One of my absolute favourite cheese cakes is from Gail’s Bakery in London. Any time, I am in the neighbourhood, I make sure to pop in for a cup of coffee and cake. But every single time, I agonise for ages between their their gorgeous cheese cake and amazing oat and cranberry cookies. In the end, after going back and forth between the two about a million times, I just end up getting both!
But with everything shut down recently, I decided to try to bake my own cheese cake. I mean, why not?
So I embarked on a cheese making odyssey to find the best recipe for cheese cake. And I made couple of cheese cakes before I landed on a perfect recipe; I tried making the base from store-bought biscuits and home-made base from scratch.
And I much preferred the base made from scratch. The base made from store-bought biscuits had a weird salty tasty which I didn’t really like.
So base from scratch it’s going to be! It’s fairly easy and only add about 10 minutes extra to the receipe.
Another thing I struggled with was making the cheese cake without any cracks or bubbles. The trick is to gently shake the pan or tap it lightly once all the ingredients are in the pan and it’s ready to be baked. Tapping or shaking will release the trapped air. Another trick is to take a spoon and smooth out the surface and pop any bubbles on the surface before baking.
Get cheesing, I mean, baking friends with this amazing cheese cake recipe for a crack and bubble free cheese cake.
Next recipe is definitely going to be oatmeal cookies with cranberries!
Ingredients
Biscuit Base
- 90 gram butter cold and cubed
- 3/4 cup plain flour
- 1/3 cup almond meal
- 1/4 cup caster sugar
Cheese Filling
- 500 gram ricotta cheese fresher it is, better the cheese cake will turn out to be
- 330 gram cream cheese
- 1/3 cup caster sugar caster sugar is not as fine as frosting sugar but is more fine than normal, granular sugar
- 4 eggs
- 1/4 cup lemon juice fresh
- 1 tbsp lemon zest make sure not to have any white bits
- 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
- 1.5 tbsp corn flour
Instructions
Biscuit Base
- Line the bottom of a 10 inch pan with a baking sheet; make sure that baking sheet is the same size as the base
- Quick mix the ingredients in a food processor so as not to melt the butter – the mix should be crumbly
- Add the mix to the pan and smooth it with a back of a spoon so that the surface is complete flat
- Bake at 150 degree for 15 minutes. Take out of the over and set it aside to cool
Cheese Filling
- Mix the corn starch with 1.5 tbsp water to make a smooth paste
- Mix all the ingredients along with the cornstarch paste in a food processor so that there are no lumps. The mixture will have the consistency of a thick cream. But do not overmix as the mixture will have air bubbles which can produce cracks in the cake
- Pour the mixture in the pan on top of the biscuit base
- Gently tap the pan to remove the bubbles and smooth the top of the mixture with the back of spoon to break the bubbles (important)
- Bake for one hour at 150C
- After one hour, turn off the heat but leave the cake in the over for one more hour
- Take the cake out of the oven and let it cool over a baking rack
- Chill in the fridge for atleast one hour before serving
Notes
