One of my Own....

For this recipe, I decided to go back to my first year of university.  We had a bit of a thing for cheesecake and of course, being students, we hadn't got a clue how to make cheesecake, so we guessed! this could have gone one way or another, but luckily for us, it was edible and quite delicious!  It was so much fun making it, and as you can imagine, there was a lot of mess.  We thought of a lot of ideas for a flavour and eventually decided on raspberry and white chocolate.  

When I think back to that year, there seem to be quite a few memories surrounding cheesecake!! For one, I remember a week that I was really ill and to cheer me up my flatmates went down to the shops and bought me a cheesecake!  Then one day, we decided to create our own for someones birthday which is the recipe I am doing here.  My flat mates even adapted this particular recipe for my birthday that year and made it with chocolate covered honeycomb which worked just as well. And of course, it didn't last very long...I asked one of my flat mates that year if she remembered this particular time and this is what she had to say:

The recipe we made is quite simple:

Base

About half a packet of digestive biscuits crushed.

2 tablespoons of melted butter.

Cheese mix:

2 regular tubs of Philadelphia or supermarket equivalent.

250ml of double cream, whipped until thick.

1tsp vanilla essence.

Sugar/sweetener to taste.

One large milky bar (melted).

Half a punnet of raspberries.

It is such a simple method that I was able to do it from memory. 

1.  Crush the biscuits until they are like breadcrumbs.

2.  Melt the butter and add this to the mixture until it has all bonded together.  Once this is done, spread the biscuit mix over the base of a tin.  I used an eight inch tin which worked very well.  Put this in the fridge to set.

3.  Whip the cream until thick and mix together with the cheese, sweetener and vanilla essence.  

4.  Add in the raspberries and melted white chocolate, saving a few raspberries for decoration.

5.  Spoon the cheese mixture onto the set biscuit base and decorate with the raspberries.  Then put back in the fridge to set.  Overnight work best for this recipe.

Turns out that you can use so many different things as utensils when lacking in a student kitchen! We ended up using a flat base glass to crush the biscuits as no one had a rolling pin or a blender.  It worked quite well.  But this time, I had mummy's kitchen to help me out, which is full of useful tools which half of them, I'm sure, have never been used. It took me no more than half an hour to make this and only about an hour for it to set so quite a quick easy recipe to do.  What I personally love most about it is that when you mix in the raspberries and they start to crush, all the juice starts to turn the mixture pink so you end up with a lovely pink swirl running through it.  However, unfortunately I used the wrong tin to make it in....it was far too wide so the cheese mix on top wasn't thick enough, as you can see in the pictures below, which was slightly disappointing, but it still tasted just as good!  The base was perfect and the cheese mix was quite sweet because of the melted chocolate but I loved it.  It adds more texture and flavour along with everything else.  Another down side is that once again I managed to cover mum's kitchen in all sorts of mess....pretty sure I'm not going to be allowed to cook there again.  But my brother on the other hand was incredibly grateful and definitely enjoyed my newest creation!  Once I had come back to university, mum assured me that once again, it didn't last very long, that I'm sure is down to my brother.

A Very Special Recipe.

As stated previously, this first recipe I decided to include has been kindly donated by my mother.  The inspiration for this particular recipe was my mum herself who, being a diabetic, had to forgo her love of cheesecake for quite sometime before deciding it was time she tried some sugar free and half sugar recipes.  She played around with different recipes trying out sugar substitutes and halving sugar amounts to find something that was suitable for her, but still tasted just as good.  This particular recipe has been a family favourite in our house for a while now and I imagine, and hope, it will remain this way.  Mum said to me as I began to make this one that 

"Having diabetes doesn't mean you can't have your cake and eat it!"  

Ingredients:

12 Digestive Biscuits

2oz Butter

500g Quark

3 Eggs

3oz Sugar and 3oz sweetener

Lemon Zest

2tsp Vanilla Extract

250g Creme Fraiche

Personally I think this recipe is absolutely fantastic!  I decided to go with the half sugar quantities when making this as I felt a no sugar cheesecake could be a bit adventurous for my first ever attempt.  The finished product was almost as good as the way mum makes it, but of course, not quite that good as no one can beat mums cooking.  The consistency was perfect and the base crunchy but not overdone.  Being a baked cheesecake, which I didn't know before exploring mums recipe tin, I wasn't sure how the consistency would compare to fresh cream cheese recipes but I thought it was just as good if not better!  I was also a little bit worried about baking a cheesecake, because i have a tendency to forget that I've put something in the oven.  But in this case it turned out perfectly with minimal disaster, (except for the mess I left behind.  Needless to say, mum was not impressed).

As well as trying to make this a low sugar cheesecake, mum has also managed to convert it to a low fat one by replacing full fat cream cheese with Quark instead, which is a bonus because it means we can have that tiny bit more without feeling quite so guilty about it.  However, there was no method included on this recipe which meant I had to keep running backwards and forwards to grab mum to ask about the next bit!  I guess by now she has perfected the recipe so much that she doesn't need a method any more, unfortunately, I did. I managed to persuade her to write out a method for me in the end though so I could include it for you all here:

Method:

1.  Heat oven to 160c/fan 140c/or gas 3.

2.  Crush the biscuits in a strong food bag with a rolling pin.  Mix together with the butter and press into a 20cm springform or loose-based cake tin.  Heat oven to 160c/fan 140c/or gas 3.

3. Put the remaining cheesecake ingredients, except the fruit topping into a food processor and process until smooth.  Pour into the tin and shake to level.

4.  Bake for 40 mins, then turn off oven and leave cheesecake to cool for 1 hour.  When completely cool, chill overnight. Don't worry if it has cracked on top, as this will be hidden by the fruit.

5.  Remove the cheesecake from the tin onto a serving plate and allow to cool. 

6.  Scatter over the fruit and dust with icing sugar if required.

Overall, I think this recipe works wonderfully as it means everyone can enjoy a piece!  Being low sugar and low fat in my opinion has made this cheesecake even more enjoyable as I don't feel as bad for eating it! It made a lovely finish to a nice sit down family meal, which everyone could appreciate.  It's almost became a tradition last year, that every time I would come home from university for a visit, which was not very often at all, that she should make a homemade lasagne and this cheesecake.  It always gave me something to look forward to after the long drive home.

An inspirational Dinner...

So, the other night, whilst out with the girls, we decided to grab a quick dinner at Nando's before going to see a movie at Westfields.  During dessert, of course, we began debating who had ordered the best option and how good they were.  One of my friends had ordered chocolate cake, the other three of us had ordered cheesecakes.  Whilst personally I thought the gooey caramel cheesecake I ordered was fantastic, my friend thought otherwise.  And my other friend, who had ordered the white chocolate raspberry cheesecake didn't really say much, so we guessed she was enjoying hers.

So this got us thinking, what is it that makes a good cheesecake? Where did cheesecake even come from? 

At this point I was considering what a good idea this would be for my food blog, to explore the cheesecake! It is something I love after all!

As soon as I got home I began gathering my flat mates and friends asking who had any recipe books I could steal for the project!  I will be testing out different recipes and also some bought cheesecakes to find the differences and see which is better is terms of packaging, presentation and flavour!  As well as this, I will be sharing all the different memories that pop up with each recipe I use, and how food being such a central part of day to day life that it is bound to trigger these memories. And here we have the inspiration for the blog title; Cheesetory!  A blog exploring cheesecake and the stories and memories that are intertwined.

Cheesecake being one of my favourite things ever, I thought that this is definitely a topic suited to me.

The first recipe I plan on trying out is one of my mum’s own special recipes which she has very graciously agreed to let me share with you all......watch this space.