Week 32 – Baked lemon cheesecake with baked plums and blackberries

Ingredients looking promising.

Well another busy week and weekend has flown by. Between visits to the Edinburgh fringe and the UCI Juniors Track World Championship cycling at the Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome in Glasgow I yet again didn't have time to try to make pastry! One of these days... But I did venture into the new world of pairing cakes with wine.

This past weekend I had my in-laws visiting and as they are avid readers of the blog I felt the need to make something quite impressive!! The BBC Good Food magazine came up trumps with a baked lemon cheesecake with blackberry and plum topping.

Ingredients

200g shortbread biscuits
25g melted butter
600g full-fat cream cheese
75g golden caster sugar
4 large eggs
3 tsp vanilla extract
100ml soured cream

For the baked fruit:
8 plums, halved, stone removed, then cut into wedges
300g blackberries
100g light muscavado sugar

Method

1. Heat oven to 160C/140C fan/gas 2. Line base of a 22cm round, springform tin with baking parchment. Put the biscuits in a food processor and whizz to fine crumbs. Tip into a bowl, add the melted butter and mix well. Press the biscuits into the base of the cake tin and put in the fridge to chill.

2. Beat together the cream cheese and sugar with an electric hand whisk until smooth. Carefully add the eggs, one at a time, with the lemon zest and vanilla extract until well mixed, but don't overwhisk (I really hate it when recipes say this, how are you supposed to know if you have overwhisked it if you are not a master baker? And if you do overwhisk, what will happen?!?!?) Pour the mixture onto the chilled biscuit base and bake in the middle of the oven for 50 mins until just set (I baked mine for 60 minutes). Set aside to cool for 10 mins, the remove from the tin and allow to cool completely.

3. Meanwhile, turn the oven up to 200C/180C fan/gas 6. Put the plums, blackberries and sugar in a large roasting tin and toss together well. Bake in the oven for 10-12 mins until the fruits have collapsed and the sauce is syrupy. Remove from the oven and leave to cool.

4. When the cheescake is completely cooled, spoon the soured cream over the top and spread in a thin layer. Serve in wedges topped with some of the baked plums and blackerries, and the rest of the side.

The texture of a baked cheesecake always surprises me because I feel like its sort of cheesecake but also sort of a firm sweet omelette/scrambled egg concoction which I’m just not sure about. I was worried that it wouldn't be lemony enough with only the zest of one lemon but to my surprise it was quite zingy. Fortunately we happened to open a bottle of red wine (that we found in the back of a cupboard) after dinner which turned out to be a lovely accompaniment to the berry/plum topping and the freshness of the cake. I have heard of pairing wines with meats/fish/cheese but not really cakes and bakes so maybe this is an untapped market and one I need to explore further, maybe with a Saturday morning TV show?? Could this be my next career move??

Overall it looked impressive, it had a nice flavour but it wasn't my favourite bake, I'm just not sure the baked cheesecake is the way to go over the traditional variety. Anyway, worth a try!

Happy baking, see you next week for another tasty treat!

Linds xx