire world to be a witness to.

Why? Because I've got a wardrobe full of clothes I love and that don't fit me anymore. That's a good enough reason, isn't it?

I'm following the Weight Watchers weight loss program. I chose it because it's a diet that includes all types of food and drink. I'm even allowed a certain amount of treats per week, which more or less allows me to eat a big piece of any cake I like once a week. It also fits with the fact that I like to eat out a lot, and I see it as something I will be able to follow in the long run (not like the super fast diets that make you eat only certain foods, for you to put all the weight back on again as soon as you start eating normally again)

The key is building a balanced diet (incredible, right?!) and planning treats to really enjoy them, rather than just eating any old junk food that comes to hand and which is often not that great.

So far so good, I've lost 1.4kg in 2 weeks. So it's slowly but surely!

The Best Ever Chilled Cheesecake

(+ variations)

God knows I love baked cheesecake like the New York Cheesecake, but this one is undoubtedly my all time favourite. As it's a chilled (not baked) cheesecake, its texture is smoother, lighter. I just love it. 
This base recipe allows you to be creative and personalise your cheesecake by adding any flavour you might like : Fruits, Fudge, Chocolate, Toffee...
Just play with it, and enjoy!

Ingredients

600g cream cheese (full fat)
200g double cream (light if you like)
100g (more or less, to taste) caster sugar
Half a sachet of gelatine + 2 tbsp water
1 tsp vanilla paste
1 pack of digestive biscuits (approx 12 biscuits) : hobnobs or ginger nuts
40g of butter, melted
a drizzle of golden syrup
any optional addition : pieces of toffee, fudge, fresh fruit cut in pieces, etc

Make the cheesecake

1/ Preheat the oven to 180deg C

2/ In a food processor, process the digestive biscuits until they ressemble fine crumbs. Alternatively, put them in a freezing bag and smash them with a rolling pin until they ressemble fine crumbs. 

3/ In a large bowl, mix the crumbs with the melted butter and a drizzle of golden syrup until well combined. Press firmly onto the base of a 22/24cm diameter round cake tin with removable bottom (the golden syrup is my personal addition to the traditional recipe. I find that it seals the crumbs together and form a lovely crunchy base). Cook for 10-15 min in the oven until golden brown. Leave to cool completely.

4/ In a large bowl, mix together the cream cheese with an electric hand mixer until smooth. Add the double cream and mix until well combined. 

5/ Take a break to prepare the gelatine: in a small bowl, mix together the gelatine powder and 2 tbsp of water. Heat in the microwave for 10 sec until the gelatine powder is completely dissolved (add 10sec more if needed), mix well and leave to cool for 1 min.

6/ Add the gelatine to the cheese mixture and mix well. Add the sugar, the vanilla, and mix well.

At this stage, you can add any "dry" addition ("dry" in order not to compromise the cheesecake mixture) that you wish to the cheesecake mix : toffee, fudge, fresh fruits (avoid very juicy fruits like pineapple, peaches, citrus, etc)

7/ Pour the cheese mixture onto the cake base, smooth the top with a spatula, and refrigerate for at least 4 hours, ideally overnight. Take the cheesecake out of the mould and serve.

Variations
Almond and seed brittle decoration (like on my picture)
On a silicone baking mat, spread roughly chopped almonds and sesame seeds.
Make a caramel in a small pan (heat 100g of sugar, with no water. Just let the sugar dissolve without mixing, until the it turns into a golden caramel)
Pour the caramel over the nuts on a thin layer, leave to cool completely before cutting into chunks.
Decorate your cheesecake with little chunks of brittle (they look rough on purpose)  

Blueberry (or other red fruits)
Just drop whole fresh blueberries in the cheesecake mixture before spreading it onto the base.
An hour before serving, make a blueberry coulis by heating fresh (or ideally frozen) blueberries in a small bowl with sugar in the microwave for 2 minutes. Mix and leave to cool completely before pouring over the cheesecake (once taken out of the mould)

Toffee / Fudge
Cut fudge candies in small pieces and add them to the cheesecake mixture before spreading it onto the base.
An hour before serving, make a toffee sauce by heating 50g of light muscovado sugar with 40g butter and 150ml of double cream in a small pan. Mix and cook until it turns to a toffee colour. Leave to cool, and pour over the cheesecake before serving

Picture courtesy of Pierre, who took a picture of my cheesecake very quickly in my lounge before we dug into it!

The Ultimate New York Cheesecake Recipe

When you're the youngest kid in a family, you share your parents' fate, to see your brothers and sisters growing up and spreading their wings, with pride and a little sadness.

The first holidays they spend away with their friends, the day they leave home to go to University, the day they move in with their partner...and their first Christmas with their in-laws.

Like your parents, you find out that you can never really get prepared for any of this, and that even though it's life and you're happy for them, every Christmas eve without them breaks your heart a little. 

This year is one of these Christmases, when most of my siblings (yes, I've got many of them) will be with their in-laws. So this time, the rest of the family have decided to make the most of it and shake up those Christmas traditions by getting away from our big empty family home. 

So, tada!, this year my parents and one of my sisters will come and spend Christmas in London, at mine!

...and slowly...this is when the pressure sinks in. Will I be able to pull if off?
More on that later.

The Ultimate New York Cheesecake Recipe

This is a simple and delicious New York Cheesecake recipe adapted from my favourite cheesecake recipes book : Women's weekly cheesecakes book
Fresh, rich, it has everything to please!
You can either make a crushed biscuit base like in this recipe, or use a sweet shortcrust pastry for the base (which I did this time). Both work, so just go with your mood! 

Ingredients

1 shortcrust pastry
750g mix of cream cheese and quark (I used 600g cream cheese and 150g quark)
100ml sour cream
200g caster sugar
grated zest of 1 lemon and 1 orange
juice of 1 lemon + 1 tsp of orange juice (from the pressed orange)
3 eggs

For the sour cream topping, mix together

150ml sour cream
2 tbsp of caster sugar

Make the New York Cheesecake

Preheat the oven at 160deg C/Gas 2

1/ Bake blind the shortcrust pastry with baking beans for 10min at 180deg C
(Grease and line the base of a 23cm spring form cake tin with baking parchment and the pastry, you cover the pastry with baking parchment and baking beans or uncooked rice, and you bake for 10min. Remove the paper and beans, and leave to cool)

2/ Make the filling : with an electric whisk or food processor, mix the cheese and sugar until smooth. Add the eggs, one at a time. Add the sour cream, juices and zests of lemons and orange, and mix until well combined.

3/ Pour the cheesecake mixture over the base and cook for 40 min to an hour until the cheesecake is cooked on the outside and still slightly wobbly in the center. Spread over the sour cream topping, leave to bake for 10 more minutes, turn off the oven, and leave the cheesecake to cool in the oven with the door ajar.

4/ Refrigerate for at least 3 hours, or ideally overnight. 
 

Blueberry and soured cream cake with lemon cheesecake frosting

Spring is here (finally)!

and suddenly life is completely different in London. 

Parks get packed with half naked people having pic nics with disposable barbecues

Pimm's is back on pub drinks menus and the usual pint gets replaced by a jug of Pimms

Barbecue meat takes most of the shelfing space in the supermarkets

People fight for a corner of a table in beer gardens

Music festivals' line ups are the favourite topic of discussion

Fruity cakes take over chocolate cakes in my kitchen

Everybody smiles just a little bit more

Happy Spring!

Blueberry and soured cream cake 

with lemon cheesecake frosting

Ingredients

175g soft butter  
175g golden caster sugar
 3 large eggs 
225g self-raising flour 
1 tsp baking powder
2 tsp vanilla extract 
142ml carton soured cream - 4 tbsp used in the cake and the rest in the frosting
3 x 125g punnets blueberries

For the frosting: 
The rest of the sour cream
350ml double cream
2 tbsp of lemon juice
1 tbsp of icing sugar

Make the cake: 

1. Preheat the oven to 180C and butter and line the base of a loose-based 22cm round cake tin with non-stick baking paper or use a silicone cake tin. 

2. Put the butter, sugar, eggs, flour, baking powder and vanilla in a bowl. Beat with a wooden spoon for 2-3 minutes, or with a hand electric beater for 1-2 minutes, until lighter in colour and well mixed. 

3. Beat in 4 tbsp soured cream, then stir in half the blueberries with a large spoon.Tip the mixture into the tin and spread it level. 

4. Bake for 40-50 minutes until it is risen, feels firm to the touch and springs back when lightly pressed. Cool for at least 10 minutes, then take out of the tin and peel off the paper or lining. Leave to finish cooling on a wire rack. 

5. To make the frosting, beat the double cream with an electric hand mixer until it forms soft peaks. Add the icing sugar, lemon juice, soured cream until creamy. 

6. To finish the cake, 2 options: 
Either spread over the top of the cooled cake (don't be impatient as the frosting will melt if the cake is too warm) and scatter with the remaining blueberries. 
Or cut the cake in two layers, put half of the frosting and blueberry inside, and the other hald on the top.

6. Bring it to room temperature for about half an hour before serving. 

The cake will keep in the fridge for a couple of days. 

Double lime and lemon cheesecake

One thing that makes a language singular is idioms. These little phrases / metaphors that most of the time wouldn't mean anything  or sound really funny if you tried to translate them word by word into a different language.

“Every cloud has a silver lining”, “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it”, “in a nutshell”, “on the wrong side of the tracks”, “come hell or high water”, ”a double rainbow”…I love idioms. They tell you a story, they speak for a culture.

I don’t actually know if “double rainbow” is an idiom or if I just heard it from a movie, but I love it and I use it all the time.

A double rainbow is anything that combines two layers of pleasure, i.e. a romcom that is a musical at the same time, a movie starring Brad Pitt and Ryan Reynolds (still to come, but fingers crossed someone will hear my prayers), a supplier who is both efficient and nice.
You get the point?

Double rainbows are really common in British baking, because British are never afraid of going a step too far. They put cream on top of chocolate tarts, they create cakes in which a brownie goes on top of a cookie (I swear it’s true, I made it for my Bday, and it’s absolutely evil)

I’ve told you before, the whole Pauline à la crème anglaise adventure is about embracing British baking. So I am getting around to creating my own double rainbows. Actually, the last one was a triple rainbow….

Double lemon and lime cheesecake

- the base could be eaten on its own. It’s an absolutely delicious biscuit –very crunchy, very tasty, very crumbly too

- the cheesecake is light and smooth. Well set, it’s like a lime mousse - devine

- the layer of lemon curd on the top is just the step higher in the direction of the sky (a step too far? Naaaa)

Ingredients for the base:

1 ¼ cup flour

½ cup butter, cut into pieces

1/3 cup caster sugar

¼ tsp salt

Make the base:

1/ Preheat the oven 200°C.

2/ In a big bowl, mix flour, salt and sugar together. Rub in the butter and crumble it between your fingers until it resembles moist crumbs, and make a ball with the dough.

3/ Press firmly the dough on the bottom and the sides of a cheesecake pan (a removable bottom cake tin), lined with baking parchment.

4/ Freeze crust for 10-15 min until firm

5/ Prick the crust all over with a fork and bake for 20-25 min until golden. If the pastry puffs up while baking, press it gently with a spoon. Let it cool completely while you make the filling.

Ingredients for the filling:

500g cream cheese (philadelphia or equivalent)

350g whipping cream, whipped to soft peaks

120g caster sugar

50 ml of lime juice (approx. 6 tbsp + 2 tsp)

Zest of 2 limes

1 ½  tsp of gelatine (powdered gelatine, or agar agar powder) dissolved in 2tbsp of water (or lime juice)

1-2 tsp of vanilla extract

Make the filling:

1/ In a big bowl, cream the cream cheese, sugar, lime juice and lime zest together.  Add the gelatine and vanilla extract and mix well.

2/ With a spatula, gently fold in the whipped cream (don’t over beat or it will become runny)

3/ Pour the mixture on to the cold biscuit base. Cover the cake with cling film and refrigerate for 5 hours at the very least (the cheesecake needs long to set and be really moussy. It’s first the wait) Ideally, make it the night before.

4/ 30min before serving, cover the cheesecake with a thin layer of lemon curd (recipe here)

Recipe adapted from http://chicgorgeous.blogspot.co.uk/

White chocolate and berry cheesecake

I’ve always heard my dad saying that children need rituals in their lives. Rituals reassure them and give them points of reference. When I was a child, I used to love our family rituals indeed:

• The Mini mice stories my dad used to invent and tell us at bedtime. I now listen to him telling them to his grandchildren, I love it!
• The Pancake Dinners on Sundays, coming back from hiking in the nearby mountains.
• Saturday lunches, when my dad would look at our school grades of the week and give us “Red coins” to reward us for our good grades
• The strawberries we would have for dessert every single night in spring, and the cherries we would go and scab from the nearby cherry orchards in summer

Growing up, I have found my own rituals. 
Cooking on Sunday afternoons is one of my favourite rituals : I lock myself in the kitchen, I turn the music on and I cook for hours. This helps me overcome my usual Sunday Nights Blues (Sunday nights have always been my week point)

Fortunately for my colleagues : Sunday Afternoon Cooking usually involves Monday Cakes!

White chocolate and berry cheesecake 

It is sooo creamy, soo delicious. I can’t tell you anything else. Just do it, and be happy!

Ingredients:

2 x 150g bars white chocolate

2 x 300g tubs soft cheese (we used Philadelphia)

284ml pot double cream

50g caster sugar

170g punnet raspberries

5 tbsp raspberry jam

85g amaretti biscuits

200g small strawberries

Make the cheesecake:

1/ Break the chocolate into a glass bowl, then put it over a pan of just simmering water to melt, making sure the bottom of the bowl doesn't touch the water. Line a lightly oiled 900g loaf tin with cling film.  

2/ Whisk the cheese, cream and sugar together, preferably with electric beaters, then stir into the almost-cool melted white chocolate until well combined.

3/ Stir 50g raspberries with 2 tbsp of the jam. Spoon half the cheese mixture into the loaf tin, then spoon the jammy raspberries down the centre. Top with the rest of the cheese mixture, level the top, then press in the biscuits. Cover and chill for 6 hrs or overnight.

Make the sauce and serve cheesecake:

1/ Set aside about 6 strawberries. Halve the rest, then warm in a pan with the remaining jam until soft. Whizz in a food processor or with a hand blender, then rub through a sieve to remove the seeds and make a sauce. Add a drop of water if the sauce is too thick.

2/ To serve, carefully turn the tin onto a plate, lift it away and strip off the cling film. Halve the remaining strawberries, then arrange on top of the cake with the remaining raspberries and blueberries (if using). Pour over a little sauce and serve the rest separately for drizzling over.

Oh, and I almost forgot to tell you : I met Jamie Oliver with when I was blogging for Samsung during the Games!

As you'll see on the pictures, it was as if I had met Leonardo Dicaprio when I was 15. The teenager who lies in me (not far from the surface as you've probably already guessed) was hysterical. It was short, but very nice. He is as cute and friendly as he is on TV.

The little bear with us is called Chocolat. He is my travelling bear, my mascot, who follows me everywhere. I had to get him on the pictures with Jamie!
http://www.facebook.com/chocolat.lourson

Cheesecake: the real reason why the Romans invaded Greece

The first memory I have of cheesecake was on TV.

Friends, Rachel and Chandler crawling on the floor with spoons, eating the neighbour’s cheesecake that fell on the floor in the corridor (Hello, my name is Pauline and I’m a TV addict!)

When I was a teenager, cheesecake belonged to these amazing foods I used to see on American TV series and dream of while stuffing myself with Marrons Suisses (chestnut mousse)

15 years or so later, I had cheesecake for the first time and God that was so good…well worth the wait.

Geek information: Ancient Greeks baked cheesecake (no wonder Romans wanted to invade them so badly). In 1912, an American called Mr Kraft invented a cream cheese called Philadelphia, which has since become the most common cheesecake filling base.

Today, each country offers different variations on cheesecake fillings: ricotta or mascarpone in Italy, quark in Germany, cottage cheese in the UK, cream cheese in the US, etc. Ok…back to the real business.

There are two main categories of cheesecakes:

- baked: the filling based on cheese + eggs + sugar (using caster sugar or condensed milk for example) is cooked before being chilled and served. The star baked cheesecake is the traditional New York cheesecake. Its texture is creamy, dense, almost heavy but divine.

Best served under a blanket with a good movie on a Sunday afternoon. It’s the quintessential comfort food.

- chilled: the filling based on cheese + sugar + often gelatine is chilled before served. Its texture is lighter that its fellow baked cheesecake.

Best served for dessert on a first date (or in the final of Come Dine With Me). Mini-cheesecakes made with cooking rings are perfect for showing off and pleasing crowds!

In both cases, the crust is usually either made of crumbled digestive biscuits (re-combined with butter, because there is not really enough butter in digestive biscuits) or a homemade short crust pastry.

If you could take only one book about cheesecakes on a desert (dessert?) island, I would recommend Cheesecakes, baked and chilled by Women’s Weekly. Its 50 or so recipes take you through many easy-to-make and delicious variations of baked and chilled cheesecakes.

Once you’ve understood the main constraints and tricks for both categories of cheesecake, you can be creative and go wild. There are endless variations of cheesecakes and your chances of messing it up are quite low. 

Chilled ginger cheesecake

The freshness of smoothness of its filling goes amazingly well with the kick of ginger. The candied ginger acts like mini-flavoured bombs, I love it.

The ginger syrup added to the crust makes it slightly caramelized, and almost crunchy.

Ingredients:

For the crust:

-12 gingersnaps

-30g melted unsalted butter

-1 tbsp of ginger syrup (from a jar of stem ginger in syrup)

For the filling: 

- 600g of cream cheese

- 250g of double cream

- 110g of caster sugar

- 3 balls of stem ginger in syrup, drained

- 1/2 tsp of ginger powder

- 1 tbsp of ginger syrup (from the jar of stem ginger in syrup)

- 3 to 4 tbsp of lemon juice

- 2 tsp of gelatine

- 2 tbsp of warm water

Optional icing:

- 3 big tbsp of spiced ginger jam

Prepare all your ingredients and take the cream cheese and double cream out of the fridge.

Make the crust:

1. Preheat the oven at 150deg C. Cover the base of a loose-bake cake tin (approx 22cm diam) with baking parchment

2. Crush the biscuits to fine crumbs either by whizzing in a food processor or put them into a polythene bag and bashing them with a rolling pin. Transfer to a bowl and stir in the melted butter and the ginger syrup. Spoon this mixture into the base of the tin, pressing the biscuit well into the base (with the bottom of a glass for example).

3. Bake in the oven for 10min or until golden. Leave to cool completely

Make the filling: 

1. Sprinkle the gelatine over the measured warm water in a small cup. Put the bowl in the microwave on middle heat for 20 sec. Stir until the gelatine is dissolved and leave to cool for about 3 min (the gelatine must not be lumpy); stir until the gelatine is dissolved,

2. Mix all the other ingredients with an electric hand mixer until well combined.

3. Pour this mixture over the top of the biscuit base

Refrigerate overnight. 

Optional icing:

2 hours before serving, heat the spiced ginger jam in a small bowl in the microwave for 30 sec to soften it. Brush the top of the cheesecake evenly with jam.

Put back in the fridge.

Before serving, remove from the tin and carefully peel off the parchment. 

NB: I know the pictures on my blog are not good yet but please bear with me, I promise I'll sort something out very soon. In the meantime, please try the recipe, I swear it looks amazing in real life :-) 
And as a proof : a picture from Adeline who tried my recipe! (I am so proud!) I love the UK flag and the sweets, it's so cute! 

Please do not hesitate to send me pictures of the cakes you've tried too! :-)