Cheesecake #2

The first thing I ever consciously decided to make and the first thing I wrote about on here was a cheesecake. It was a horrible, floury mess that hadn’t really set and it made me think that this whole idea was stupid and awful. Which, of course, it is - but that hasn’t stopped me so far. Since then as soon as anything starts to go even slightly wrong I am taken back to the dreadful moment I tasted that bloody cake and I have to take a deep, cleansing breath before I can carry on.

I am neither a very good nor very competent cook: I leave ingredients out by accident, my oven doesn’t work very well and I tend to leave stuff on the stove for too long while I finish a cigarette. However the last few things I have made have turned out at least half way decent and this has given me a bit of a confidence boost. Ready to face my nemesis I bought some cream cheese and rolled up my sleeves.

For blueberry cheesecake you need:
150g of blueberries
500g of low fat cream cheese
75g of unsalted butter
397g (one tin) of condensed milk
3 eggs
1 teaspoon of vanilla essence
The zest of one lemon
200g of digestive biscuits

To make the base you need to crush the biscuits. I think the best way to do this is to put them in a sandwich bag and break them up by hand. It’s probably easier to use a rolling pin but what could be better than an edible stress ball?

On a low heat melt the butter in a large pan but don’t let it get too hot. Pour in the digestive crumbs and stir it all up. It seems like a tiny amount of butter but you only need to dampen the biscuit bits to get them to stick together. Spoon the base into a shallow nine inch cake tin (or whatever size mine is) and press it down very firmly. I used a wooden spoon for this as you can get right against the edge and flatten it out. Shove this in the fridge for 20 minutes to chill. The one thing I’m not looking forward to about summer is being unable to shove things (beer) outside to keep cold when I need space in the fridge.

Heat the oven to 170°c/gas mark 3 and while your base is taking up valuable booze space in the fridge mix the cream cheese in a large bowl until it’s soft. This takes all of 30 seconds and after that whisk in the eggs, lemon zest, vanilla and condensed milk.

Condensed milk is one of the most horrible things I have ever seen. It looks like very sweet living room paint and it just oozes. I have no idea why it was ever invented. Yes it keeps for ever but God, why would you want it to?

At this point the first cheesecake I made was a thick, creamy mix that smelt exactly like something you’d get in a coffee shop (or with a pube in it from my local Co-op). This time I just had a slightly yellow cream. This worried me a bit but remembering how promising the last one seemed I pushed this to the back of my mind and kept whisking.

Pour this onto the base and scatter the blueberries over the top. I plopped mine in as I’m clearly easily amused and liked the way they bobbed. I used far fewer blueberries than 150g but looking back I probably should have used at least that as they are what sweetens it.

Put your cake in the oven for an hour, a tiny bit longer if it’s still not firm. When you take it out place it on a rack to cool and definitely put it in the fridge for a while.

Mine seemed rather sticky on top and I couldn’t get it out of the tin. Though this was down to my sheer incompetence rather than the cake. As I started to slice it - and badly scratch my cake tin in the process - the fear set in. My hand shook as I tipped a wedge onto a plate. I watched on tenterhooks as my mum took a bite. “Ooh. Tastes a lot like flour, doesn’t it?" she lied. As my face fell she cackled and proceeded to hoover up two large pieces.


If anyone would like to adopt me into a safe and loving home I would be very grateful.

Cheesecake

Today I decided to do something stupid. That stupid thing was to make a cheesecake.

I got the recipe off the Waitrose website which handily let me know that Philadelphia cream cheese is the best thing to make this with. I won’t bore you with the Waitrose cooking instructions as I found them more confusing than a Pynchon novel. I have read them about nine times and I still have no idea what they’re telling me to do.

For the crust you need:
50g of caster sugar
150g of plain flour
Grated zest from ½ a lemon
Seeds from ½ a vanilla pod
1 large egg yolk
125g butter, diced

Typing this out I realised I put in 150g of butter and forgot the lemon zest.

For the filling:
600g of cream cheese
180g of caster sugar
1 tbsp of plain flour
Grated zest of one orange
Grated zest of one lemon (it’s good I forgot this in the crust as I only bought one lemon)
Seeds from ½ a vanilla pod
2 large eggs and 1 egg yolk. I used the white left over from the crust, but I’m sure that’s fine…
2 tbsp of double cream


To prepare the crust you need to put the flour, caster sugar, lemon zest (whoops) and vanilla seeds into a food processor and ‘pulse briefly’. I don’t have a food processor so I used a bowl and a spoon and nothing but man power. I knew how to get the seeds out of the vanilla pod from watching Something For The Weekend most Sundays with a hangover. But I didn’t realise that they’re really quite sticky and you’re more likely to slice through your thumb than do this easily. For any one who doesn’t know; you have to slice the pod in half and scrape the seeds out with the blade of the knife. Well, that’s what I did anyway. By this point I was swearing a lot and decided to put Queen on to drown myself out.
Now add the egg yolk and the right amount of butter and use your fancy-pants kitchen equipment or be a man about it and use elbow grease to combine it.
This ends up as a big sticky lump that you then need to squash into a disk, cover in clingfilm and stick in the fridge for an hour. I had a fight with the roll of clingfilm and used a sandwich bag instead.

I used this hour to glare and mutter at the evil roll of clingfilm, drink a beer and text the Best Friend ‘I’m making a cheesecale!’. Always double check predictive text. And cooking instructions.

Next up is the filling. Put the flour, caster sugar, vanilla seeds and zest in a bowl and mix together until smooth. My cream cheese was straight out of the fridge which made this a bit tough at the beginning and while grating the lemon I got some juice in my eye, but you don’t have to do that if you don’t want to. Add the eggs and the yolk/white one by one and make sure you blend it all together properly after each egg and then add the cream. My huge bowl of off-white gunk started to smell and look a bit like cheesecake at this point which was weirdly satisfying. Though I’ve just remembered that I forgot to put any cream in… Bugger.

Take the crust out of the fridge and roll half of it out until its 3mm thick. I suddenly realised that I don’t own a rolling pin so washed my beer bottle from earlier (look at me recycling) and used this. Every time the bastard stuff got thin enough it tore and then stuck to the kitchen surface even though I’d sprinkled flour absolutely everywhere. I finally got it done and shoved it on the base of the cake tin. You’re meant to use 20cm-diameter springform tin but I made do with a twenty one(!) cm diameter shallow cake tin with a removable base.
Once you’ve covered the bottom of the tin put it in a pre-heated oven at 200°c for ten to fifteen minutes until its set and a nice golden brown colour then leave it to cool on a rack.

When my little cakey base was cool I tried to put it back in the tin but it had grown a bit and cracked all round the edges. I ended up just forcing it in and covering any gaps with the crumbs which wasn’t very neat. Once you’ve got the bottom in the tin you need to line the sides with the remaining crust-dough stuff. I cut mine in to strips and overlapped the sides and then covered any holes left at the bottom with small bits of the dough, then trimmed the top to fit. Once you’ve done this you need to pour the filling in. It looked as though there was far too much for my tiny tin but it fit perfectly. Level the top and then put in the oven at 140°c for an hour.

Even though the filling was exactly the right amount I had loads of dough left over which was a bit strange and quite annoying.

After letting it cool and then sticking it in the fridge for a bit I took it out of the cake tin. The bottom was stuck to the base and the whole thing looked quite greasy. The cake itself was a bit soggy, rather than firm and spongy and the crust around the sides looked half cooked. I had half a mouthful which I couldn’t swallow as all I could taste was soapy flour but Sous Chef Mum had two slices. The whole thing took hours and the end result definitely wasn’t worth it. I’m sure that that’s down to my baking skills rather than the recipe though. I imagine that leaving out several ingredients didn’t help but boo to Waitrose recipe cheesecake. If anyone knows where I went wrong please do let me know.